Another Pass at Another Pass at Revenge of the Sith

Case and Sam explore the origins of Another Pass, looking at the original Certain Point of View episodes that spawned the series. “A Prequel” if you will. Flashback to the halcyon days of CPOV with the original Revenge of the Sith episode that spawned the series. Has time been kind to this prototype? Case and Sam have thoughts!

“Crapping on the Star Wars prequels is easy to do. Coming up with ideas to tweak and fix them is far more interesting. Ben, Addy and Case brainstorm some changes to Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith. What could’ve made Episode 3 work better? What changes would you propose? “

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• Addy’s Pitch – New Open for Revenge of the Sith

• Making Anakin’s turn to the Dark Side work, why would Anakin kill younglings

• Giving moral complexity to the prequels, Heroes and Villains on both Sides

• “Purpose over feelings”

• Planting the seeds for the Rebel Alliance with the Separatists

• Big Space Battle over Vietnam like Jungle planet (Saigon) evacuating the planet

• Witness the cost of the war

• Grievous, mix of cybernetic and humanoid, freedom fighter/terrorist, charismatic, not simplistic villain

• Anakin and Obi Wan are forced to protect supplies and troops instead of rescuing refugees

• Refugees killed in strike against Grievous called by Mace Windu

• Case – Heroes on both sides

• Case’s Machete order cut, remove Grievous

• Case’s Pitch, New Close

• Grievous, Organa and Kenobi start the Rebel Alliance

• Anakin has wounds and more cybernetics

• Expand on the Clone War’s impact

• Witness Republic Invasion of a system

• Brutal conflict for first half of the movie

• Palpatine seizes power as the Clone Wars ends and as the Jedi are spread thin

• Ben – Fix Order 66

• Make it a law instead of a command programmed into the clones

• Palpatine reveals himself as the Sith Lord in confrontation with Jedi, but forces them to serve him as servants of the republic and senate

• Jedi are divided

• Anakin wants to unite Jedi and Sith, Obi Wan and Mace Windu want to kill Palpatine

• Jedi Civil War!

• Jedi confront Palpatine who unites with Grievous to wipe out Jedi

• Law to abolish Jedi religion is passed

• Case – use Dooku to reveal Palpatine is the Sith Lord, public attempt on Palpatine with a disgraced Dooku ends with Order 66

• Ben - Padme survives the movie

• Anakin not allowed on the Jedi council and eventually banished by the Jedi Order when secret marriage is discovered

• Anakin resents Jedi and Padme

• Case – jump to other Clone Wars battles including Kashyyk

• Anakin makes a more calculated decision to kill Padme

• Explore the Clone Wars more

Meeting summary:

●      The Podcast Episode Review and Analysis meeting focused on revisiting and analyzing Episode 116 of Another Pass podcast about Revenge of the Sith. Key points included proposed changes to the film's opening scene, reworking plot elements such as Order 66, enhancing character development, adding more political complexity, and improving visual and thematic elements. The meeting also discussed script critiques, retrospective analysis of the prequel trilogy, character rewrite proposals, and production critiques. The meeting concluded with action items for the hosts to prepare for the discussion of Attack of the Clones in the next episode and recommendations for listeners to check out other podcasts on the network and join the Discord server for further discussions.

Notes:

●      🎬 Introduction and Background (00:00 - 10:32)

●      Episode 116 of Another Pass podcast

●      Discussing Revenge of the Sith from 2017 Certain Point of View episode

●      Case and Sam reviewing old episode format and content

●      🎭 Original Episode Analysis (10:33 - 18:52)

●      Proposed changes to Revenge of the Sith opening scene

●      Suggestion to make the war more morally complex

●      Discussion on improving character development for Anakin and Grievous

●      🌠 Plot Reworking Ideas (18:52 - 26:58)

●      Proposal to make Order 66 a legal process rather than a programmed command

●      Suggestion to keep Padmé alive until later in the timeline

●      Discussion on improving political complexity in the film

●      🏛️ Character and Story Development (26:59 - 36:34)

●      Ideas for enhancing Anakin's character arc and motivations

●      Suggestions for improving the portrayal of the fall of the Republic

●      Discussion on the potential for a Jedi civil war storyline

●      🎨 Visual and Thematic Elements (36:34 - 44:46)

●      Proposals for more diverse and morally ambiguous separatist factions

●      Suggestions for incorporating Vietnam War imagery

●      Discussion on improving the portrayal of the transition from Republic to Empire

●      🔍 Script and Dialogue Critique (44:46 - 52:29)

●      Analysis of problematic dialogue, particularly between Anakin and Padmé

●      Discussion on the need for better character motivations and development

●      Critique of Lucas's directorial style and its impact on performances

●      💡 Retrospective Analysis (52:29 - 1:07:57)

●      Reflection on the prequel trilogy's place in Star Wars fandom

●      Discussion on the impact of expanded universe material on fan expectations

●      Analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of Revenge of the Sith

●      🎭 Character Rewrite Proposals (1:07:57 - 1:19:32)

●      Detailed suggestion for rewriting Padmé's character arc

●      Discussion on improving Anakin's motivations for turning to the dark side

●      Ideas for enhancing the political intrigue and complexity of the plot

●      🎥 Production and Direction Critique (1:19:32 - 1:27:06)

●      Analysis of Lucas's directorial approach and its impact on performances

●      Discussion on the challenges of green screen filming and actor direction

●      Reflection on the potential of the story ideas versus their execution

●      🔚 Wrap-up and Future Episodes (1:27:07 - 1:36:06)

●      Announcement of upcoming episodes covering the rest of the prequel trilogy

●      Promotion of other shows on the Certain Point of View network

●      Discussion of potential future projects and collaborations

Action items:

Case and Sam

●      Prepare for discussion of Attack of the Clones in the next episode (1:33:00)

Listeners

●      Check out Fun and Games podcast on the Certain Point of View network (1:29:19)

●      Join the Discord server for further discussions (1:29:48)

●      Follow Another Pass on Twitter for updates (1:30:53)

Transcription

00:00
Sam
I did speed watch this movie, or Speed Reed watch this movie.

