Restoring Balance to the Force: Episode I - The Restructuring of the Plot

Restoring Balance to the Force

Episode I

THE RESTRUCTURING OF THE PLOT

A long time ago, in a blissful naïveté far, far away...

Star Wars fans eagerly awaited the tale of how Obi-Wan Kenobi met Anakin Skywalker, only to fail in preventing his friend and pupil from slipping to the Dark Side.

Instead we received a trio of bloated films that covers 13 years of galactic politics, numberless origin stories, dozens of settings, and a myriad of plot, dialogue, and acting problems that buried that promised story mentioned above. In the end, it was only one plot point of dozens, awkwardly squeezed into the last half of the third movie. What should have been the beating heart of the series was stifled and muddled.

How can this be fixed? I like wonder what the plot would have been like if this was a Shakespearean three-act tragedy and each Episode was an act. How might this look?

Act one: Anakin as hero.

Act two: Anakin tempted by the Dark Side.

Act three: Anakin as villain.

Compare this to the Prequels' actual plot structure:

Episode I: Anakin as annoying kid who accidentally saves the day.

Episode II: Anakin as annoying teenager who is supposedly a hero, but doesn't accomplish all that much really.

Episode III: Anakin as annoying young adult with a terrible haircut who is a hero for half of the movie and then almost out of nowhere just starts killing children.

If you squint your eyes real hard, you can see that George Lucas did try to introduce the idea of Anakin being lured to the Dark Side in Episode II. In fact, Anakin slaughters an entire village of men, women, and children out of rage. How do the other characters handle this disturbing step into darkness? Padme, Anakin's wife-to-be, pretty much just says, "We all get angry sometimes. That's just part of being human!"

So, let's paint a picture of what my trilogy would look like, stripped to its bare bones.

Episode I

Since we need Anakin to be a convincing hero, we must bid adios to 10-year-old Anakin Skywalker. I don't think I'll get a lot of complaints there. But remember, my philosophy is that we don't have to obliterate the entire original plot to make a good trilogy. My goal is to redeem George Lucas, not humiliate him.

So what elements of Episode I can we keep? What should be thrown away?

Let's say Qui-Gon Jin is still around. Maybe he has been training Anakin for years, but Obi-Wan will take over for him after his inevitable death at the end of the movie. Maybe, he pressured Obi-Wan into taking Anakin on as an apprentice. It really doesn't matter all that much. What is important is that the Anakin we meet can already wield a lightsaber and fend for himself.

What about Darth Maul, AKA the greatest missed opportunity in Episode I? For someone who looks so menacing and cool, he really only does one thing in the Episode I, two things if you count dying. The other thing he does is kill Liam Neeson. He can stick around for my movie, but he has to be a more direct antagonist. We have to see him as the source of our protagonists' woes, not Newt Gunray, not even Darth Sidious (at least at first). There is also no reason why he cannot survive until the second movie. He would then become an excellent foil for Obi-Wan.

What about Naboo? Maybe, but serving a vastly different purpose, a purpose that is 100% Jar Jar/Gungan free. Instead of us dropping in on the prelude to a conflict brewing over bureaucratic disagreements about taxing trade routes, the new and improved Episode I will introduce us to our characters in the first battles of what will quickly become a brutal war. It will not be between toy robots and cartoon aliens, but an insurgency of disenfranchised people against an increasingly corrupt government...but we will save that discussion for the philosophy article. Naboo can stay, but only as a battleground for what becomes the Clone Wars.

The important thing is this: we need to see a young adult Anakin be a legitimate hero and develop an earnest kinship with Obi-Wan. We can also begin to see the seeds of why he will turn. As someone who gave himself to an order that seeks to defend "peace and justice," he is more and more frequently sent to kill people in the name of peace. Also, he learns that he is good at it, very good.

Episode II

The war is in full swing now in our new Episode II, which will only take place 1-3 years after Episode I. Maybe it begins with the marriage of Anakin and Padme, or maybe that is how Episode I ends. What is most important is that we can clearly see how years of war and killing have weathered away the Anakin we once knew. He is no longer naive and he now sees the world in moral shades of grey. He still loves Obi-Wan like a brother, but we can see that Obi-Wan is genuinely concerned for his friend and tries to fight to keep him from slipping away.

A lot of the plot of Episode II can be jettisoned because it was unimportant. The plot point that should be retained is the discovery of a clone army that is quickly utilized (I will discuss the moral implications of this in a later post).

What needs to be added is this: Palpatine will be coercing Anakin to the Dark Side throughout until something happens that causes Anakin to fully slip. It might be his mother's death, or maybe he is trying to save Padme, but that needs to be elaborated upon. If love was his motive, it cannot be true love that turns him into Darth Vader. Maybe, in a variation of Daniel O'Brien's suggestion, Anakin's love is consumed by jealousy and delusion and he begins to think Obi-Wan is making him into a cuckold. Whatever it is, we have to see him become subsumed with hate of everything he used to be. He definitely cannot slaughter a village of men, women, and children without consequence.  

The important point is this: Anakin must slowly but surely ease into darkness and by the end of this movie he should turn to the Dark Side.

Episode III

This gives us a lot of freedom with how we handle Episode III. Though Anakin has become Darth Vader, the Republic has yet to fall. Maybe Obi-Wan doesn't even know that his brother-in-arms has betrayed him. Now we can see Palpatine enact his master plan, which now can be Machiavellian and elaborate, as opposed to a three-minute scene depicting the fall of the entire Jedi Order and Galactic Repblic. Instead, we now have an entire movie where we see the Jedi try to respond to a threat they noticed too late, only to slowly succumb to it, but not before they sow the seeds of what will eventually become the Rebel Alliance.

And in Vader's mad rush to destroy everything he once defended, he tragically and unintentionally kills Padme, but he places the blame on Obi-Wan and the Jedi, further fueling his hatred.

Episode III must accomplish two things: we must see the entirety of Anakin's fall from grace and we must see the small, but hopeful beginnings of the Original Trilogy.

If you stuck with this, bravo to you! I hope I have demonstrated that the Prequels can be rewritten in such a way that the plot can be largely retained and yet still engage the audience.

Next time it is Episode II: Simplicity Strikes Back!