WHAT ONE ELEMENT WOULD YOU CHANGE OF THE ORIGINALS?

The kiss in ESB between Luke and Leia. Or the romance in ESB. Make Han less pushy. It hasn't aged well.

 

Ewoks.

MOD EDIT

 

Periodically I take cracks at rewriting Star Wars scripts for fun, just to see how else things could be if some things were changed.
One thing I've learned along the way is how dialed in a lot of stuff is.
Changing seemingly small things in Star Wars has this ripple effect that causes a lot of reworking to fit the change.

It may be fine in the one film I'm tinkering with, but then there's the others and so a domino effect begins.

Though once in a while I can change something with little hiccup, but it has to be pretty small.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

That's all the fault of the butterflies.

 

That's interesting. If you don't mind, could you give some examples?

 

Let's take a common pick; Ewoks.

So let's remove Ewoks from ROTJ.
We'll keep the whole scene and everything, but we're going to replace the entire Ewok group with a band of local people on Endor. So they're human, and they are poor, and have been hiding out all Robin Hood in the trees.

So, right away we have a bit of an issue with miscommunication not being a plot device anymore because almost every human seems to speak the same universal galactic language in Star Wars films (which we hear as English).
Well, we'll just work around that and suppose this is one of those Star Trek types of cases where you find a bunch of humans on a planet in the middle of nowhere who seem to have been left behind ... somehow. Luckily, this is Star Wars so we don't have to explain ourselves too much.

So, basically, now we have a Star Wars version of Native Americans. Though, we'll also need to make them incredibly backwards and stupid because otherwise why wouldn't they have ever tried to rally up and fight before anyone came along and showed them how to organize a unified strategic strike?
So they don't know military tactics; they're just hunter/gatherers who have just barely existed the stone age.

Everything else works pretty much as it was in the films, except we make the attacks on troopers and what-not more powerful than a few rocks being thrown.
We have the rebels arm these people with weapons that can actually make a difference with any extra weapons they have, which isn't much, and for the rest, they set up a wide variety of traps to capture and wipe out soldiers, and rely on guerilla tactics - sort of a Star Wars Robin Hood meets Last of the Mohicans.
They are a warrior people, and they look like it, but they are a warrior people who have been pushed into hiding and submission to the point of being ashamed of their inability to fight. When they get this chance, it's an explosive moment for them. They let it rip. Going for the throats and holding nothing back; when they tackle a soldier and beat on them with their stone and wood weapons, they beat on them ferociously - though we spare the audience the blood and guts of the imagery, we do see these warriors on top of troopers whaling on their heads multiple times until helmets are shown to shatter.

They never take the soldier's head-on, and stick to guerilla tactics because head-on is a guaranteed loss. They take a few out at a time and make a sneaky move into the shield generator station without raising alarms everywhere.


Cool.
So that takes care of the Ewoks and gives folks a bunch of cool things to look at, while still maintaining the "low tech" vs "high tech" parable of that scene; that with enough will, the lower technologically advanced people can still overcome tyranny even if it has the highest tech available.

So that seems all good within ROTJ and we shouldn't have any problems, right?

Well...not really.
Let's now flip to TPM.
You basically now have to fix just about everything in TPM to do with the Gungan.
You can keep the trapping scene, because we can still have ROTJ introduce the low tech folk as trapping our heroes, but the marveling over 3PO kind of goes out the door in ROTJ because if they are hiding from the Empire, and fear technology by proxy, then 3PO wouldn't really be a god-like thing, and the humor of that is also entirely lost with these folks now being just regular people. Instead, we have viciously capable indigenous warriors, so you'd have 3PO at far more threat than Luke and party.
We could get around this by flipping it around such that Luke's hand is seen and they do the marvel over it thing because they've never seen that before - a human who is also partly a robot. They take this to be cool because Luke is commanding the technology, bending it to his will, from their view. Something they couldn't have imagined. So Luke goes to the shaman and has a barrier language conversation something akin to the scene of the meeting between the chief and our hero in the film Avatar.

Back to TPM.
Now we have to re-write the entire concept of Jar Jar and all of the Gungan race.
Ewoks were cut in half Wookies, basically, and Jar Jar is basically the Chewbacca of the PT (settle down rage-folk...I'm not saying Jar Jar is as cool as Chewie).
He's basically there to tag along as the token alien character who's best buddies with our heroes and has a very different way of thinking from our human heroes which causes interesting moments to happen; sometimes for the better and also for the worse.

Now, we can keep Jar Jar, but we have a bit of a problem with the Gungan race and everything that happens there because the Gungan are a good counter-reflection of the Ewoks, but they're not a very good counter reflection to a Last of the Mohican's Avatar warrior people.
They're pretty much just the opposite of that, in fact.

So you have to then create an aboriginal style people here, but not ones like Jar Jar because we can't have idiot savant cultures now that we've removed the Ewoks.
Now they have to be ruthless warriors who have, for whatever reason, evolved a technology that looks like backwards technology, but has elements of high technology within it, but the high technology that they have is technology they get from nature - it just so happens that their planet provides some rather dangerously powerful raw materials that don't require a lot of refinement to employ their dangerous qualities.

