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(Crossposted from Pillowfort)
I'm not the biggest fan of the Star Wars prequel films. Okay, that's an understatement: I wasn't embarrassed to be a fan before they came out, but the films were the final nail in the coffin built by the introduction of the Yuuzhan Vong into the existing EU. This, coming from a kid who fell into a fandom of 1 at the age of eight (because it was shameful to be a nerd in the '90s and we were all so in the closet that none of us would even talk to each other) and readily absorbed All Things Star Wars for over a decade.
The problem with the first retcon to the IP (that's Intellectual Property: all the officially accepted literature and content) was that, over the course of the preceding 30+ years, other writers and creators had built a solid mental structure and timeline for the events preceding the Original Trilogy. The Clone Wars preceded the Empire but didn't precipitate it; it involved clones on both sides; Anakin was about Luke's age when he and Obi-Wan met; the Jedi weren't freakishly obsessed with the concept of attachment. And so on.
I can't speak for other fans, but having that mental picture shattered was almost physically painful for me. I gave up on Star Wars entirely for over a decade until TFA and Chuck Wendig's Aftermath novels came out.
So I've been considering what the Prequels might look like if they matched the old suggestions put down by other writers and the original scripts. If they actually succeeded in the political commentary George had been aiming for. If their plots actually made sense.
This is long, and includes commentary off the original Pillowfort post, so I'm sticking it under a cut.
The Prequels Remastered
I'm not the biggest fan of the Star Wars prequel films. Okay, that's an understatement: I wasn't embarrassed to be a fan before they came out, but the films were the final nail in the coffin built by the introduction of the Yuuzhan Vong into the existing EU. This, coming from a kid who fell into a fandom of 1 at the age of eight (because it was shameful to be a nerd in the '90s and we were all so in the closet that none of us would even talk to each other) and readily absorbed All Things Star Wars for over a decade.
The problem with the first retcon to the IP (that's Intellectual Property: all the officially accepted literature and content) was that, over the course of the preceding 30+ years, other writers and creators had built a solid mental structure and timeline for the events preceding the Original Trilogy. The Clone Wars preceded the Empire but didn't precipitate it; it involved clones on both sides; Anakin was about Luke's age when he and Obi-Wan met; the Jedi weren't freakishly obsessed with the concept of attachment. And so on.
I can't speak for other fans, but having that mental picture shattered was almost physically painful for me. I gave up on Star Wars entirely for over a decade until TFA and Chuck Wendig's Aftermath novels came out.
So I've been considering what the Prequels might look like if they matched the old suggestions put down by other writers and the original scripts. If they actually succeeded in the political commentary George had been aiming for. If their plots actually made sense.
This is long, and includes commentary off the original Pillowfort post, so I'm sticking it under a cut.
The Prequels Remastered
- Promoted-too-soon General Obi-Wan encounters teenaged orphaned resistance fighter Anakin -- virtuouso pilot, fierce as hell, keenly aware of the injustices leveled upon his homeworld by the CIS -- and is told by the Council that Anakin's too old and rebellious to be trained (Obi-Wan could say, "that's what you said about me").
- Start it toward the end of the Clone Wars. An actual Clone War, with cloned soldiers on both sides. Dark-side users (if not full Sith) are commonly used as CIS military commanders: the Jedi command Republic forces not because the troops belong to them, but because it’s a definitive war against the Dark Side.
- Obi-Wan decides to train him anyway, and they prove the Council drastically wrong.
- Obi-Wan is sent to Alderaan to serve as their military commander to push back a siege there and takes Anakin with him; the Organas are available to explain how things went to shit for Anakin’s (and the audience's) sake -- so there's a sense of perspective and how far things have fallen.
- Queen-in-Exile Amidala is sheltering on Alderaan, so the SkyBerrie sparks fly.
- The CIS is ejected from Alderaan, their leaders captured or dead. The last real bastion of the enemy is on Naboo, so that's the penultimate battle.
- It's a distraction -- while they're defeating the enemy on Naboo and bringing the war to an end, Valorum is assassinated on Coruscant.
- Palpatine takes power and quietly seeds the sentiment that the Jedi failed Valorum, despite being nice and placating about it in public
- Through a series of adventures over the next, say, five years, we watch the Republic get visibly worse, Anakin get progressively bitter and fall prey to Sidious’ manipulations -- doing increasingly distressing things for good reasons -- and the Jedi fall from favour.
- Despite their service to the Republic, the clones are not granted equal citizenship; their only options are to either set up on remote planets with no land-ownership laws, or stay with the military. Anakin -- having fought alongside them rather than being in command -- is disgusted and disillusioned that the Jedi cannot or will not do more in support of the people they served with.
- Who needs control chips when you and your siblings are literally social outcasts and seen as little better than droids?
- The Jedi lose their popular support and political power by increments, until they’re at risk of being evicted from their temples and praxeums.
- They discover, too late, that Palpatine is the Sith Lord who ran the CIS, but when they move to do their duty, their way is blocked by Anakin, Sidious’ acolytes, and the remaining clone forces.
- A lot of Jedi die in that final battle. Anakin -- already claiming the title of Vader -- is severely injured, but Obi-Wan can’t bring himself to finish the fight. Darth Vader recovers and hunts the Jedi down one by one in the Emperor’s name, with the support of Sidious’ acolytes.
