Chat corner 158: Attack of the Clones

[annathecrow]

Welcome to the Monday chat corner! This week, it's time to talk about ***Episode II: Attack of the Clones***. Now that I'm thinking about it, it's interesting that there's such a big time skip between Episode I and Episode II. The Original Trilogy has time skips too, but they're very subtle, and the Sequels have nearly none. That makes me wonder... if you were to replot the Prequel Trilogy to eliminate this skip, how would you do this? What would you change, and how? Characters, settings, plot points...? (...I'm aware this sounds like a writing assignment but I swear I'd love to know, this is *crunchy*!)

Comments

[yourlibrarian]

I'm guessing the main reason for the time skip was to allow Anakin to be played by an adult actor. Also, given where Lucas wanted to take the story, it needed to start moving along if it was going to be a trilogy.

What's more interesting to me is that the Clone Wars series was set in between Ep 2 and 3, which is a much closer time period rather than Ep 1 and 2, even though with animation the issues with child actors wouldn't be a factor, and, as you point out, there's an enormous amount of time that could be explored in it. Despite all the series made since then, that time remains unaddressed by the shows.

[havocthecat]

I always kind of figured the timing of The Clone Wars was set when it was because it allowed them to give us Ahsoka, a new viewpoint child character (so amazing, I love her and I'm glad we got her), while still allowing us to see more of Anakin's growth from Anakin to Vader. I also love The Clone Wars because we got a lot more with Padme and Republic politics.

Though I can see why you wanted them to explore the growth of younger Anakin to older Anakin - there's a lot of ground there that could be explored!

[yourlibrarian]

I think the development we got for all the characters in Clone Wars was leagues better than the films and am also glad we have it. But there are also certain constraints. We have, for example, an awful lot of things packed into those few years and there's a limit to how far out they could go with it.

[seascribble]

I would dedicate the entire first half of the movie to what happens on Kamino with Jango, Boba, and the development of the clone army. :D But then, I don't care about anything that happens to Anakin in those ten years.

[annathecrow]

:D Actually, Kamino during the 10 years might make a good TV show... animation would be easier, obviously, but it would be really cool if they pulled Orphan Black - get a few actors to play the different ages of the clones and compose multiple characters from them.

[sathari]

If I were going to tighten it up, I'd make Anakin older in TPM--- early teens is still young enough to have some separation issues about his mother, especially given that he's leaving her in slavery, so playing up the "I'm scared for what will happen to my mother" angle would work there. (It would also allow an opportunity to highlight some of the issues with the old Republic/Jedi Order, and yes, that slash is there for the pun on them being in bed with each other--- issues like "the Republic can't do anything about slavery outside its borders which is fair but they still do business with worlds where slavery is legal" and "the Jedi Order seem to be more constrained by and concerned with the Republic and its politics than, say, with the will of the Force and maybe doing things like freeing slaves and fighting just wars like Qui-Gon seems to want to" which is where I go with the PT.) (And this is as good a place as any to mention that I love the PT for its impossibly Aaron-Sorkin-esque story ideas even though those are not plots that George Lucas should ever have tried to work with because he's not only not Aaron Sorkin, he doesn't want to be--- seriously, I remember reading some behind-the-scenes stuff for the PT back when it came out where he spoke disparagingly about "talking heads" movies", except that, oops, that's the kind of plot he gave himself for a lot of the PT, lol.)

[annathecrow]

Lucas vs "talking heads" movies -- oh noooo, that explains so much! XD (And if I wanted to be mean, I'd point out that PT still does too much of its storytelling through dialogue, so he still did make a "talking heads" movie...)

[extrapenguin]

Hmm. I agree with the suggestion to move TPM a bit to the future maybe, but TBH the largest change I'd make is having the movies last longer internally (like, not just 1 week, but 1 month+) and increase the Palpatine content to make it so that Palps starts out giving more reasonable advice that gradually becomes creepier until finally, the reveal that he was the Sith Lord all along. I mean, still with Anakin as the lead, but Palps as an important secondary character.

[annathecrow]

I love that. Making Palps more present to build him up as a threat would boost the "impeding tragedy" tone.