One of the things I lament most about the slow transformation of ‘Star Wars’ from a great movie into a multi-billion dollar industry is the way that George Lucas has mythologized the process of creating the films. I’m not upset about it; I understand that most people don’t really want to hear about the slow, messy, frequently accidental way that an idea is transformed into a finished film. They want to imagine a singular vision bringing a staggering work of art forth over years, even decades of painstaking effort; saying things like, “No, I really don’t know what the Clone Wars are. But I’ve got time to figure that out before we start shooting the prequels,” does not go over well. Lucas felt a lot of pressure to tell everyone that he Had It All Figured Out From the Beginning, not just financially but in every sense imaginable.
But it is sad, because it encourages people to think of the Star Wars saga not as a story that takes different paths, but as a monolithic universe to be elaborated on. The idea of “other directions” that the series could have gone is one that gets less exploration, I think, than in any other sci-fi franchise, simply because there’s the assumption that this was the way it was all along. But that’s simply not true; and in honor of yesterday’s Father’s Day, I’m going to poke at some other ways the story could have gone at a key juncture, if different creative decisions had been made somewhere along the line. And speaking of lines, here’s a famous one: “No, Luke…”
1) “…Obi-Wan killed your father.” Fan myth has it that this is what David Prowse actually said to Mark Hamill on the set, little knowing that it would be overdubbed in post-production with James Earl Jones’ famous line. (Fan myth also has it that after seeing ‘Star Wars’ and finding out that none of his dialogue was kept, Prowse had a tendency to wander off-script in the later movies. I’d love to spend an hour listening to David Prowse’s stories about the role.) But imagine how different the third movie would be if it were true. Instead of fighting to redeem Vader, Luke would be fighting against his own self-doubt. Both his mentors lied to him. The man who showed him a wider universe turns out to have deprived him of his first connection to it. (Guinness would have been amazing here; if you think he did a great job of confessing his deception and self-justification in ‘Jedi’, just imagine how he would have been weaseling around to the idea that while he was the one who killed Anakin, it’s Vader who’s really responsible.) Of course, you’d need to come up with the backstory…perhaps Vader had turned Anakin the same way he was trying to turn Luke, and Obi-Wan killed his disciple to save his soul. There’s no question, though, that it would radically transform the third film (and remove the need for the Emperor to be a powerful Jedi, if the emotional climax is Luke rejecting Vader’s temptations and destroying him. Palpatine becomes a much less important figure in this envisioning of the trilogy.)
2) “…Obi-Wan is your father.” After all, the decision to kill off Obi-Wan was made fairly late in the shooting of the original film, when it became obvious that the character didn’t have a whole lot to do after the Death Star escape except for offer Luke a key bit of advice at the final juncture, something he could just as easily do as a blue Force ghost. It’d be very easy to imagine a movie where he escaped along with the others, perhaps using some of that Force telekinesis that everyone displays everywhere else in all the movies, books, comics, breakfast cereal boxes… And then, in the second movie, it’s Ben who trains Luke instead of (or possibly alongside) Yoda. Ben is the one who talks about the irredeemable Sith, Ben is the one who tries to prevent Luke from confronting Vader…and Ben, it turns out, was the one who wanted Luke seething with revenge for the loss of an imagined parent, filled with anger and ready to strike down his opponent. Was Ben willing to throw away his own son to get rid of the Sith? If not–if Luke could kill a man for revenge and come out the other side with his soul unscathed–what does that say about the Jedi beliefs about the Dark Side? It’d be a very different emotional tone for the remainder of the series, because there’s really no way Obi-Wan could come out of this one seeming sympathetic.