So then you have the whole Jar Jar as mediator problem, because how on Earth could Jar Jar mediate this type of event; they aren't his people anymore.
Well, we're in a pickle. We can flip it so that Qui-Gon does this instead, but then we run into a problem that there's really no reason for these people to listen to Qui-Gon at all.

OK, so we flip Jar Jar to be one of these people so that we have an inside hook with these people just like we did before.
Fans rejoice everywhere with the removal of Jar Jar.

However, now we have a much bigger problem to iron out. Jar Jar is everywhere and his bumbling ways cause all sorts of things to happen, and now we have a ruthless warrior type alien in here.
It's more like Chewie, but if Chewie were less technologically savvy - so, something like Drax from Guardians of the Galaxy.
He doesn't get or understand most of what's said because he thinks radically differently and much more directly - like the rest of his people.
He understands what things do technologically, but not how, why, or therefore what that consequently means (he can't easily infer things about technological items).

So now we have to weave this whole new character through the whole trilogy in replacement of Jar Jar.
We'll just imagine that we do and that it's better.

PHEW!

NOW we get to TLJ and the poor children who rise up against their slavery to help Finn and Rose escape with the key breaker (DJ).
Well...hmm. Crap.
We have kids, which are like Ewoks and Gungan people (small, typically taken lightly and seen as no threat at all), but we now need to flip them into warrior people, and we have to come up with some reason they would be turned into slaves in this way in the first place.
Clearly they've been doing this for a while, so this isn't a new thing.

So now we have to balance giving a look of warrior people who are beaten into being slaves to the point that they don't have any fight left until Finn and Rose give one of them an ignition of hope and this one figure happens to be influential and compels the others to follow him in helping Finn and Rose.

Well...this is a tall order. We're also in a bit of a pickle here because these people need to reflect the kind of atmosphere that TPM's slavery shtick did with children.
So perhaps we'll have their adults in slavery work inside the casino and their children in the Fathiers.

We don't have a lot of time, so we can't take time to properly tell the entire backstory of how this all works, and build up the history of our token Child slave who compels the rest to follow along.
We'll have to do it with looks and images while the rest of the main plot goes about.
So, while Finn and Rose are moving around inside the Casino, we're going to have to have a passing moment off to the side of the Child's mother and father looking worried at the arrival of Finn and Rose.
We can dump the hick sounding alien for the child's father, because he's worried over safety and folks ruffling things up is a threat to their normality and safety; even though they are slaves.
So a look from the mother who's watching her Child (the one to help later) down on the track while holding a tray of stuff for people in the casino (she's stealing a moment from her slave work), while looking out that balcony view, she sees Finn and Rose walk-running up the way to the casino and that alarms her subtly.
As Finn and Rose enter, she smoothly transitions into the inside of the casino proper, and follows Finn and Rose off to the side. We bounce back and forth between the normal conversations of what's in TLJ in this scene for Finn and Rose and this new addition off to the side, which looms a bit of a threat.

Then we have her look over to her husband once Finn, Rose, and the mother off to the side get close to his area. He looks at her normally at first, and quickly adjusts to her expression, she looks at Finn and Rose, so he follows her look. His face becomes afraid, and then resolved. He looks back at the mother with solemn confirmation in his visage.

Things roll on and he turns them in, Finn and Rose try to run away, they get back outside but are captured.
The kid down at the tracks looks up at the commotion and sees his father helping capture Finn and Rose; the father looks down at the kid and offers a look of embarrassment and then his face hardens and he returns inside.

The kid watches Finn and Rose taken away and grabs a trinket on his necklace. We don't know what that means exactly, but it's in the same shape as a tattoo on his father's face, and in the film earlier, we saw a person grab an important trinket when they were settling in to resolve, so we can ride that theme here of symbols of things that are important helping to give a resolve, so long as our symbols of resolve are directly related to a personal relationship, and not some ideal (like religious or political ideals...every trinket in TLJ gets converted into a personal connection).

We still haven't worked out that these are a warrior people, so we're just going to have to shoehorn that in at the stable; the kid is just going to have to explain that just a bit here through broken English.
And we'll focus on Finn's emotions through his face at the horrid telling of a sort of alien holocaust story and how they once were a proud warrior race, something that is said while he squeezes the trinket subconsciously.
This will replace the Rose to Finn bit on the balcony where she convinces him through a distance of the horrible treatment caused by the place.
I mean, she can still show him, because we still need a balcony view moment here for the TPM race track and AOTC love balcony tie in that it's doing in that moment, but we'll reshape it to Rose trying and failing to get all the way through, but still growing more to love Finn just a bit because she can see him through his words - he speaks of his plights a bit, but his position maintains a bit of "what can we do about it - it's not really our place, or ability to do anything about this".
So while she's falling in love a bit here, she's also pushing him a bit along the way.

Back to our scene, we see Finn shedding a tear - still stone-locked staring at the kind.

This is because the boy's story is too much akin to his own; too relatable, a will bent and broken.
Rose gives the kid the ring; he, in exchange, gives her his necklace.

