Was Darth Vader's costume unique in the world of SW?

[enyawd72]

^ THIS.

Absolutely. McQuarrie's early designs for Vader included a blaster and holster. It would've been cool to see a Medical Droid strap that to Vader's leg and have Palpatine suggest "Until your strength returns..." or something like that.

One of my biggest problems with ROTS was they put Vader in the suit too fast. His burns were still raw. I think it would have been much more powerful and moving to show a limbless Vader floating helplessly in a bacta tank (ala Luke in Empire) watching as droids assembled his armor. I would have closed the shot with a close-up of burned Anakin with the helmet reflecting on top of his face in the glass.

Man, I should have been a director! LOL

[Gorn Captain]

You're going to like the way you look, I guarantee it! Palpatine...

Black really slims you down. And it compliments the color of your soul...

[huedell]

One of my biggest problems with ROTS was they put Vader in the suit too fast. His burns were still raw. I think it would have been much more powerful and moving to show a limbless Vader floating helplessly in a bacta tank (ala Luke in Empire) watching as droids assembled his armor. I would have closed the shot with a close-up of burned Anakin with the helmet reflecting on top of his face in the glass.

Man, I should have been a director! LOL

I'm gonna play your hypothetical "Producer". To get that kinda stuff, you're gonna have to split Sith up into at least two movies.
All these YouTube "How To Fix The Prequels" kind of presentations, and I still haven't seen one that starts with Anakin as an adult....really, the most exciting stuff happens as Anakin "falls" anyways. Also, isn't that story the better one to use those "call backs to the Original Trilogy" that Lucas loved to indulge in so much? The only thing that starting the prequels with adult" Anakin would negate is that "little kid main character" aspect that I think Lucas thought was cool for grabbing that same age demographic, but I don't think it was necessary, nor helpful.

I like where you're going as Director---so, for re-makes of the prequels, I say we pick up about 6 months before the Skywalker twins were born, and let the trilogy run in more "real-time" time as far as actual movie release/production dates and time as it's portrayed fictionally on film.

"LOSING FAITH"(or I'd use "LOSS OF FAITH" as a title, but I was trying to avoid repetition of the "Of" that the ROTS title has)
At the start of the first film, we're in the midst of the Clone Wars and power-hungry Jedi Anakin discovers his covert marriage to Senator Padme is at risk due to her pregnancy, and his happiness is at risk due to premonitions of Padme's death at childbirth. Anakin's wise Jedi friend/teacher "Obi-Wan" agrees to assist Anakin in seeking a solution but thing become strained as they are dividing their time between that and their official Jedi Clone War business. Conflict and miscommunication ensue as Anakin suspects Obi-Wan of everything from joining in Jedi corruption to hitting on his woman Padme. The close of the film would be Anakin, Obi-Wan and the current Chancellor "Palpatine" succeeding in taking doiwn Dooku and Grievious' Sepratists.

"REVENGE OF THE SITH"
The start of the second film is Anakin's discovery that Palpatine is the enemy the Jedi have been hunting for the last few years, a Sith Lord named Darth Sidious. The rest of the movie is Anakin trying to come to terms with working with Sidious to save Padme, but Anakin fails with Padme dying in childbirth, and Anakin, having "sold his soul" to Sidious (and becoming this newest Sith apprentice), is left to burn to death on the shore of a volcano river after his mass Jedi genocide and following losing an epic light saber duel with Obi-Wan. We close this second film on a limbless Vader floating helplessly in a bacta tank (ala Luke in Empire) watching as droids assembled his armor

"DARK EMPIRE RISING"
Then we have a whole third film delving into the recovery of Darth Vader, with opening scenes of him learning about Padme's death, and also with Vader coming to terms with the long road of recovery that lay ahead. Halfway through the film, he gets into the suit, and the rest of the film (when he's not in his Star Destroyer breathing chamber) he attempts to find Obi-Wan so as to enact revenge. A "more fragile than we're used to" Vader calls on the son of the "original clone" named "Boba Fett" to assist him as salaried muscle. Obi-Wan and Yoda leave the baby Skywalkers in the hands of R2-D2 and C-3PO so they can go their own way while the droids deliver the babies to Senator Bail Organa. The totally ambitious future Grand Moff (currently General Tarkin) goes to Alderaan to hassle the Organas which sends the droids (who just arrived) on their way with Luke still in tow. Where will they take baby Luke!!!

Tarkin, with grand plans for the ultimate military weapon ("The Death Star") ingratiates himself with Sidious and Vader by finding Obi-Wan and Yoda on the distant Wookie planet of Kashyyk. Tarkin's mission also marks the start of the new, emerging Empire's slavery trade system---beginning with the physically powerful but easily manipulated Wookies

The film ends with Sidious and Fett arriving on Kashyyk and Sidious/Fett kicking the pants of Obi-Wan and Yoda with a little "unexpected" help from the ladder-climbing Tarkin---and, ready to kick Jedi-butt (as a result of his recent rehabilitation process), the newly powered-up Darth Vader, who is on the road to becoming more powerful by the day in his new, iconic "breathing-apparatus"/costume!

Fett remains on Kashyyk, paid to be involved with day-to-day internment camp operations under the command of Tarkin. mostly hunting down fugitive Wookies.