00:05
Case
Revenge of the Sith.

00:06
Sam
Yeah, just slightly. I was just like, jumping points. Jumping. I didn't realize how much of these prequels I have blocked from my memory.

00:19
Case
Welcome to certain point of views, another pass podcast. Be sure to subscribe, rate and review on iTunes. Just go to certainpov.com. Hey, everyone, and welcome back to another past podcast, the podcast where we talk about movies that we found fascinating but flawed. I am case Aiken, and as always, I am joined by my co host, Sam Alasea. Hi. And you know what's funny? I say, as always, because that has become my habit since you have become the co host of the show, starting with episode 101, which it's crazy to think that we are now 116 episodes in.

00:53
Sam
That's insane.

00:55
Case
But it was not always. In fact, another past has a long, weird history. And I'm just gonna say it. I'm getting married this month, or at least this month as of when we are recording this episode. And it seemed like a crazy idea to try to record a bunch of episodes. So we figured, hey, we'll put out some of the episodes that are. I've been meaning to put out since the beginning, because another pass started as a spinoff of a pre existing show called certain Point of view, the flagship show of this network. And it actually started as an episode idea that happened in the early episodes, back when Ben and Addie were first trying to figure out new concepts each week between movie releases and big news updates for things to talk about.

01:42
Case
And I suggested, hey, this was a thing we did back when I was working at New World with Jeff Moon and where we would just speculate on movie ideas. What if we did that for Revenge of the Sith and the Star wars prequels? As I had done many a time with Jeff and Ben and Addie were like, that sounds like a great idea. So it started here. So we're going to. We're going to listen today to the Revenge of the Sith episode, because I've been meaning to put it back on the another past feed since certain point of view shut down. It seemed like a good time to do it for all those reasons. And, yeah, so, Sam, before you listened to this, and I was like, hey, let's do this as a way of saving time and so forth.

02:22
Sam
Yeah.

02:23
Case
Noting that you've met Ben, you haven't met Addie, and you weren't really that familiar with a certain point of view back in those days, I may have shared an episode or two with you then, but it was really when another past became my own baby, that I connected you with all of this. What were your thoughts before you listened to this episode?

02:42
Sam
So I wasn't sure what was gonna happen. I mean, honestly, my real thought was like, oh, man, I'm gonna have to rewatch the prequels, and I have not watched those since I went to see them in theaters. I've watched clips here and there, like.

03:00
Case
You know, and I'm gonna say, for the record, I didn't say you had to watch the prequel movies. I just said give the episode a listen to.

03:06
Sam
You didn't. I wanted to make sure, like, if I was commenting on the things that were being commented on, I wanted to have a point of reference, because I realized in listening to these episodes and also, like, rewatching some of the movies, specifically revenge of the Sith, which is the least annoying to me. Of the three prequels, the best of the three, I was like, wow, I repressed a lot of these movies. I did not remember that Anakin and Paname had a secret wedding. I had decided that it didn't happen in my mind. So funny. So as I was listening, I was like, oh, you know what? I need to, like, go. I need to. I need to, like, yeah, I need to go and, like, skim these movies. Now.

03:56
Sam
I did watch them at, like, one and a half speed, so I did not watch them normal. I did speed through things. I skipped scenes. But I have to say, like, this is going to be a different episode for people who are used to our regular, where we kind of talk about the good and the Badland. You guys just jumped in. You were like, all right. And you were so excited, which is lovely. People are going to hear a lot of excited people. Like, giving really, like, I mean, honestly, this could have fixed this movie. And the premise, there's kind of, like, a little intro that lets you know that the premise is that you're working backwards because you're changing the movies as you go forward. So everything that happened in the first and second movie already happened.

04:43
Sam
So you have to just change what's in revenge of the sith. And I thought that was really an interesting concept.

04:49
Case
And, yeah, we've done sequels, but it's been a while since we've done, like, a third movie in a series.

04:55
Sam
Yeah. Yeah.

04:56
Case
So you know where you're really stuck with your actors at that point, or if you're not, it's gonna be, like, a thing.

05:02
Sam
Yeah.

05:02
Case
Like, it'll be one of the things people like, talk about the movie, just the recast part.

05:07
Sam
So, yeah, so there's some, like, really good, there's some really excellent points here made. And I think even though this was definitely recorded years ago, I think a lot of it still stands true within the universe to be sound. So, yeah, I think people in general are going to enjoy it. Just, it's not going to have its normal. Like, this was the good things, these were the bad things. It's kind of like right into the pitch, fast and furious.

05:34
Case
Yeah. Well, I mean, a certain point of view started off as a Star wars podcast. So there was an assumption that, like, anyone listening to the show had probably seen all the Star wars movies, which I think holds true. And I think the Venn diagram of people who've seen Star wars and people who listen to our podcast is likely a small, little hole for our podcast. Just inside of the Venn diagram of people who've seen Star wars. It's very rare that we encounter someone in our sphere who has never seen them.

06:05
Sam
Yeah.

06:06
Case
Although not unheard of, but a little overlap of that dot just poking out.

06:11
Sam
And I'm not judging people who have it. I mean, I get it. I never saw saved by the bell as a kid, and I refuse to watch it now because it's just fun to tell people that it's something I never saw and have their jaws dropped. It's fun.

06:25
Case
But we're going to hop into the episode. I'm not going to play the entire episode because there's a good chunk at the beginning that is like us talking about news, but this was in 2017, so that news is so old, it's kind of uncomfortable to listen to now beyond just the sort of nostalgia of being like, oh, yeah, we actually cared about these things. We allude to past episodes. In the opening preamble, we talk about upcoming Star wars news related to, like, rogue one, which is like, so far back now that it feels it's unnecessary and it takes up like, the first, like 30 minutes of the episode. So we're going to get into the main bulk. Like, I'm going to play the opening song because I need people to remember what the hell the opening credits used to be on that show.