Finn is snapped out of his stare by the ring. He focuses on the symbol.
Rose looks to Finn from the boy, and catches Finn's face and tear.
Finn is now angry and resolved. They're going to get out of there, and they're going to tear down the walls as much as possible on their way out.
The kid rally's the others, they break out in much the same way as in TLJ, except that in the wreckage, the kid is placed in harms way, the father sees it as he runs out of the casino with all the mess, - a guard is aiming a laser rifle right at his son who is sitting on a Fathier and yelling at the others. His father dives down to his son, landing on the Fathier just in time to be shot by the rifle, screaming. The boy is stunned; shocked as his father lays dead in front of him on the Fathier.

Rose spins around to look. Finn notices, spins around, blasts the guard.
Rose looks deeply. Finn looks at Rose, then follows her gaze, they see the child, his dead Father.
They are stunned a moment.
The child looks up and see his mother, Finn and Rose follow his gaze and see her as well, she falls to her knees as the city walls crumble behind her.
The child yells out a cry of anguish.

Rose and Finn are destroyed emotionally.

Then the two guard vehicles jump out as before, causing Finn and Rose to cut and run, and then we pick up and move on as we did before in TLJ with DJ picking them up, etc...

Later in the film when Finn dives for the self-sacrifice, now it's a bit more about his self-loathing over that moment; over failing and causing further pain and suffering instead. He's streaming tears and wanting to die. Wanting to destroy the beast and go down with it.
Rose still does the saving Finn bit at the last minute, seeing what Finn is doing, grabbing the token the kid gave her, she resolves, sets on her way, rams Finn, saves him, and gives the same line and kisses Finn all the same.
Yada, yada, fin.

---

Aaaaaaand, DONE

Now, I'm not saying these changes would be worse (nor am I saying they would be better).
It's just that this is what happens as a result of just touching Ewoks.
It doesn't have to come out this way, but all of these parts would need adjusting as a ripple effect.

The worst thing you could do is just rip out the Ewoks and not do anything else. That would rip a giant hole in this woven pattern.

But, yeah....does that work as an example?

Cheers,
Jayson

 

That all said, and keep in mind while reading this that ANH is one of my favorite SW films, I have a solid itch to reimagine ANH from the angle of being a stand alone film.

Because if that had happened, and you look at ANH as a self-contained film, which it was designed to be in case sequels never happened, then it really starts to buckle at the knees.
For its time, it was a mind blow, but mostly because it was so upbeat, adventurous, and filled with spectacular effects never seen before.

If you try to imagine realizing ANH today, if SW never existed, the script is not good enough; not strong enough. Characters aren't motivated deeply enough or focused into the story enough by today's standards.

I've been wanting to rewrite it from this angle just for practice; not because it would be better than ANH as it sits culturally today, because that's just not possible, but just to see what it would take to make it work if it came out today and SW never happened.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

In ANH I would change the fact that Leia goes straight to the Rebel Base after escaping the DS, especially having correctly predicted the Falcon was being tracked.

Wouldn't it have been better to offload R2 and the plans to another rebel ship first thus not revealing the location of the Rebel Base. This plan would also buy the Rebellion more time to prepare the attack whilst the Falcon is being used as a decoy.

 

Go back to 1983 and add the caption THE END after the force ghosts of Anakin, Yoda and Obi-Wan appear at the very end of ROTJ, just before the end credits. This new addition could have prevented any terrible sequels from ever being made.

I have simulated it below for you:



Here is the appropriate music too:

 

The Leia and Luke kiss in ESB, ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

 

Bad-guy's aim ('cause there rarely is any real tension in OT action scenes due to the fact that badies only ever comes close to hitting their target when it is dramatically appropriate for them to do so and/or off screen)

+

Boba Fett's defeat.

 

Amen! It always sounds good to change an element one doesn't like. Ewoks being the example from ROTJ that always gets mentioned. But just changing one thing has a knock on effect. And in the case of Star Wars (the OT and the PT) the effects are massive thanks to the way Lucas used the "ring" structure.

This is the problem I had with the final few seasons of GOT. They changed so much it made it extremely difficult to get back and stick the ending (but that's a story for a different thread).

When it comes to the OT, the only change I'd make is to update the duel between Vader and Obi-wan. For it's time it was fantastic, but it could be better. Use stuntmen and modern effects to make it look like Alec, but have the duel be more violent. But that's just me.

 

Leia being Luke's sister, since it's a retcon and interferes with hints of Luke's attraction to and relationship with Leia in ANH and ESB.

 

Ben (Obi-wan Kenobi) acting less delusive towards R2D2 & C3PO. It was like he didn't even know them at all.

Obi-wan, these are the droids you're looking for!

 

That poor animal having to die. The one Han cut open for him & Luke to stay inside in TESB. Always felt bad for the critter to get run to death.

 

@Stefynoseu , the tauntaun was already dead frozen, when Han opened his belly.

 

He never met the droids before. Lucas changed that 20 years later with the prequels.

 

I never knew this before. How did you find this out?

I'm confused because in the prequels he clearly interacts with them.

 

You know that the prequels were filmed after the classic trilogy, right?