3) “…you have no father.” Yes, we all saw how that turned out in the prequels, but I’m not talking about the half-assed “created by the living Force” bullshit that Lucas pulled out in the prequels to no apparent purpose. Keep in mind, at the time ‘Empire’ was being filmed, they really did have no idea what the Clone Wars were to have been about. (There were drafts of the script that had Lando as a surviving clone, with Leia’s distrust borne of the long-standing divide between clones and humans after the Clone Wars.) It would have been a very interesting twist to find out that Luke was made, not born, as a weapon to be turned against the Sith Lords. ‘Return of the Jedi’ would feature a conflicted Luke having to decide if he had a place with his friends (who would all be pretty anti-clone, given the hints that Clone War survivors made up the bulk of the veteran troops) or if he should just give up and embrace his monstrosity, and join the Empire.
4) “…Tarkin was your father.” Sure, it’s way the hell out of left field. But you have to admit, that’s one hell of a third-act conflict. Finding out that your father was a monster, not a martyr…and that oh, by the way, you killed him and you didn’t even know it…that’s a lot of burden to bear. This would make for a much more introspective final movie, with Luke uncertain as to how to proceed after losing his moral compass. In this version, Ben’s decision not to tell Luke becomes an act of mercy as much as anything else; who’d want to know that their dad destroyed an entire planet purely as an object lesson?
5) “…your father is alive.” This would be a pretty major cliffhanger: Luke finds out that his father isn’t dead after all, but instead rots in an Imperial secret prison for the last of the Jedi. (Perhaps for those that the Emperor feels some potential for evil in?) Vader makes it clear; for Anakin to continue to enjoy his health and long life, Luke must join the Empire and turn on his friends. Brokenly, he agrees to do so. And in the next movie, with Luke’s growing Force power turned against the Rebellion, Leia and Han (and Lando and Chewie and R2 and C-3P0 and Wedge and…) have to engineer a breakout from the most secure prison in all of the Empire. And when they do break out Anakin Skywalker, Leia would find out the truth of her own parentage as well…
6) “…Chewbacca is your father.” Nah. Too silly.
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How about “…Han Solo is your father”?
“…you are your OWN father.”
And then the third movie is essentially Back to the Future with lightsabers.
My favourite alternate Star Wars is the very early version where Luke is a woman, and there’s no Leia.
“R2D2 is your father…”
“Also, your mother was into some really freaky stuff in the bedroom…”
Is the first one really a fan-myth? I could swear that’s been confirmed in most documentaries by the actors themselves.
I prefer the Roman Polanski version:
“Luke, I am your father.”
WHAP!
“Luke, I am your brother.”
WHAP!
“Your father…”
WHAP!
“Your brother…”
WHAP!
(yeah, yeah, i know; old joke…)
Back in the days between “Empire” and “Jedi,” there was a magazine (Starlog or Fantastic Films, I think)article that speculated something close to #3 wherein it turns out that Luke is a clone of Darth Vader created to defeat him. But it got weirder: Vader himself was either a clone or the son of the original Luke Skywalker. When Yoda told Ben “there is one other,” he wasn’t referring to Leia, he was referring to Skywalker Prime, long thought dead by Ben and the rest of the galaxy. And what was Skywalker Prime doing during all this time? Protecting and hiding the Jedi Knights — and now Han Solo — disguised as the notorious bounty hunter Boba Fett.
I so wanted to see that movie.
The thing that disappointed me most about the prequels?
Remember back on Hoth, when ghost-Ben tells Luke to find Yoda? “There you will learn from Yoda, the Jedi Master who instructed
me.” He gets to Dagobah and summarily dismisses the little gnome he finds there, because “I’m looking for a great warrior.”
The presumption Luke brings to the Jedi is that great = warrior = great. It’s not just that Yoda can’t be the Jedi master he seeks because he’s not great, it’s that a Jedi has to be a warrior. Anger and hate feed the Dark Side. Why wouldn’t a Jedi master also be a pacifist? And if he did have to fight, if Yoda never touched a lightsaber at all, could he still be a Jedi master?
It was very telling to me, even then, that Luke immediately jumped to the “warrior” conclusion all by himself. But it’s more telling, and ultimately disappointing, that Lucas went right along with him.
‘…pshquirrrrrr is your father.’
‘Sorry, what? What did you say?’
‘I said rasspquiss is you father.’
