So as you all may know, we’re big, big fans of the “Star Wars” series. We’ve seen all the movies, all the re-edits and special editions, we (when we say we we mean me) bought all three covers of the TV Guide special edition celebrating “The Phantom Menace,” we’ve seen the animated series, the other animated series, that other animated series with those dumb teddy bears, the animated series with the gay robots, and the current animated series exploring Anakin’s life before he became all evil and melodramatic. Recently we rewatched the entire series on Spike TV here in America and realized that we didn’t enjoy the prequels as much as we remember. I mean I’m definitely in the minority when I say “Attack of the Clones” was watchable, and “Revenge of the Sith” almost (almost) gets in touch with what “Star Wars” is all about, but I sat watching “The Phantom Menace” and… um… yeah, it’s terrible. Terrible. Awful. I mean I still don’t know what the actual plot for that movie was. Seriously, tell me! I decrypted the plot to “2001: A Space Odyssey” faster than I did for this.
But you know how the song goes. Every fan boy from New York to Belgium has cried the name of Lucas in their sleep and has probably written a Death Note especially for the bearded double chinned one, so you’re likely just rolling your eyes and looking for something else to do. I don’t care, we’re still going through with the article. Here’s us re-writing “The Phantom Menace.” We’re going through every character featured in the movie and explaining how we would establish them and stage their roles in the forming of the destiny of Anakin Skywalker. Simply put it’s another form of “Star Wars” fan fiction we’re trying to pass off as an article. But we’re going to do it anyway. Screw you. Just be advised that these ideas belong to us and we will know if you’ve stolen them. We’re just bad ass that way.
ANAKIN SKYWALKER
We’d cast a better actor and increase the age of the character because it made no sense that the Jedi Council was refusing to train Anakin because he was too old and then suddenly see children older than him still at that training stage. So we make Anakin in to a more convincing pre-teen. This adds more depth to the character, and we bring Anakin in to the scene as an aspiring thief who knows his way around the planet and is basically keen to the shady characters who dominate the village near where he lives. Anakin is cocky, smug, very fast and rationalizes his criminal behavior convincing himself that it’s all to help his mother. This also helps because when he gets to meet Padme it’s no longer a young woman hitting on a little kid, instead it’s a young woman meeting a kid who is only slightly younger than she actually is. And when the council refuses to train him because of his age, we can believe it more and get a better sense of why Anakin eventually craved power and revenge in his later years, and we get a hint of how he became such a legendary war hero in the future. He’s also truly devoted to his mother and hardly ever leaves her side. And he doesn’t race no punk ass pods, instead he makes a good living out of theft and is eventually caught.
QUEEN PADME AMIDALA
Amidala is no longer a young queen who sits around in ridiculously intricate costumes for the purposes of ordering people around and being bullied during senate meetings. Now Amidala is more head strong, sassier, and we get a look at how Leia ended up so strong and heroic. Amidala is almost the exact duplicate of Leia. She’s sarcastic, gives people a hard time, and refuses to be seen as the damsel in distress because while she is the Queen, she’s not someone who has to be looked after and saved all the time. This would also give us the impression that the character is not a talking cardboard cut out like we saw in the actual movie. By “Revenge of the Sith” all she did was stand around and witness the events unfolding. Padme should be given more to do and in our version she gets to fight with the boys. She gets shit done, she carries a gun, and yes she’s well aware of who and what a Jedi is… and she’s weary of them because they’re sent to her planet to protect her and she don’t need any protection from people forced on her by the senate. She also manages to come aboard the ships to experience some of the battles in space, which accounts for her appearing on the star ship where Anakin boards and eventually meets her. The two have instant chemistry, and there’s no ridiculous lines like: “I don’t like sand. It’s coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere. Not like here. Here everything is soft and smooth.”
DARTH MAUL
Surprise, surprise, Lucas completely under used Darth Maul. In his effort to side step potentially scary characters in exchange for more marketable kid friendly ones, Maul was completely mis used and suffered a quick death. In our “The Phantom Menace” Maul has a more prominent role in the movie. He’s there from the beginning eliminating Jedi Knights from behind the scenes and working under the radar to help improve the chances of a treaty by drawing suspicion away from Sidious. So he is assigned to basically kill all potential threats who suspect Sidious of wrong doing. Qui Gon Jinn is one of his many victims and he’s assigned to destroy the likes of Queen Amidala, Obi Wan Kenobi and potentially Yoda. Maul is a man who gives our heroes a very hard time. He has excellent tracking skills, gets in to one or two scuffles with other Jedi and knows the ins and outs of light saber battles, but he’s not as flashy as we last saw him. He relies on his skills to bring down the Jedi but allows his master to finish them off whenever necessary. In the movie, he’s tracking Kenobi and has an instant vibe about Anakin. He’s almost disturbed by him upon first meeting him in battle. And yes by the climax he does go toe to toe with Kenobi but he has more advantage over him because Kenobi is still ill-prepared and a Padawan. Maul dies, but by the end it was all worth it because he was a more vocal and active villain in the story.