As a quick denouement:
Obi-Wan and Yoda, sorely beaten, flee Kashyyk and disperse just as the Empire begin their first Wookie internment camp---Kenobi/Yoda travel different trajectories into space. The more deeply injured Yoda settles on Dagobah. Kenobi, the stronger fugitive, hides out on a nearby planet of Alderaan name "Corellia" populated with criminals (think "Australia a century ago"). On Corellia Obi-Wan gets a transmission from Bail Organa explaining that C-3PO and R2-D2 fled with baby Luke after panicking over Tarkin's visit. Baby Leia, however, is safe with the Organas.

It dawns on Obi-Wan that the most logical place the droids would have went to hide would have been the planet where Anakin grew up (the same planet where Anakin built C-3PO: Tatooine). It's the only planet that C-3PO has spent any time on, and R2-D2 has never spent time where he wasn't on a travelling freighter.

This whole last prequel film "Rise Of A Dark Empire" establishes that Vader's recovery (which we've seen develop over 2 big screen movies!) included embracing fear, anger, desire for power---basically all "evil" stuff---the kind of "hate" that would keep Vader from revisiting the planet where he grew up as a slave, and where he witnessed the death of his Mother at the hands of Tusken Raiders.

That'll make your idea work that much better IMHO, man!
And, frankly, these are the movies I woulda wanted to see instead of the prequel trilogy that we got anyway

[Nostalgiabuff]

yeah, although I always like phantom menace, I thought they should have started with Anakin as a young adult. the kid thing threw everything off

[k2]

Huedell , I am so bummed the prequels were not that! Awesome idea,s I would LOVE to see a prequels do over

[huedell]

yeah, although I always like phantom menace, I thought they should have started with Anakin as a young adult. the kid thing threw everything off

It could have worked, but it would have been difficult to do because that wasn't "the feel" of the Original Trilogy--- but, the way to make it work, I think would be too much trouble for me (and especially difficult for Lucas) to make "pop" the way you could make an older Anakin an interesting character in the context of HIMSELF as well as THE SAGA on the whole.

Huedell , I am so bummed the prequels were not that! Awesome idea,s I would LOVE to see a prequels do over

Thanks man!

---I was feeling pretty inspired when I wrote the outline ideas (thanks go to enyawd72 for that!).

if you notice above---I did some rewriting, most notably naming the planet in the third film as Chewie's home planet, and setting up Fett as a Wookie hunter (which goes with his Wookie pelt collecting fetish we know of). I also set up Han Solo's home planet of Corellia as a prime resource for "non-clone" Empire troops. 10 years after the final "redux" prequel trilogy film, Han could be the "Corellian with the heart of gold" who, at 20-years-old, has a change of aforementioned heart, sacrificing the security of his new Stormtrooper enlistment to save the heroic Wookie fugitive Chewbacca from execution at the hands of Tarkin who has sent his boy Boba Fett to do the "kill" job. This inspires Chewie's "life debt" to Solo AND begins a legitimate beef between Solo and Fett, a layered relationship that I think Lucas HAS fell (and Disney likely WILL fall) short on We could have Lando and the Falcon play a part too!

I also did abit more setting up Tatooine as a more logical place for Obi-Wan and Luke to hide out on---I mean, if Obi-Wan originally wants to hide out on the barbaric planet of Corellia, but realizes over the course of the movie that the very planet that C-3Po fled to with baby Luke is the same planet that Darth Vader's psyche won't allow him to revisit---well, you get the idea

[acrovader]

I think they'd want to keep Vader unique. It seems that Sith will don whatever as long as it is black or black with red. (Although, the Emperor wore dark gray robes.) I'm sure they could come up with some really cool Sith designs for the upcoming movies.

[Bruce Banner]

yeah, although I always like phantom menace, I thought they should have started with Anakin as a young adult. the kid thing threw everything off

Lucas did originally consider making Anakin a teenager in Episode I (closer in age to Padme), but ultimately decided to make him younger because the trauma of a 9 year old boy having to leave his mother behind would be much more emotionally wrenching for the character than if a teenager was doing it.

But the titles of the prequels were great, in my opinion. Many people lambasted those titles, but they perfectly reflected the content of the movies, and had that great matinee serial vibe to them so intrinsic to the original inspirations behind the SW saga.


_

[jwyblejr]

I think it could have still worked if Anakin was 12 or 13.

[huedell]

Lucas did originally consider making Anakin a teenager in Episode I (closer in age to Padme), but ultimately decided to make him younger because the trauma of a 9 year old boy having to leave his mother behind would be much more emotionally wrenching for the character than if a teenager was doing it.
_

But it wasn't necessary to go that way. My opinion is it would've been much better to have started Anakin as a quasi-adult and that Lucas was simply too lazy or too cowardly to do that.

As a compromise, if Lucas needed to have Anakin have mother-separation issues at a young age, he could have had the first of the prequels have Anakin around 18-years-old while having exposition in certain points through a retreading of his old stomping grounds or even flashbacks or whatever diagramming the separation.

IN all, the whole "much more emotionally wrenching for the character" excuse for actually having that incident in the films and then thrusting a ten year old into the films is half-baked to me.

[Hedji]

It would have worked even if Anakin was in his twenties. In fact, it might have worked better, as a young man being taken from the only family he'd ever known. Talk about attachment, he would've had an even harder time letting go, which is think was the point. And he still could've gone back to have the Tusken encounter, which emphasizes his desire to keep others from dying.

[Bruce Banner]

I certainly agree with the consensus that Anakin should have been introduced as an older character (a young adult) in Episode I.

That way, the seeds of Anakin's fall to the dark side could have been sown much earlier in the prequel trilogy, making for a more compelling narrative regarding his reasons for taking the dark path and imbuing his choices with more dramatic impact.