‘It’s the mask, and the wind, I can’t quite hear you.’
‘Quisssrrrrrr is your father!’
‘Quisrrr? The guy with the trumpet face?’
‘NO! RSSSPQUIPRRR.’
‘Sheesh, we have flying cars, can zip past millions of stars in seconds, convince women not to wear underwear, but you still have to wear a steam-powered respirator. And what’s with the cloak?’
‘It’s Steampunk, and it’s cool, so fuck off.’
‘It’s bloody cheap.’
‘Right, that’s it, fuck you, and fuck your father… which I did by the way!’
‘Aaaah!’
I recall reading magazines at the time that said David Prowse was given a LOT of fake dialog, because it turned out there were far too many leaks about the first movie that were mostly traced to him. These also said Lucas was claiming he’d make 12 total movies, then changed to 9.
Considering all of Vaders/James Earl Jones lines were done post production, what *I* want is to hear the full raw tracks that he did. ALL of them!
“No, Luke, you have TWO fathers.”
I recall reading a site, post Phantom Menace but pre Clones, that had a complicated theory that it would turn out that the Anakin of the prequels became the Obi-Wan of the original trilogy, and the Obi-Wan of the prequels became Vader.
It was hinky, but there was some cool stuff in there.
There is no “Luke” in that line.
@Matt Duarte: Actually, considering that in a lot of early drafts and right up until Harrison Ford nailed the auditions, the character of (or characters that were eventually composited into) Han Solo was an older, grizzled, cynical veteran type, it would be a good twist if he turned out to be the father of Luke Skywalker and Luke reawakened the idealist in him. Nice one.
@NotTheBuddha: Pfft. Pedant. 🙂
I would have settled for a version where Yoda and Obi-Wan didn’t know everybody except Han and Lando already. Stupid prequels…
Anyway, is the Jedi Bendu script site still a thing? Some of the stuff from the rejected earlier drafts is pretty darn interesting. Such as General Luke Skywalker, a grumpy old guy with a beard who I imagined as what you might get if Sean Connery had played Ben Kenobi instead of Alec Guinness, or Tarkin being more like Ming the Merciless.
Some of the stuff wasn’t so good, such as Star Destroyers being two-man fighters but still… You could take the cool bits from the first two versions of the script and make what would amount to a much more awesome version of “The Phantom Menace” (replacing annoying little kid Anakin with Anikin Starkiller, twentysomething Jedi bad ass with Qui-Gon Jinn’s hairstyle).
That’s the “What if?” I would like to see. Instead of making a dumbed-down kids’ movie that goes out of its way to recycle story beats from “A New Hope” while simultaneously peeing all over things we loved about the original trilogy, what if Lucas had gone back to the first draft and adapted it faithfully? Then he would have made a crazy, pulpy action story about a bunch of Jedi trying to break into an Evil Overlord’s lair with some help from alien allies people could take seriously.
Obviously, Lucas would have had to change some of the names and stuff but it would have been awesome for people like me who read too much Seventies-era science fiction and fantasy as kids.
Instead of Jar-Jar, we’d get to see a lot more people fighting with lightsabers and people riding giant birds and other cool junk like that.
In this version, Anakin would be a fully trained adult (beard optional) trying to rescue a different princess (go ahead and call her Padme) after the bad guys killed his father and his brothers, and the Jedi would be quirky guys and gals who would be at home hanging out with the Seven Samurai instead of a bunch of boring, stoic monks. Doesn’t that sound at least a little better?
‘Chewbacca is your father’
damn, now I have to acquit.
“no apparent purpose” – Anakin was not fatherless, he was created by Darth Plagueis. This was explained in EP III – why does no one ever remember that.
Lucas gave an interview to Dynamite magazine (I swear to god this was an actual magazine) in late 1977, where he talked about how he had nine movies planned out, with Star Wars being the 4th in the sequence. He mentioned that the climax of the 3rd movie was going to be Obi-Wan confronting Vader in a big lightsaber fight that left Vader unable to survive outside his suit.