07:09
Case
We'll play a little bit of the introduction and then we'll cut on over to the actual, like, another pass portion, and then we'll come back to us just to have our thoughts on the episode itself. So, yeah, we're going to do another pass, add another pass. We're going to look at the episode of Suit and POV. That was the launching point for the show. We'll drop an ad in between there for one of our network partners, and then it'll be back with me and Sam to talk about our thoughts about that episode. So see you soon.

07:37
Ben
Video games are a unique medium.

07:38
Case
They can tell stories, immerse us in strange, fantastic worlds, blur the very boundaries of our reality. But at the end of the day.

07:47
Ben
Video games are of fun, whatever fun is to you.

07:50
Case
I'm Jeff Moonan.

07:51
Ben
And I am Matt, aka Stormageddon.

07:53
Case
And on fun and games, we talk about the history, trends, and community of video games.

07:59
Ben
It's a celebration of all the games we play and all the fun we find within them.

08:03
Case
And there's so many more games out there, so we hope you'll share in that conversation with us.

08:08
Ben
Fun and Games podcast with Matt and Jeff. Find us on certainPov.com or wherever you.

08:12
Case
Get your podcasts and happy gaming. Welcome to certain point of view, your first step into a much nerdier world. Be sure to subscribe, rate, and review the podcast on iTunes.

08:26
Ben
Just go to certainpov.com. And now your hosts, Ben Milton and Adi Thomas.

08:32
Addy
Hey, Nerf Herders. I'm Addy Thomas.

08:34
Ben
And I'm Ben Milton.

08:35
Addy
We got case with us again.

08:36
Case
Woo. Thanks for having me back, guys.

08:38
Ben
Dude, you are quickly becoming just a regular. Like, you're almost. You've almost made the team. Like you're in the minor leagues. We're thinking about calling you up.

08:46
Case
I'm like the b squad host, which.

08:48
Addy
Is funny because you're really the nerd. That kind of legitimate legitimizes us in a certain sense. You know, like, you come up with the actual, like the actual data, whereas we just kind of throw crap out.

08:59
Ben
Of it against the wall and make stuff up as we talk.

09:01
Case
But that's how nerds are. We all have the different types of things or specialties, and like, who can fetch the random factoid from their brain versus who knows all the issue numbers versus, you know, we need to have all the different types of nerds all sitting together, talking, maybe over cards. Who knows?

09:16
Addy
Well, don't forget, you can join the conversation. You can join it through social media. You can tell us if we have stupid ideas, if we have great ideas, or if you're somewhere in the middle, too. You can let us know if you have ideas that are better than ours. All of that, just go to our, check out our social media, on Twitter, on Instagram, on Facebook, even on Twitch when we're streaming every now and then, you can find all of that on our website, certainpov.com. Today we're gonna be talking about a little bit of a rewrite of Star Wars Episode three. Before we get to that, just have a couple things that we want touch on. Well, so let's move on. We've got the actual episode.

09:56
Ben
Oh, you actually want to talk about something today?

09:58
Addy
I don't have it. I just didn't have a transition for this.

10:01
Case
No good transition from I want another dragon film. We'd have a nice wipe, because what we're talking about today is Star wars. Specifically, we're going to do sort of our version of a game I used to play with a buddy of mine, which is re pitch the movies. So today we're doing Star Wars Episode three, Revenge of the Sith. And the idea here is that we're going off the perspective of, let's say, episode one and two came out. So it doesn't matter how big of a train wreck those were. Those came out. Let's pitch the third one and make it work. Like, make.

10:36
Ben
Try to redeem the.

10:37
Case
Redeem the franchise with that.

10:39
Ben
But still, those two are still canon, their catalog. They're out there. You have to work off of what's already been produced. Yeah, the idea is make something good out.

10:48
Case
Lucas acknowledged. Oh, okay. The first two were mistakes. I need to bring some talent in to make it. These guys have a podcast. Let's have them punch it up. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

10:58
Ben
Which, frankly, wouldn't have been a bad idea.

11:00
Addy
Yeah. They should have called this I love.

11:02
Ben
There's nothing like one of my favorite games. And we'll talk about this at some point. Is casting. Like, I love playing. Like, who would you cast that would. There would be a lot of changes.

11:11
Case
And on that note.

11:11
Addy
And there would be Clive.

11:12
Case
A lot of Clive in the third movie. You can't really do that much.

11:14
Ben
You can't really do that much except for the new characters. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it would involve Clive Owen is absolutely right.

11:21
Addy
Well, I'm gonna throw this out here for you now. Maybe Clive Owen is general Grievous in mind, so. Well, I'm not putting him as robot.

11:32
Ben
Right.

11:33
Addy
Obviously, I'll back up.

11:34
Case
So why don't you start at it? Let me finish by, like, just giving a shout out to the buddy of mine who actually, like, he and I were the ones who came up with this game. And we did this for a bunch of movies. We. We here are going to eventually do it to other Star wars movies, but for right now, we're doing episode three, so shout out to Jeff Moonan. Thank you, Jeff, who is a massive nerd, that if he didn't live in New York, would be great to be on the show.

11:53
Ben
So there's always Skype.

11:55
Addy
Yeah.

11:55
Ben
So we might have to have Jeff won at some point.

11:57
Addy
Yeah.

11:58
Ben
Thank you, Jeffer. Addie, what do you got?

11:59
Addy
All right, so I reworked the open of revenge of the Sith I didn't like. There are a couple scenes that I like, a couple key moments that I have problems with. But episode three is actually of the, you know, of the prequel trilogy is the one that I actually kind of like in certain instances, I have issues with. Obviously, the awkwardness of the dialogue between Padme and Anakin and then Anakin's actual turn. And that was the moment that stuck out to me. Like, they just didn't build up to that turn so well. One, because of how sudden it was, and also, like, he went from, like, wanting to save Padme to killing younglings really quickly, you know? So I actually tried to figure out, all right, what's going to justify that kind of Anakin, that he's going to go with that.

12:48
Addy
So I decided to rework the opening. You know, I wanted to give moral complexity to the prequels, and one of the issues I always had were Jedi was automatically good, separatists were automatically bad. And even though they say that they weren't, you know, like the opening crawl says, you know, there were heroes and villains on both sides, and the Clone wars does a good job at adding some complexity. Like, you have Jedi falling from the order. You see the Republic is inefficient, and you see that there are a couple heroes with the separatists. Not a lot. They could have done more with that. So Anakin's turn needs to be rooted in something more interesting.