- It’s a tragic and painful story. It’s supposed to be; that’s why Episode IV is titled “A New Hope”.
Comment:
How long would your new Clone Wars last? The canon three years is a bit short for a galaxy wide conflict, and since you've resolved the problem with Anakin and Padme's relative ages there's enough room to have it be a slow grind of painful attrition on both sides.
Long enough that some clones age out, or are too damaged to be useful to the Republic - perhaps the CIS treats their clones better, or uses them up in medical experimentation - and you can see veterans begging on the streets of Coruscant, or protesting on the steps of the Jedi Temple before their brothers are forced to pick them up to be taken off to the Outer Rim "settlements".
Reply:
In FtRP, I'm stretching the Clone Wars by two years into five. In this proposed rewrite, however, I would hazard that the roll into war was a slow, gradual increase of tensions (rather than the Everything All At Once situation in the films, which is one of their weak points) over the course of decades. The clones would have been a "recent" introduction, but the "recent" is relative -- say within the latest ten years (both the Republic and the CIS tried to instate a draft because their military was becoming depleted, but faced riots and rebellion, so they started manufacturing their soldiers). So yeah, long enough for the fast-aging clones to age out. Maybe even have someone in the Senate or among the manufacturers make an awful comment about "planned obsolescence".
The point of the prequels is not that the Republic is at its peak -- the Republic was at its peak hundreds of years earlier, and it has drastically fallen since then, although everyone keeps telling themselves the Republic has never been greater (George wrote both the OT and the PT and allegories for the political situations at the time; the PT was written from the PoV of the early '90s and the Gulf War, which I remember quite well).
This is why it's important to have Anakin as the audience's introduction to things: as far as he's concerned, things have always been like this. Having Bail and Breha as older, experienced politicians to explain that the Republic is failing and the war has been an awful grind since they were young would add the perspective the series needs.
Comment:
The slow escalation of hostilities - years of rising espionage and 'military preparedness' and self-reinforcing budgets - gives the eventual declaration of war so much more momentum than a surprise! droid army! It's years of small decisions and habits of thinking that add up to something weighty and inevitable. Even if no one can quite figure out what the thing was that tipped everyone over the edge, they've gone over now and no-one's coming back.
The slow escalation of hostilities - years of rising espionage and 'military preparedness' and self-reinforcing budgets - gives the eventual declaration of war so much more momentum than a surprise! droid army! It's years of small decisions and habits of thinking that add up to something weighty and inevitable. Even if no one can quite figure out what the thing was that tipped everyone over the edge, they've gone over now and no-one's coming back.
Something about not having to fund a Veteran's Affairs department of the GAR, since the clones will have the decency to die off after the Republic's gotten every last bit of use from there? Or use them as experimental subjects for bioweapons, or new types of bomb, or any of the real world examples of armies using their soldiers as guinea pigs?
In some ways it feels like you're updating the allegory of the PT and the Gulf War to be the unending generational War On Terror, with no winning condition, and even the people with power can't figure out an exit strategy, and all the while the disenfranchised kids on the ground keep dying for nothing in particular.
Anakin would contrast against Breha and Bail's status in the system they're apparently fighting against, too? Some of TCW episodes nearly touch on it with Padme, but flinch at the last second; she benefits from the system too much to see clearly how it's been distorted over time. Anakin's never had that sort of insulation, and maybe he thinks it can't be saved, and it is time to burn it all down.
Reply:
Exactly. The larger span of the SW content involves a continuously grinding war between Jedi and Sith, with the Empire a resurgent threat.
Exactly. The larger span of the SW content involves a continuously grinding war between Jedi and Sith, with the Empire a resurgent threat.
(The biggest difference between pre-PT content and post-PT content is that in pre-PT, writers assumed the Sith were an existent threat that just weren't shown in the films [because of scope, time constraints and financial matters rather than because they weren't there]. The PT introduced the idea that the Sith were "gone" and that there were only two left; if the PT is being rewritten, that history can be rewritten as well.)
One of my favourite fanfics (it's this one, I highly recommend it) includes a concept of clone soldiers who are too "good" to simply "decommission" being offered suicide missions, and grievously injured clones being sent to Kamino for treatment and then being culled. Definitely the kind of policies that might be in place if the government doesn't care about them or sees them as an investment rather than people.
The thing is that all that early fighting in the Gulf never really ended. It's faded on occasion, and then a new regime takes over and it explodes again -- the US and other international forces never actually left. It's something George wouldn't have been able to use in context, considering he was writing it all before 2003. Would he have written it differently in, say, 2008 than he did in 1995? Most definitely.
And absolutely the contrast between the privileged and the exposed would be a massive factor.
People have asked if the clones -- at least the ones from the Republic -- would have the same origin (Jango, mainly -- I think the questions are more because people are strongly attached to TCW's iconic characters). The answer is yes, BUT there'd be more than one clone source -- volunteers from the best soldiers and privateers the Republic and CIS have available.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-06 02:13 am (UTC)From:I think I know which one you're talking about but if there's a clone-centric fic out there I haven't found yet, I need to read it!
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Date: 2018-12-06 02:23 am (UTC)From: