Re: Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Just an aside, but I think it was a mistake to not have [Luke] born on Tatooine.
I know you meant Anakin, but the responder who thought you meant Luke raised a good point.
Not a mistake. One of the many, many continuity gaffes the Prequels made. I'm not talking about Obi-Wan fudging his father's fate for Luke. I'm talking about the things he had no reason to lie about, including after all the hedging was dropped. "When I met your father he was already an excellent pilot, but I was amazed at how strong the Force was with him." Not what we saw of his reaction in Episode I -- that was Qui-Gon. "When your father left, he didn't know your mother was already pregnant." Oops. "I was born here, you know." Enh... I can see them not telling him any different. Granted, Owen was originally going to have been
Obi-Wan's brother, but I'm actually glad that line got dropped from filming and we ended up with what we got. But in addition to the contradictions, also all the things that were revealed and shouldn't have been. Anakin becoming Vader and the appearance of Yoda undercut the hell out of Empire. Seeing the twins being born kills the big reveal of Jedi (and also undercuts Empire's "there is another").
George said the proper viewing order is 1-6, telling the rise, fall, and redemption of Anakin Skywalker. But while he's a good idea man, he's such a weak film-maker it just doesn't work that way. I'm not talking just as a Star Wars fan, but also a student of storytelling. We now spend the OT waiting for the main characters to catch up with what we the audience have known all along, and that's not the right position for an audience to be in. He's forgotten the content of his own notes, and, indeed, the Anakin arc was Rick McCallum's input. Anakin was only ever a supporting character for what George's notes refer to as "The Adventures of Obi-Wan Kenobi". Why Alan Dean Foster used "From The Adventures of Luke Skywalker" for the novelization of Star Wars and Splinter of the Mind's Eye (and also one of the things I love about Matt Stover's Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor").
I've commented elsewhere that one of my scriptwriting professors gave me some excellent advice for learning the craft. Part of the learning is watching what has been made, and, sadly, there's a lot of crap out there. He said, when you notice you've gotten kicked out of the story, don't just sit there bitching about it -- get a copy of the script and see if you can do better. So far I've rewritten the Prequels, focusing on Obi-Wan, preserving the surprises, and expanding them back out into the six films they were supposed to me, plus rewriting and re-expanding Return of the Jedi back out into the
four films
that was supposed to be. A lot of what I used is from his notes and earlier drafts of the scripts. And they work a lot better.
It's telling, to me, that the film that is most fans' favorite -- the Empire Strikes Back -- he considers the weakest of the six. If he's
that incapable of recognizing what people respond to, he
really needs people around who are good strong storytellers that he can't bully into bad decisions. He needs to have not forgotten all the mythology texts he read to prep himself for Star Wars. The Force is
not balanced by eliminating the Dark Side (or trying to). Light needs darkness to define itself. And vice versa.
So no, I don't think the new films should focus on the OT characters. Obi-Wan was supposed to have been (and, from a certain point of view, still is) the central character of the Prequels. He mentored the central character of the OT, literally passing the torch to him, but still staying on to help and advise. I expect the OT characters will still be relevant and not glorified cameos, but this movie is going to be about the new generation coming up and coming into its own. Remember we had no idea who Luke was when we saw Star Wars, or any of the others, but we could still figure out who he was and what his motivation was and sympathize to one degree or another with all the main characters along their arcs. It will be the same here. The new characters will be introduced and, if a competent writer has been at work, we will come to care about them and what happens to them.
--Jonah