13:23
Addy
And I was watching an arc with a kid with the character that's gonna be in rogue one, saw Gerrera, and there was an interesting phrase that Anakin uses when he's talking to Ahsoka about kind of separating out her feelings from what she's doing right there. And he says, purpose. Remember, purpose over feelings. And I thought that would be an interesting through line to connect with Anakin and why he decides to go ahead and kill younglings, why he feels his purpose is grand enough to usher in the empire to get rid of the Jedi order, that he feels his purpose justifies these terrible acts that he loses himself in. So one of the other things I would have liked to work into this and wasn't able to was to show some of the Jedi who maybe have defected over to the separatists.

14:15
Addy
But I'd like to open, instead of the biggest fight and kidnapping of Emperor Palpatine or Chancellor Palpatine, at this point, I kind of want to open with two X wing fighters or x wing prototypes. They kind of had it in that opening fight, but instead of them being on the side of the Republic, they're separatist fighters. So you're already starting to see the separatists are you're already planting that the separatists are the beginnings of the rebel alliance, or is that.

14:43
Case
Yeah, this is actually very similar to the stuff that I was going to pitch for later.

14:45
Ben
Oh, really?

14:46
Sam
Cool.

14:46
Case
Oh, good.

14:47
Sam
I.

14:47
Addy
So you already see, like, elements of that. The camera is going to pan with them to reveal a big, massive space battle, kind of like the opening that we did have with Revenge of the Sith, because I did love the slow drumbeat, and then opening with the big battle with all the different. With all the different carriers and star destroyers and all of that. And this time, we also see the two Jedi starfighters where Anakin and Obi Wan following these. These two x wing like fighters. It's above, I'm just gonna say a jungle planet. Just because we haven't had too many jungle planets in Star wars, and be nice to mix it up. I didn't want to put another desert planet, because we've had too many of them at this point.

15:28
Ben
So it's not Dagobah, but it looks like Dagobah.

15:30
Addy
No, I was gonna actually, like. Felucia would be a cool one. One that was in revenge of the sith that was sort of unique, but we never really got to see much of. Okay. Would have been a cool one.

15:40
Case
Sure.

15:40
Addy
To go with.

15:40
Ben
I'm with you.

15:41
Case
And there's another would work also pretty.

15:43
Addy
That's true. But there's a reason also for the jungle imagery, because I'd like to have. So what's happening in this battle is the Republic is evacuating like crazy out of this planet, and it's. I want to draw from, like, Vietnam, Saigon type of imagery.

15:56
Case
God damn it. We're so in sync right now. I was totally thinking about all this.

16:00
Addy
Well, because I think it's the per. It's a. It's better for the political complexity of the prequels that Lucas tried to get at, because, you know, the original trilogy is very. You know, it's very cold War. World War Two is very, you know, very simplistic, good and bad, whereas Lucas does try to, you know, bring some.

16:21
Ben
Complexity and modernize that story.

16:23
Addy
Yeah, exactly. And I think Vietnam is kind of the perfect imagery and the perfect, like, set to kind of do that on.

16:31
Case
So, you know, you have, because, like, when they use coruscant, like, it's a cool idea to be like, oh, they actually made it this far. And, like, you can certainly set up a cool story about it, but they don't. The city just goes right back to being fine. No one was, like, evacuated. No one was, like, in hiding. No one was in bunkers like Pacific rim. It's like Coruscant. It was like, oh, we got really close to Coruscant. Oh, cool.

16:54
Addy
It was kind of immune from it. There were no, like, other than, you know, other than the big separatist carrier that crashes and safe lands relatively safely. There's no real damage to Coruscant that we see. So, yeah, that's totally one of those issues here. So I decided, all right, let's start seeing the cost of this war. I thought they did. You did have anakin who was a little bit more scarred up, a little bit more rugged, definitely a little bit more battle weary, and I think that was something good that you can go with. So here's the concept with what's happening in this battle. You've got troop transports, supplies and resources are being run out to the fleet in orbit. They're just evacuating like crazy.

17:30
Addy
Jedi and clone pilots are doing their best to protect this sort of, this evacuation as best as they can. And I was thinking, I wasn't sure who should be the Jedi in command here. I was thinking Mace Windu would be good. So it connects with the moment when Anakin decides to off or attempt to off mace Windu. But I also thought Ki Adi Mundi looks like kind of a dick, so you would also be a good guy to throw in there, you know? I don't know.

17:55
Ben
You use them both. Really?

17:56
Addy
Yeah.

17:57
Ben
It's such a big thing.

17:58
Addy
Right? So we have him sort of in the command position in one of the main star destroyers. He reminds Anakin and Obi Wan to stay close to the transport when one is lost. And so you have a whole battalion of troopers lost right there and a bunch of supplies. But there's also an emphasis that these resources, these minerals are also important to the war effort. So there's very clearly, they're trying to make a, they're evacuating a whole bunch. It's refugees. It's troopers. It's all of this on the ground. You have republic positions are just being desperately being evacuated because they're being overrun by the droid army and local separatist guerrilla fighters, and they're led by a charismatic ish leader. You're not sure who he is. We know who he is because he's got multiple lightsabers on his belt, and he's got some cybernetic implants.

18:50
Addy
Because I know Lucas. I'm gonna say right here, it's grievous. But Lucas wanted to use grievous as sort of like.

18:57
Case
Like a proto vader in terms of the body.

18:59
Addy
Exactly. So I was kind of like, that was an interesting idea that Lucas tried to go with, but let's. Let's kind of keep that spirit in.

19:06
Ben
There instead of going, like, just. He has lungs, right?

19:11
Case
Yeah. I mean, they went. They made him look like the battle droids that the separatists were using in the first two movies, which, you know, you can see, like, okay, it's shared technology, but for it to be that, like, sort of proto Vader, I would have rather it been, like, not much more difficult to support a damaged human body. Like, you could have this, like, stick frame kind of robot, and, like, if it's just an autonomous thing, that's fine. But the second you have to be, like, supporting human conditions, like, you know, it goes out into space at one point. Like, that should be really difficult for. Right. Like, you can't just have it just be exposed. Like, it's not even just the breathing thing. Like, there's all these other cold and radiation and all that stuff.

19:47
Addy
Right. But he's got exposed lugs right there.

19:50
Ben
He's fine.

19:51
Addy
Yeah, it's all good.

19:52
Ben
He's fine.

19:53
Addy
So I kind of want to go with you. Cut back to the space battle. Anakin comments that he and Obi Wan would be of better use on the ground evacuating the refugees. And there's a lot of remind, you know, you see the refugees on the ground. Windu reminds him, though, that they need the resources, they need the troops. And I, you know, you see, you get to see Anakin at his best as a pilot again, since that is, you know, a big part of who he is. We get to see neat tricks.

20:21
Ben
I want to reach across the table.

20:22
Case
And just strangle you right now. But if Anakin's like, I'm a really good pilot, and they're like, we need you on the ground, and he sees something coming, and he hops in a ship, and that's how he, like, gets into the aerial battle. Yeah, like, because I see what you're saying. You want him to be, like, kind of rebellious and emphasizing that. Like, that would be cool. Like, they're like, yeah, the force on the ground, we need, like, the troopers got it up there. We need people who can think for themselves down here. And he sees how badly they're doing, and he hops up and, like, does this huge victory. Like, he, like, saves the day, like he did way back when on Naboo. That would be cool. Yeah.

20:57
Addy
Well, so we'll keep going with this. Even though Windu won't let him go to the surface and help the refugees, Obi Wan reminds them purpose over feelings, and this is a phrase that I would like for it to come out, like, come up regularly in the rest of the story. You go back to the ground. You're down to a single evac zone. You can kind of see the separatists are swarming the area. You're going straight up Saigon imagery. You have refugees handing their kids to troopers on the transports, just desperately trying to get away. You know, it's a mix of clone troopers and refugees.

21:35
Addy
And what I also would like, and this isn't necessarily something that would have been apparent in the movie, but I would have liked young Jedi on the ground, Jedi who were clearly Padawans who've had to replace and refill the ranks. Normally, they wouldn't be in this position, but because of the toll of the war, they're in these command positions, and they're not quite as ready for this. But this is all that they had. This is all the force that the Jedi had to dedicate it to this particular mission.

22:02
Ben
So already, the Jedis are depleted and diminished.

22:06
Case
Yeah, and if they are diminished, they're overstretched, like, to be in all these places. There's only so many Jedi who are combat ready and experienced, which in revenge.

22:16
Addy
Of the Sith, they did have a moment like that when they cut to the Jedi council chamber. And one, there's a whole bunch more people on, you know, different plans on hologram. Yeah. But there was also missing people, missing empty chairs, too. So you have that Anakin brings. We'll have a spectacular sequence where Anakin brings out a separatist cruiser. The separatist forces swarm the final Republic post on the ground. So the clone troopers, refugees, and the two young Jedi take refuge in a depot with a mix of supplies. And you hear over the communications to Windu that, the cries that Grievous is here. You see, surgically, just some of the clone troopers in that last depot and the two Jedi taken out. Grievous walks in, and you're not really sure what to think of him, but he promises he's there to help the refugees.

23:03
Addy
Windu, hearing that Grievous is there, orders a strike on the bunker. Because this is a guy that's been escaping them. We. We know we can take him out. Anakin. Well, Anakin doesn't protest it. Anakin just tries to go for the. For the. For the bunker. He tries to head to the surface as quickly as he can, while Obi Wan protests the action and says, just send us down, and we can try to save them, and we can try to capture grievous, whereas Windu just says, no, this is our. This is our opportunity.

23:33
Ben
And the innocents as well.

23:36
Addy
Exactly. So you have a moment where you have all these refugees and these women and children and elderly people are taken out because of the cost of war sort of moment here. And just for the sake of a fun cameo, we'll throw Tarkin in as the guy that Windu hands the order to fire the strike. On it. But right there, you have a moment where Anakin is helpless and has had to decide, well, the purpose of the war outweighed the lives of these refugees. So you have it. You have a moment that later on is easier for him to object to who the Jedi are.

24:12
Ben
Do you feel my only question to that is too dark for a Star wars movie. Oh, is it too out of character for Mace?

24:19
Addy
Well, and that's so one thing I thought, I would like to go. That's why I wanted to throw Chiari Mundi in there. I was like, I don't know if I want to make Samuel L. Jackson a bad guy. But I also thought, like, there was an interesting idea with. With mace in terms of lore, was that because his purple lightsaber is supposed to be, he has, like, a mix.

24:38
Case
Of balance, light and dark.

24:39
Addy
Yeah. Right. So it would be an interesting, like, choice for him. Exactly.

24:44
Case
This would also play much better to Samuel L. Jackson, who, like, is not given a part that he was really meant to play with mace. Right. It's just not his type of character. But if he's barking orders on a battlefield and is forced to go, like, really crazy about it, like. Or, like, not make a tough decision. Yeah, make those tough decisions. It's like. Like, now. Now. You know, like, do that you can now, motherfucker. Well, exactly. But they're not gonna have him say.

25:07
Ben
That it's a very different Star wars.

25:11
Case
Drop the motherfucking bomb.

25:13
Ben
I'm sick of these motherfucking stroids on this motherfucking plane.

25:18
Case
But, yeah, that would play very much to the actor, which. Which is a problem that this series kind of failed a lot across the board.

25:25
Ben
Yeah.

25:26
Case
The prequels as a whole did. Yeah. Like, they cast this, like, really passionate, like, large personality actor and was like, no, I want you to sit and be subdued and timid.

25:36
Ben
Yeah.

25:37
Case
When people ask you questions, you're like, I don't know if that's wise. Like, that's. That's all his character, like. So, yeah, they wanted Morgan Freeman out.

25:45
Addy
Of Samuel L. Jackson.

25:46
Case
Right.

25:49
Addy
But, yeah. So that I think that would be an interesting. Open to change up the tone. Sith is already a darker movie. You have the killing of children, of younglings in the movie, even though, you know, you cut away from it, and you can cut away from the destruction and imply the violence here. But I think, like, I think it would fit.

26:08
Case
I like it a lot. I like it. And, you know, to combine it with ring theory, as it were. Yeah. Like, open with the big battle on the jungle planet.

26:16
Addy
Yeah, yeah.

26:17
Case
I see what you're doing.

26:18
Addy
That's why I was like, I gotta.

26:19
Ben
Keep a couple of bitches.

26:21
Case
I see what you're doing there.

26:22
Ben
Well done. Well done, addie. Good job, Case. What do you got? Where did you want to mix up and change?

26:29
Case
Okay, so, like I said, this is actually shockingly close to what I was thinking about it, because it'd be great if, like, they were on, like, if you open, you could even do the space fight, and they, like, get on the carrier, and the carrier crash lands in the middle of the warzone, and then they have to, like, fight their way through it or, you know, something like that. But make it a ground battle, a really important fight, because the movie as it is currently, you feel like after that opening sequence, when they finally crash land on Coruscant, you feel like the war is pretty much done. The last holdouts are still there, but the war is over. They made that one big push on Coruscant, which we see the very end of.

27:07
Case
They beat it, and then all of a sudden, everyone's in hiding and they go flush out the remainder. That's like going after nazi war criminals after Europe's been cleared out. So, yeah, I'm shocked that were that in sync on this one. I also am totally about, like, having the heroes on both sides because my big thing was like, so I did a like, a machete order cut of episode two and three, like, down to one movie. And I found that in the. If you could make a perfectly fine edit that doesn't feature grievous at all, like, if you. If you want, you can just completely cut him out and no one would even know. Like, they would reference him once or twice, and that'd be it, which is fine. He's a yemenite general. Grievous. Whatever.

27:48
Case
So what I would love is if at the end of the movie, to sort of tie back to this, when Obi Wan steps into the chamber with Senator Organa and all these people at the foundation of the rebellion, grievous is sitting there with all these other people from the separatists, and he goes, strange times make for strange bedfellows. A kenobi. And then it's like, yes, it does. And then he sits down and then credits. Like, that would be a really interesting opening. Right, right to that. Or, pardon me, interesting conclusion to that. That movie. Yeah. So, yeah, I totally am with you on that one. I kind of also would maybe throw in, like, reveal that Anakin has had a few wounds since clone wars or attack of the clones. So, like, maybe, like, maybe he's got, like, an artificial heart or something.

28:36
Case
Like, you know, like, little pieces not.

28:38
Ben
He's already starting to become more than just the arm.

28:40
Case
The arm was the big thing. But, like, so nothing that big. But, like, yeah, like, maybe, like, he's got, like, a plate in his head, and you can clearly see, like, a metal piece or something attached, like, little details there. So, yes, that's sort of a big one. The problem, I think, with the bulk of the movie is that the stakes are really skewed. Like I said, coruscant doesn't look like it's really been damaged. You know, it looks like everyone's on the run. Everything's fine.

29:08
Ben
You know, there's no stakes.

29:09
Case
Yeah, he has a nightmare that his wife might die, which is only. It's its own thing.

29:14
Addy
Right. You know, it's not really tied to the clone wars.

29:17
Case
No, not at all. Like, the clone wars could have been a really cool. I mean, ultimately, it would be a backdrop for, like, the personal conflicts that sort of rise up, but, yeah. So I would definitely do very similar things with, like, grievous being much more of a hero with, like, just generally the separatist not being like, oh, we're bad guys who are coming to, like, wipe everything out. Like, I'd love to see a republic invasion of a separatist planet, too. It should be back and forth, and there's a lot going on, because if the Republic's winning, it means they're going into territory that had previously been controlled by the separatists. And those can't all just be, like, machine armies of the trade Federation. Yeah. So building off that. Oh, Mandy. It's so exactly what I was thinking.

30:02
Case
Like, a really brutal conflict that takes up the first half of the movie. You can cut away from it, but tie up most of your cast in this big battle for the first half, and then you can actually sort of deal with the falling action of a bunch of people escaped. We don't know where they went. And Azzard, in this confusion, that's when the emperor seizes it, because all of a sudden, it's like, oh, well, we've basically won. They've all escaped, and he has to make his move. And I'm not sure what exactly that move would be, but, like, make his move to, like, become the emperor, to, like, prevent them from having a question of, like, should he step down or anything. He's just like, nope, I'm in charge.

30:39
Ben
And that's when he, like, just seizes control.

30:40
Case
Yeah.

30:41
Ben
Yeah, I have something similar that. Can I piggyback right now? So my idea, my problem that I wanted to fix was order 66 and the destruction of the Jedi. I wanted to make that more of a law that they were annihilated it by law and not by some magical code that was programmed into the clone's head.

31:02
Sam
Yeah, I agree.

31:03
Case
It shouldn't have been a one off.

31:04
Ben
Yeah.

31:04
Case
That it was an ongoing, like, traveling around killing people.

31:09
Ben
Yes, for sure. And everybody was. And there was, you know, in my version, there's. There's bounties on the Jedi's, and everybody is hunting them, and there's rewards for killing Jedi's, etcetera. And that's because at some point in time in the movie, and I kind of just jumped into it. But Palpatine maneuvers for the vote of no confidence and to control the Senate, and he does. And in doing so, the Jedi are disturbed by this, and they're not okay with it. So they send an envoy, a group of Jedi, over to meet and talk to Palpatine about this. And in that conversation, it's revealed that Palpatine is, in fact, the Sith lord that they've been hunting for. But instead of having the stupid fight that goes off where he just kills everybody one off in that awkward moment.

31:50
Ben
Cause they were face off, which doesn't make any sense. He tells them flat out, he's like, look, you are either going to serve me and the Senate, which you are sworn to protect, or I will have you destroyed. And so he puts the Jedi in this awkward position of having to serve the Senate, in which they are sworn to protect, knowing that a Sith lord is controlling the Senate. And so there's, like, this really weird, like, power play for the control of the Senate of, like, what do we do? Do we break our oath and try to kill the Sith Lord and throw him out of power? Or are we subject to our oath?