For all the faults of the prequel trilogy – and there were so damn many – I have to say that, silly dialogue aside, the Kenobi/Vader fight at the end of Episode 3 lived up to three decades of expectations.
“you have no father!”
(and then Darth Vader takes off his helmet and it’s Mark Hamill in old-guy makeup.)
Woulda been pretty sweet, and entirely in keeping with the general theme of sci-fi movies from the late Seventies time period.
@Prodigal: “…the Kenobi/Vader fight at the end of Episode 3 lived up to three decades of expectations.”
Nonsense…
Obi-Wan: It’s over, Anakin! I have the high ground.
Anakin: You under-estimate my power!
Obi-Wan: Don’t try it!
======
The abrupt, sudden tactical advantage of the “high ground” was as well-developed and motivated as metachlorians.
My personal favourite crazy Star Wars theory was the idea that Obi Wan = 0B1, that the old jedi master in a New Hope was a clone of the Ben Kenobi who would be introduced in the prequels.
@ highlyverbal
My biggest problem with the Episode 3 battle between Obi and Anakin? Those droids they jump on on the lava lake.
“Whoa. Some guy just jumped on me! Oh well, better just keep hovering and keep … mining this lava, or whatever the hell I’m supposed be doing.”
Anakin was not fatherless, he was created by Darth Plagueis. This was explained in EP III – why does no one ever remember that.
Because it requires an extra character who is never seen and is named/introduced late in the game. (I like the idea that Anakin has a Sith for a father who wiped Shmi’s mind, but the only way to make that work from a dramatic point of view is to make Palapatine the father.)
I think the biggest problem with the prequels is that there was more than one of them. Specifically, Lucas stretched the story into three movies, because the original Star Wars was a trilogy or just for the money or who knows why, when there was a decent story there for one epic movie that turned to shit when he put too much extra stuff in it.
The events of The Phantom Menace could have been covered in 15 minutes, tops. A routine mission goes awry for Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan, they sense great potential in the slave (this isn’t on Tattooine, that’s stupid), and take him with them when they go. Scene. Padmé could be introduced here, maybe, but doesn’t need too much development. The idea of an elected, teenaged queen can’t stand much scrutiny.
Attack of the Clones could have been reduced to half an hour. Obi-Wan investigates separatists. It’s a more important assignment than usual, and we get to see that Anakin is reckless, that he has a budding relationship which is contrary to Jedi policy, and that the war is brewing, but the plot so far is still just a Jedi going on a mission, as they do. This might be the only place I’d change things: I’d have Palpatine helping Obi-Wan somehow, rather than just giving Anakin relationship advice.
And I’d leave Revenge of the Sith mostly unchanged, although I’m sure they could edit out 20 minutes somehow. We don’t need the the whole Kashhhhhhyk battle or the ham-handedness. But the basic plot stands: the Jedi and clones combined win the war for the Republic, but Anakin does very bad things for love and loses his soul in the process, and we learn that Palpatine has been directing both sides, so that he’s an absolute ruler no matter who wins.
Now, at 165 minutes, that would have been a long movie, but not all that long. A little longer than The Avengers or The Dark Knight, but shorter than Braveheart or any of the Lord of the Rings movies, it’s well within what audiences would put up with for a good story. A director who was interested in quality foremost and willing to experiment and slaughter some sacred cows could have made a great epic movie out of that. Too bad that hasn’t described Lucas in my lifetime, if it ever did.
tl;dr version: The prequels would actually be a really great movie if you gloss over or edit out the Gungans, the podrace, General Grievous, the pathetically melodramatic parts of the love story, the ridiculously simplistic politics, the gratuitous continuity nods, and the Gungans.
…and flying R2D2, and Watto, and Obi-Wan’s Snuffalupagus thing, and “NNOOOOOOOOO!!!”, and Darth Maul’s fatal brain cramp, and the plot, and the dialogue, and most of the acting, and the cramming all the CGI into every shot, and the Gungans.
