Did we need a Prequel Trilogy?

I have been saying this for years. If Lucas would have crafted a 3 hour standalone prequel movie with a few flashbacks, I actually think there would have been less backlash and probably would have been better received.

Lucas has said that ROTS had 60% of the PT plot points, so it was the red meat of the trilogy.

I think it would have worked perfectly with the OT & ST as a true backstory. You could watch the OT, then the Prequel Movie, and then fast forward 30 years to the ST.

 

60% huh? I guess that's why he made a whole movie about space taxes.

 

We didn't need any Star Wars film.
It's not up to us and never was.
It's Lucas' story. We certainly didn't need ESB or ROTJ. ANH was designed as a one-off and so it was.
True that Eps I and II were prequels to the actual prequel story that was created when Lucas wrote ESB and merged Anakin and Vader into one person. ROTS probably was 60% but that still leaves 40% and to gain a full picture of the events of III you need I and II.

The backlash that lead to those movies grossing all told some 3.5 billion dollars plus? That is not just the box office take of which Lucasfilm gets about half but video, TV and other revenue streams. Nevermind in addition to that total all the other merch on top of that.

It still works far better with 6 movies. If you don't like the first 2 so much then never watch them again and follow your order.

While I get to watch all 6 and even more later.

 

The Prequels should have been two movies. First movie, the adventures of Anakin Skywalker & Obi Wan Kenobi during the clone wars, make it a war drama or a spy thriller movie where Anakin & Obi Wan hunt down a spy/mole in the Republic Army. Let Anakin be an overconfident Jedi maverick with thoughts of grandeur because he is thought to be the chosen one. A have him meet some woman that becomes enamored with him because he's the chosen one then finish the movie. Second movie, afters years of war Anakin is jaded and cynical due to the stress of the war. Anakin has two infant children by this time, the mother "the woman from the first movie" daughter of Senator Bail Organa. Anakin the master Jedi pilot is shot down in a battle and nearly dies. He is rescued from the wreckage by some strange old hermit who wears a mask "Palpatine" Faced with his own mortality and the pain of his wounds he suffers a psychology breakdown and becomes mentally unstable. Feeling that the chosen one prophecy was fasle, he is overcome by greif , vitriol & fury toward the Jedi for them leading him to believe that he had some great prophecy, some great destiny. The old hermit starts speaking of ways to obtain great power that he desires by the means of the darkside. Anakin agrees to become his apprentice and falls to the darkside "all part of Palpatine's plan". Anakin now Vader, carries out the attack on the Jedi Temple and Palpatine calls for the execution of order 66 and takes over senate in the way of a military coup. Anakin returns to his wife who is happy to see him alive and has no knowledge of his involvement in the assault on the Jedi Temple. He informs her of his new darkside power that helped him defeat the Jedi at the Temple, she is shocked & horrified at what her husband has became. He informs her to retrieve the childrens things and that they are leaving coruscant to other planet. She refuses to comply with his orders. An altercation accrues and Anakins wife is mortally wounded, Vader leaves with the children. With her last breaths of life she tells Obi Wan where to find her children and to rescue them. Obi Wan tracks down and confronts Vader in a duel, Vader critically injured in the battle and is left for dead as Obi Wan takes the children to Bail Organa where it's decided that the children should be separated for their own safety. Bail takes Leia and Obi Wan takes Luke to Anakin's relatives on Tatooine. Vader is then recovered Palpatine and put into a life support suit. End movie with Vaders mask closing fade to black, cue Vader breath, roll credits.

 

I remember Lucas did an interview during the leadup to Episode 3 and he said the PT outline was divided:
20% TPM,
20% AOTC
60% ROTS

 

Of course we needed three prequals. Remember the opening crawl of A New Hope states it's STAR WARS Episode IV?

 

If Lucas can replace an actor with another actor in the movies (Sebastian Shaw deleted for Hayden), then could he have changed the opening crawl numbers.

Episode 1: The Prequel Movie
Episode 2: A New Hope
Episode 3: Empire Strikes Back
Episode 4: Return of the Jedi
Episode 5: ST Movie #1
Episode 6: ST Movie #2
Episode 7: ST Movie # 3


This whole notion that everything needs to be a trilogy sometimes dillutes a product. For example the Lord of the Rings story needed 3 movies, where the Hobbit did not need 3 movies.

 

I'm pretty sure that in the original release, the opening crawl just said Star Wars

 

Sure we could of seen the entire story of the Prequels in one movie. But the deeper problem is that, in my opinion, we shouldn't of had any prequels! The backstory of Star Wars works well as backstory - everything is explained to the audience in enough detail that we get exactly enough of a sense of what happened as we need, to understand the story. All the rest of the junk in the Prequels is just filler. Boring filler. That's (one of the many) reasons the deliberate (but terribly executed) pristine, clean look of the Prequels clashed too harshly with the look of the Original Trilogy, is because it (deliberately) didn't look like Star Wars. I don't want to watch a Star Wars movie that doesn't look like Star Wars. It's backstory! Star Wars is a story about adventurous young rebels in an evil (ancient?) Galactic Empire, not any random wierd setting you can come up with (like what kind of wierd place is the "Republic" supposed to be?). But um if we had to see the prequels, they could definitely of been in one movie.

 

They should only make one sequel movie then and don't bother with any other films at all.

That is simply not true as the prequels show. The point is that we didn't know the backstory.

If you think that then it is for you. Not for me or the millions who saw and enjoyed the movies just like the originals.

That is simply untrue.

If you don’t think that prequel environments like Tatooine,various parts of Corsucant, Geonosis, Utapau, Mustafar and various other settings don’t look “lived-in” then that term CAN’T apply to various places in the OT. Yavin, Hoth and Endor among others look far “cleaner” as there was nothing to be “dirty” there in the first place. It’s only dirty as far as it’s in the wild. Never mind Cloud City.

What’s also obvious is that in the OT they went to these essentially barren worlds like Yavin, Hoth, Dagobah that only had animal lifeforms or Endor with the primitive Ewoks and not places with advanced civilizations.

Look at the ships in EPIII after 3 years of the Clone Wars. Look at Grievous’ Invisible Hand and compare that to any imperial ship interior you see. No comparison to which one is more “lived-in”. The Imperial ships are have nicely polished floors.

Oddly we actually live in a lived-in universe and not everything is dirty, rusty and falling apart. How do you explain that? What also is funny is that it’s quite clear that Tatooine is just about the worst place to be. As Luke says “If there’s a bright center to the universe, you’re on the planet that it’s farthest from.” That bright center in Star Wars is Coruscant.

It is Star Wars. It can't not look like itself.

I don't think you are going to be very happy with the new movies. I really don't.

Let's have only one sequel then.

 

I am actually very confused why you put this part.

You fought in the clone wars?

Your father was the best star pilot in the Galactic Empire. And he was a good friend.

For over a thousand generations, the Jedi knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the old republic. Before the dark times. Before the Empire.

A young Jedi named Darth Vader - who was a pupil of mine before he turned to evil - helped the Emperor hunt down and destroy the Jedi knights. Vader was seduced by the dark side of the Force.

The Force is what gives a Jedi his power - it is an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us, penetrates us, and binds the galaxy together.

Obi-wan never told you what happened to your father.
He told me enough - he told me you killed him!
No, I am your father!

What part of the story told in the Prequels did we not know? I mean, besides things that didn't matter (the filler) like the part where General Grievous flew a ship and then got killed. And when Anakin is a stupid kid. And the...*gags* prophecy part.

Its not about how much physical dirt there is in a scene! Its about how real things look, in the Original Trilogy, people look like they are walking around in real place, and the objects and details of the sets look like they have real purposes, like they made sense. With the Prequels they could use CGI to create any stupid setting or ship or alien, no matter how unpractical and wierd it is. "Utapau" and its dumb sinkhole cities will never look as believable as Echo Base, even if they did add a pile of CGI dirt. There was dirt in the setting of the Flintstones, are you trying to say that it looks more believable than Cloud City? Grievous's ship just looked like a level in a video game, in fact so did all the settings in the Prequels.

This part is just wrong. We saw advanced civilization on Tatooine, the Rebel Alliance bases on the sixth planet of the Hoth system and in the temple, in Cloud City, and on the Death Stars and the other Imperial places. And they all managed to look like actual places, most likely because they were all actual places. But even the (extremely few) real sets they built for the Prequels look like CGI.

No its not.

I have said before, I think that J.J. Abrams can make a good Star Wars movie. He grew up with the Original Trilogy, and is passionate about it - he has said he's always wanted to make a Star Wars movie. His Star Trek films definitely captured the right feel, and he doesn't appear to be that big a fan of Star Trek (neither am I). But best of all, it can't be as bad as the Star Wars Prequels.

 

It all depends on how much material you have. If JJ & Disney only had material for 2 Sequel Trilogy movies, I would be fine with that. As I said with Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, the Lord of the Rings needed 3 movies because of all of the material, where The Hobbit could have been 1 or 2 movies, but 3 is too much.

Even if the PT were 2 movies, I think that would have worked better, because I don't think Lucas had enough material for 3 movies, hence his quote that 60% was in Episode 3.

Now I am naive to think this is all about money, and 3 Hobbit Movies will make more then 1 Hobbit, the same with the PT. But quality wise, sometimes less is more.

 

As it was created, the PT was not necessary. It's already been pointed out by several posters, but bares repeating: we didn't learn anything new from the prequels. Yes we learned names new characters and planets. We learned the convoluted minutia of Palpatine's rise to power. But in the grand scheme of things none of the new information was VITAL. It was just filling in the blanks already created by the OT.

A good analogy is the OT created a coloring book, and the PT colored it in with crayons. No new pages were added to the coloring book by the PT.

 

Good points, all. But can you imagine the uproar if there had only been one prequal after the OT was already numbered IV, V, and VI?

 

This is unquestionably true. The statements that we only needed one film for the prequels is predicated on being locked into the content provided in those films.

 

You make two prequal movies 2-3 about Anakin Skywalker & Obi Wan Kenobi. Then you go back and make episode 1 about Darth Plagueis, Palpatine or whoever, have it tie into 2-3 somewhat .

 

The Prequels are not just the story of Anakins fall. I personally loved seeing the rise of Palpatine. The start of the Clone Wars, and what brought about the fall of the Republic. Without TPM and AOTC, we loose so much of that story.