32:28
Ben
And so they have this ongoing debate and this ongoing kind of war amongst themselves in which Anakin and Obi Wan are on opposite sides of that argument, in which Anakin sees an opportunity to unite the Sith and the Jedi, bring them together, and make one better thing, purpose, over feeling and balance to the force. And Obi Wan and Mace, especially, is really against us and know we need to kill the Sith Lord and take out this threat to the Jedi order. And so it starts to bring that rift between the two, and so that they're, you know, now we have a reason for them to fight down the road.

33:07
Addy
The Jedi civil war.

33:08
Case
Yes. Yes. This would be a really nice moment to do what they did in force awakens and have a really good hologram that you would be forgiven for thinking was real. Like, if the conference, like, confrontation with Sidious was. They thought they were talking to him, and his evil is so everywhere that they couldn't. It clouded their senses. And then when they're like, then all of a sudden, they realize that they're not in the room with him and that he's actually, like, out in the public. Yes, something like that. Where if they're going to rebel, they have to do it openly. Yeah, like that. That's the thing. Like, when they. Like. Or when sidious is like, oh, they are like, the Jedi have rebelled. No one sees it, no one ever witnessed.

33:46
Ben
Knows that's what's.

33:47
Case
It would be great if they had to make an assassination attempt.

33:49
Ben
Right, exactly.

33:50
Case
Or make a statement.

33:51
Ben
Exactly. So that was something that had. Eventually, there it comes. It comes to a head, and they make that decision that they're going to, you know, try to forcefully remove Palpatine. At the same time grievous shows up with his army. There's a quick broke. A quick brokered piece, quote unquote, which allows grievous and palpatine to unite fully as one now, to protect the best interests of the galaxy and bring peace to the galaxy, and it wipes out a majority of the Jedi at that moment when they're making that attack.

34:22
Addy
So your grievance is still definitely very much a villainous.

34:25
Ben
Yes.

34:25
Addy
Yeah, yeah.

34:26
Ben
He's still a villain, but. Well, he's. I mean, he's a warrior.

34:28
Addy
Right.

34:28
Ben
He's a general there.

34:29
Addy
Right.

34:30
Ben
You know, depending on which side you're on, he's a hero.

34:32
Addy
That's true.

34:32
Ben
You know, so I think it still works. I like having the complexity of grievous and having him actually be some. Someone formidable that the Jedi are intim. Not intimidated by, but, like, have respect for of. Like, we really don't want to tangle with this guy.

34:48
Case
Right.

34:48
Ben
He does kill a lot of us.

34:50
Case
Yeah.

34:50
Ben
So that's where a good bit of the Jedi are slaughtered, is in that big battle. And from there on out, the order is given that the Jedi religion is now an illegal religion, and they are to be freely hunted and destroyed.

35:08
Addy
I like it. Yeah.

35:12
Case
This all works. I mean, you know, it actually would tie it together pretty well if a captured Dooku and then he revealed the information, and then it looks like he leads them to attack Palpatine ultimately, like, he's with them. And so since he's already been disgraced and discredited and, like, referred to as a sith lord, like, the public is given to watch what appears to be a sith lord in command of all the Jedi attacking the chancellor.

35:40
Ben
Oh, so the chancellor doesn't reveal to everybody else that he's Sith.

35:43
Case
That would make sense. Not to the public, not to the wide world.

35:46
Ben
Yeah.

35:47
Case
And so you could even have, Dooku's arms have been cut off, but he's there, and he's got metal hands, but he's not holding a lightsaber. But he points the way. It's.

35:56
Ben
Yeah, that very symbolic that way. Kind of leading the charge into.

36:01
Case
Yeah, they capture him at the beginning and maybe keeping him alive because now that once he's captured in the Jedi's possession, Palpatine spends the whole time trying to get. Get him transferred over, and the separatists are trying to kill him because he knows too much. And then once he reveals why. So it could be one of those tense crime stories where it's the informant who knows all the information they have to keep him alive, and ultimately, they try to use him to get inside close to Palpatine's stuff so that they can take him out. But in doing so, they stumble into a very public venue where they are then just shown, like, palpatine, and that's where he, like, guns down a bunch of them.

36:43
Ben
Yeah, but for great pr for his service.

36:46
Case
Right, exactly.

36:46
Ben
Everybody. So the feeling of goodwill leaves the Jedi, and everybody's kind of like, these guys are monsters and power hungry hippies with lightsabers. I like it. Yeah, that's totally good. And then the other thing that I wanted to change, and it doesn't really matter how it happens, but Padme has to survive the movie.

37:08
Case
Yeah, it is weird how in Jedi they talk about it and I, and we all know the head cannon is like, oh, well, she's talking about Organa's wife and, like, right. All that. But it would be nice to have her survive because that's why the fuck not?

37:21
Ben
Like, well, I like the idea then of, like, you know, of her being at odds with Anakin, with Anakin over this issue of him supporting the chancellor, supporting the empire and her, like, being thrust out with the senate and kind of being pushed off to the side and having that split between them so that she has reason to hide Luke and Leia. But still, but still, you know, be around.

37:49
Addy
Well, so would you. What do you do with Padme beyond that? Because obviously she's not in the originals. Like, does she.

37:57
Ben
She has to die sometime in between there. Yeah, absolutely.

38:01
Case
There's a big time gap. And if Leia was talking about her biological mother, then we revealed in Jedi anyway that she was dead. Like, yeah, you know, it's true.

38:10
Ben
Yeah, yeah. So she just has to die by the time Leia's a teenager.

38:13
Addy
Right. By the time of a new hope really is all you need right before.

38:17
Ben
Yeah, right up to a new.

38:18
Case
She could have been alive on Alderaan.

38:19
Ben
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly.

38:22
Case
Doesn't that make Alderaan have so much more weight?