Maybe the prequels would have been better to go back even farther… the really really early Jedi days, with a whole new slate of characters that we wouldn’t already know the fates of… and then only in E3 do we start to see the roots of E4-6, like Li’l Obi-Wan or Teen Yoda, and the Big Events referred back to in E4-6 are left nicely offstage where they always belonged.
For some reason, things I have seen online have gotten me thinking a lot about the prequels lately and I think the basic problem for me boils down to this: it was disappointing to find out that every important thing alluded to in the original trilogy happened during Obi-Wan’s lifetime.
As a kid back in the Seventies and Eighties, I imagined this sprawling epic that took place over hundreds or even thousands of years, with the emperor’s rise to power being this mind shatteringly awesome tragedy that took a long time.
Okay, part of that was that I somehow got the idea (from Star Wars trivia on a Happy Meal box or a trading card or something that turned out to be wrong, probably) that Obi-Wan was several hundred years old and not just old enough to collect the Empire’s version of Social Security. But still… Alec Guinness talking about things that happened “a long time ago” sounded more interesting before I found out he really meant “forty or fifty years ago, when I still looked like Ewan MacGregor.”
The prequels, among many other things to complain about, retroactively make some of the dialogue from “A New Hope” retroactively dumb. Those Imperial officers who didn’t believe in the Force? Just a bunch of jerks who deserved to get slapped around by Darth Vader, since they were alive when Episode III was happening. Han Solo talking about “myths and legends” is lame now for similar reasons.
It would be kind of like somebody talking about Ronald Reagan and having some punk kid with his hat on backwards acting like Reagan was a fairy tale character who never actually existed.
I still have a hard wrapping my brain around the idea that the Empire run by the evil Palpatine got its official start right before Luke and Leia were born. That isn’t a whole lot of time to establish all that infrastructure, somehow convince most people that the Force isn’t real, start talking about the Force like it’s a religious thing, and get people motivated enough to form the Rebel Alliance.
Hitler needed less time than that to go from being a popular politician to herding people into death camps, so I guess twenty years is feasible. But it’s a lot less fun than imagining Clone Wars that happened long enough ago for the details to be completely forgotten and start being treated like myths.
Especially since the clones were just the Stormtroopers. Which seriously takes the fun out of the whole idea of “Clone Wars.” Any ideas we came up with when we were younger about cloned slaves rebelling, or influential leaders being replaced by doppelgangers or whatever can now never happen.
Basically, this is my long-winded way of agreeing with Cyrus. Everything we really needed to know about Anakin could have been covered in one better-written movie. Which would leave the next two films to concentrate on making the Clone Wars both more awesome and more consistent with the tone of the original trilogy.
Or, Lucas could have done something along the lines of what Unstoppable Gravy Express suggested. The first two movies could have been about new characters (or at least, mostly new characters) with the stuff tying into “A New Hope” happening in the third one.
tl;dr version: “Phantom Menace” was a complete waste of everybody’s time. It made sense to do one movie about Anakin when he was still a good guy and one showing how he became Darth Vader, but the first movie should have been about Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan trying to stop Palpatine from taking over the universe, not “pod racing Ani helps fight some bad guys.”
@Cyrus: That’s pretty much what Topher Grace did with his edit of the prequels.
…Jar-Jar is your father.
What could be a better reason to turn to the dark side than Anakin finding his true love Padme in flagrante with his childhood friend?
Being sentient beings who share the same planet, I’m sure the Naboo humans and Gungans have gotten together PLENTY of times.
4) “…Tarkin was your father.”
And Luke and the audience both squint, and go, “Who?”
“The guy on the Death Star. In the last movie. He died.”
“Wait, weren’t you talking to him, earlier? On your spaceship?”
“What? No, that’s a totally different guy.”
“The English guy with the hat.”
“They all have the hat!”
Luke rescues his father, brings him on board the rebellion capital ship… and he promptly stabs Leia in the gut with his lightsaber. He’s evil, turned to the dark side after years of torture. He duels Luke on the bridge of the Rebellion capital ship as Han rushes Leia to the medbay. And then stuff happens.
@highlyverbal: I had already conceded that the dialogue was bad in the part that you chose to leave out when quoting me, so the only thing that was nonsense was you telling me that the fight didn’t live up to my expectations.
“Obi-Wan never told you what happened to your father…and neither will I.”
Darth Vader: King of the Dick Move.
I’m sure that the David Prowse being told the wrong lines and being a source of leaks was in the official commentary documentary that came with the digital re-releases. Carrie Fisher remembers referring to Prowse as Darth Farmer on set because of his accent.
Of course, David Prowse apparently doesn’t even get his any residuals from ROTJ because apparently that film never made a profit (http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110912/13500315912/hollywood-accounting-darth-vader-not-getting-paid-because-return-jedi-still-isnt-profitable.shtml). Prowse has been treated quite badly by LucasArts in a number of ways.
The Robot Chicken version of the line will stick with me forever. “I am your father. Also, I built C-3PO…”
And the only version of the prequels that I have watched in the past few years is the Silent Movie Fanedit. Each movie, 40 minutes long, the great music, and all the terrible, terrible dialog replaced by cards with better dialog.
Did Lucas say he overdubbed that crucial line, so nobody knew it on set? I could swear I remember Kershner telling us that he requested the actual line because he wanted to get Hamill’s reaction.
(Not that he requested the line itself, just that he requested its delivery. Maybe it hadn’t been written down, like Nolan didn’t write down the ending to TDKR? I really should have asked.)
Kersh’s favorite lines were
She: “I love you.”
He: “I know.”
To return to the original premise in a more serious way (What? I can do serious).
‘Luke, your father was just a farmer who signed up to fight. I didn’t know his name, I didn’t see his face. I led the Empires defence against a foolish attack by the rebels – they were under-armed and ill-prepared. Your father fought alongside Obi Wan that day, but had he been born within the Empire he could so easily have been fighting beside me. He died in a pointless battle for a minor world, just one soldier amongst countless others. Obi Wan talked much of your father in his interrogation, slipped him like a knife between my ribs. I learnt they were friends, that he had a farm, a wife, a son. Your father was a brave man, but he was just a man. *You’re* special though, Luke. You have power beyond even the Emperors reckoning. Come with me now and I can make amends.’
Allow me to give you the single-parent child re-write of this:
VADER: If you only knew the power of the dark side. Obi-Wan never told you what happened to your father.
LUKE: He told me enough! He told me you killed him.
VADER: No. I am your father.
LUKE: Oh, bullshit!
VADER: Search your feelings. You know it to be true.
LUKE: Let’s say it’s true. So what? I had a father, his name was Owen, and he did all the hard work of raising me and making me into the man I am today, and now I feel like kind of an asshole for always wanting to be somewhere else. You? You just stuck your prick in my mother and took off to become the galaxy’s greatest asshole. Sure, I’m a little pissed that Ben lied to me, but the alternative was, ‘your father is the greatest threat in the galaxy and blows up inhabited planets for the hell of it,’ so I’m willing to cut him some slack. I don’t hear from your for 22 years(*) and now you show up and want to call yourself my father? Bullshit. I wish I still had both hands so I could flip you the double-bird on the way down, but one will have to do.
(*)I looked it up.
Well done, HrolfK and Snap Wilson.
I would have been much happier if Lucas had stuck to the original idea that Anakin and Vader were literally two different guys.
In “A New Hope”, Vader was just a “fixer” the Emperor used to deal with problems and that was fine by me. I never felt like I was missing out on anything because I didn’t know his full backstory. He hated Obi-Wan and killed Luke’s father. That was enough for me. I didn’t need all the Darth Vader as failed messiah/real star of the series stuff to make me think the guy with the cool costume and the red lightsaber was awesome.
Snap Wilson: Yours is awesome. Adopted kids real parents are the ones who raise them; anything else is nice to know but largely irrelevant in the scheme of things IMO.