QUI GON JINN
Congratulations Oskar, you’re now a cameo! Yes, thanks to us Qui Gon Jinn is not the master of Obi-Wan Kenobi. Instead he’s only one in a line of Jedi Knights victimized by the vicious Jedi hunter Darth Maul. You see Qui Gon is on to Senator Palpatine’s devious under handed plans and in the opening is murdered during a light saber battle that ends with Darth Sidious finishing him off. It’s only the beginning though as he plays an important role in the mystery of who Sidious is and what he intends to do to the Republic.
SENATOR PALPATINE/DARTH SIDIOUS
To this day I’m still not sure what Lucas intended with Darth Sidious. Did he really think people wouldn’t guess that Sidious was actually Palpatine? And why did he just give up hiding his identity by the end of the movie? And why is it never talked about in the later films? And what is the point of having Count Dooku and Grievous? Anyway, my idea for Sidious would be to completely separate their lives as Lucas did but in a more active way. Palpatine’s influence on politics would remain as his intentions toward the senate and the republic would remain completely difficult to decrypt and then we’d be able to see him spend time with his apprentice Darth Maul. We’d see where Sidious goes to when he’s playing Sithlord, what kind of influence he has on the dark side and what connections he holds underground. We’d also see the extent of his dark powers as he prefers to try and convert the jedi Maul hunts and then eliminate them when he’s run out of options. Would Sidious really be able to hide under the cloak of the darkside without at least one or two jedi noticing? This would be reason enough to keep Maul in most of the film, thus Sidious would have more to do. There’s not an actual villain in “The Phantom Menace” so Sidious would definitely benefit as being one behind the curtain a la The Wizard.
PADAWAN OBI WAN KENOBI
In the original movie we’re given only a hint of Kenobi’s darkside when he defies the code of the Jedi and kills Darth Maul in the heat of battle. In this movie we’d explore the character of Kenobi with more depth. Not every Jedi is dead set on doing good. Everyone has a darkside. As a Padawan he’s stubborn, headstrong and intent on seeing what potential Anakin Skywalker holds even if it means defying his master Yoda. Kenobi is also a bit irresponsible which accounts to him eventually losing hold of Anakin in the future and watching him drip in to the darkside of the force. Like Anakin in the future he is anxious to prove himself as a Jedi Master, thus he defies Yoda’s good sense and stands up to the Jedi Council insisting that he can train Anakin with great success. In the climax when Obi Wan does face off with Darth Maul he kills Maul in the heat of battle and is forced to confront his harsh error in battle. He’s completely stood against everything he was taught in the beginning and now he’s killed someone. Is he really prepared to teach a potentially powerful apprentice? Kenobi is still the valiant hero, but he is one who is not sure where he stands in this prophecy, but he’s willing to sacrifice it all to show the council that he can train someone and make them proud.
YODA
Yoda doesn’t just have a small role here as he does in Lucas’s “The Phantom Menace.” Yoda was just a way to remind people that we were honestly watching a Star Wars movie. Thankfully he gets a larger role in the formation of the Jedi order in the remainder of the series, but in our version, Yoda is training Obi-Wan Kenobi. Though he does have faith that Kenobi can be a formative Jedi Knight, he doesn’t have faith that he can train Anakin Skywalker in spite of his insistence. Yoda is hesitant to let his Padawan mature in to a Jedi Knight so early in the game, and there’s a bit of friction between them that keeps them at odds with one another. Yoda is the person who discovers Anakin, senses his ability and refuses to let him be trained as a Jedi Knight. Obi-Wan manages to convince the council and Yoda approves the training in spite of his nagging bad vibes that Anakin can only spell doom for the Jedi order. Yoda doesn’t do battle here, but he does play a big role in deciding the fate of his Padawan Kenobi and Anakin.
R2-D2
R2-D2 is another character from the original series that didn’t have to be included. I love him (assuming the droid is a him, mind you) just as much as everyone else, and I rooted for his survival in the rest of the prequels, but was there really a point in having him in “The Phantom Menace”? He shows up to save the ship and is immediately treated with care for something that is required of him. From there on he serves no purpose but to interact with a pre-armored C3P0 and just stand at a distance watching the events unfold. The watcher is the most important aspect of any story, but not until something actually starts to happen. Until then, he and his gold counterpart are best left for the later movies.
C3P0
There was really no point in featuring C3P0 beyond Lucas wanting to squeeze in as many characters from the original trilogy as possible. C3P0 only served the purpose to show up for a little while, make it apparent that he would appear in the series and then be completely ignored until the rest of the trilogy. C3P0 doesn’t show up in this version because he has nothing to do in it. Showing up for a minute wouldn’t serve any function to my plot, so he’d only appear in the sequel where we’re able to put him to good use. I never really bought that Anakin built him, anyway. Especially when the Jawas are around that planet selling stolen bots. What’s the point?
JAR JAR BINKS
Jar Jar Binks? Who’s Jar Jar Binks? As far as we know he’s now just a background character who walks from one side of the screen to the other. The whole Jar Jar storyline made no sense whatsoever, and we’re still trying to decide why Lucas created him other than to sell toys and teddy bears. We’d take any of the Ewoks over Jar Jar any day of the week. Trust me, if Lucas actually made this movie realistic Jar Jar would honestly not make it past the first twenty minutes. He’s THAT pathetic. Jar Jar is the Screech of the “Star Wars” universe. There’s no actual reason he would hang out with the cool kids, so don’t try to sell us on that.