Anyone else seen Aaron Diaz’s Star Wars: 1999 reboot idea? He largely mocks the myth of Lucas as sole creator of Star Wars, points out that other people did the production of Empire Strikes Back.
http://dresdencodak.tumblr.com/post/23052633233/previous-sw-1999-posts-here-and-here-thisll-be
I like Snap Wilsons angle.
With mine I was trying to remove the inheritance and ‘chosen one’ nonsense, and have Luke the dumb rope in a pointless tug of war.
Ben gave Anakin life in Vaders mind to play on his conscience – this has worked and now Vader wants to make amends. Whether Anakin ever really existed, or if Luke is really Anakins son is a moot point – Ben saw his opportunity, and is just using Luke to get at Vader.
Vader in turn only wants to use Luke to salve his own conscience, to absolve him of all the casual destruction he’s wrought.
None of it has anything to do with what is best for Luke, which is why Yoda is reluctant to go along with Bens plan.
Hell, you could throw in the possibility Luke isn’t special at all – that he has no more power with the Force than anyone else who put in the practise. It’s all a lie to make Luke a weapon. As Han said – ‘No mystical energy field controls *my* destiny’. The lying, untrustworthy, out for his own ends, crook, Han, is the only one who has been honest with him.
Empire is about Luke being torn apart by various sides for their own ends – neither interested in the truth, or Luke, or even the galaxy.
Jedi is him growing up, rejecting both sides, finding his own way, actually becoming a weapon in ways Ben didn’t expect, opposed as much to his plans as the Empire – a true rebel.
He understands now his father was Owen, the person who raised him, and the film ends with him back at the farm, at peace – away, if only briefly, from the wider galaxy nonsense, visiting his real parents graveside, now a man.
This exists, you know. It’s called Star Wars Infinities.
@Sigma7: I have the same problem, in reverse. I was always hoping we’d find out that Luke never actually met Yoda, and the puppet was just some swamp charlatan.
I always imagine the possibility that they aren’t related at all.
LUKE: I’ll never join you!
VADER: Look..Luke, it was Luke, right? I’m not really sure why we’re even fighting. I am really busy crushing a Rebellion, and this is tying up my afternoon.
LUKE: Obi-Wan told me..he told me you killed my father!
VADER: Did I? What was his name?
LUKE: Anakin.
VADER: No, not ringing any bells.
LUKE: Anakin SKYWALKER?
VADER: Skywalker? Hrm. Really, no, nothing. Not coming to me.
LUKE: He was a great Jedi warrior!
VADER: Look, I’ve killed a LOT of “great” Jedi warriors. And honestly, if he was a cruddy Jedi warrior, I certainly doubt Obi-Wan would have said so anyway. Normally I’d be all for this dark vengeance thing, turning you to the Dark Side and such, but really, there are Rebel scum EVERYWHERE these days, and I’m really too busy for an apprentice.
LUKE: I won’t rest until ONE OF US IS DEAD!
VADER: Right, suit yourself.
*Cuts off Luke’s other hand and pushes him over the edge*
Honestly, I always figured that the “Clone Wars” were about Jedi being cloned, trained to be Sith Warriors, and then sicked on the actual Jedi they were cloned from (and the Republic, by proxy). Armies of evil Jedi, killing everything in their path with waves of Force Lightning and thrown lightsabers.
That said, you could certainly have the Clone Army of the actual Clone Wars being the footsoldiers of these Jedi Clones. At the very least, then we could still have the Stormtroopers running around and establishing the roots of the Empire.
Also, I figured Ben was much much older, as many above me have said. Maybe Anakin Skywalker was the last of the ‘really strong’ Jedi left, with Vader being his clone duplicate. Thus, we have a different twist on ‘NO… I AM YOUR FATHER’ while also being true to that line in the first place.
Or not. Whichever.
Are you saying that “STAR WARS” became a big mess because Lucas had decided that Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader were one and the same?
I don’t even understand this reasoning.