38:25
Ben
Yes, totally does. Totally does. Yeah. So, yeah, so she's alive on Alderaan. Yeah, that's what I was going to follow along. Yeah. Right up until that one moment when it got real hot. So, yeah, those are the two things that I really wanted to change.

38:41
Case
I like that you bring up Padme because I was going to say that is the one thing we hadn't really addressed so far because I think we can address the fight scenes and the big battles and the things that we all wanted that we didn't quite get in this movie. That doesn't change the through line. We need that love story because that's clearly what Lucas wanted, and we need some additional personal reason to drive Vader down this path.

39:02
Ben
Well, my thought on that was that Anakin sort of saw himself as a political. A politician equal to Padme.

39:12
Addy
Right. Which they already established in attack of the clones when they're having their debates about, you know, democracy, the value of democracy.

39:21
Ben
Right. The way I see it playing out is Anakin wanted to be on the Jedi council to be Padme's equal in having influence on what was going on, where she's a very influential senator. He would be on the Jedi council, but he's never given the opportunity to be on the Jedi council because of all of his issues and not listening. And that kind of, like, starts to spill over wherever I. Eventually, it's discovered that he's married to Padme, that she's pregnant. And this also can be another point, then, to cause a rift between Obi Wan and Anakin. And Anakin and the Jedi. And you could have, like, a trial where he's banished from the Jedi order, which drives him to palpatine and frustration.

40:04
Case
I like that because if he never. Like. As it is, he never really suffers for being married to her. It's like, oh, were right. You totally shouldn't have been married and had kids. Like, that's a bad choice. But, like, he never has, like, a direct consequence to it. Like, it could have just as easily been open to the public, and it wouldn't have had an impact on the story as it. As it was presented. So, yeah, I think that'd be good, because then if he's forced out of the order because he's married to her, that will add to his resentment of.

40:31
Ben
Her, of her end of the Jedi as well.

40:34
Case
Yeah, for sure. Like, he has this. You could really explain that he has this great inferiority complex, being a slave that, like, was freed, but it wasn't through his own power. And then, like. Like, has been uplifted and uplifted, but he himself, no matter how hard he tries, he to prove himself. His successes in station have never been his own. Like, he might be a great, like, war hero, but he's never put to be, like, as the general because of his accomplishments. He's never, like, on the council.

41:00
Ben
Even though he's obviously the most powerful Jedi on the field.

41:04
Addy
Right.

41:04
Ben
And able to do all these amazing things. Yeah, exactly. And so there's this resentment and this frustration of, like, why won't you ever recognize me for. For who I am, you know, my accomplishments? And so, you know, that drives him to try even harder, which only, you know, drives him further away down the path and down the path of the sith.

41:24
Addy
Right.

41:25
Case
Yeah, I kind of like the idea of, like, the second half of the movie being a little bit of dirtier in terms of the clear division of, like, clone wars. Not Clone wars. Clone wars into empire rebellion. If we sort of open the movie with this huge battle, that's really one of the last big battles. And we don't just focus on that one location. We jump around a little bit. I mean, let's say cash it, because I know Lucas always wanted to do it. It'll be fun.

41:50
Ben
It'll be super cool.

41:51
Case
Yeah, it'll be fun. We'll get to show it, but do it well and have it be bloody and terrifying. You know, huge chunks of the trees are, like, burned away. So all of a sudden, you're seeing down to, like, the. What was it? Like, the underdark or whatever they called it, like, so all of a sudden, you're revealing these chunks of the planet that had never been seen before. And the wookiees don't really trust people because everything's just destruction. And they. But, like, troopers are being. Are telling them, like, if you come with us, like, you'll live and. But, no, you'll actually die. I mean, we cut around to, like, a few other battles, but, like, the big one's, this one, and then the middle of the movie, sort of basically, the war is over.

42:24
Case
There's a few things to be cleaned up, but there's also all these atrocities and so forth that we're starting to realize were happening. There were these war crimes that occurred and these horrible things. So people are starting to go towards the rebellion. The rebellion starts before the empire is really a thing. And then the end of the movie, the third act, is actually Anakin starting to hunt down those Jedi and those rebels, the earliest ones. And, like, maybe. Maybe his killing Padme isn't like, a force choke right there or him thinking he killed Padme, but rather, like, he, like, sees that her ship is flying away and that she's got all this information, like, documents or something, you know, that he needs.

43:05
Case
So he, like, he, like, gives the order to shoot it down, and he doesn't see that she, like, and he walks off, and he doesn't see that she was in an escape pod that got away. But, like he said, he thinks he destroyed the ship that she was on.

43:18
Ben
Right, because he has to think she's dead.

43:20
Addy
Exactly. And not realize that there are kids out there, too.

43:23
Case
Right.

43:23
Addy
I was gonna ask you about that. How do you. Him not knowing about the kids, he.

43:27
Ben
Has to think that she's dead.

43:28
Addy
So with. With this now with him hunting down.

43:30
Case
The Jedi, I'm gonna note, by the way, that if we. We can't solve the kids problem with this movie because we've already created way too big of a problem by showing, like, his family on Tatooine. And he's named Skywalker, right.

43:41
Addy
Yeah, we'll never. Well, I mean, we've. We've got that. He doesn't like sans.

43:44
Ben
Yeah, yeah.

43:45
Case
I mean, like, that's good enough.

43:47
Ben
You're in a big metal robot. You never like sandwich. Yeah.

43:52
Case
He never looked into, like, his half brother. Never, like, in a moment of depression and doubt over the course of his, like, being tried to.

44:00
Ben
I think there was a lot. I think there's a lot of emotional reasons to that for that character as to why he would not want to go back to Tatooine.

44:06
Case
Oh, I know, but I'm saying, like, that doesn't mean that you don't question that. Why wouldn't he ever have done it? Like, you can present all the reasons why he didn't.

44:19
Ben
I think that Palpatine would have kept him busy enough.

44:22
Addy
Yeah. And it also didn't seem like he established a relationship with the law.

44:26
Case
Yes, and that's also true. But, like, this is still a justification for a thing that already is not. It's not a plot hole. It's just like, it's a little awkward.

44:34
Ben
I don't think so.

44:35
Case
Well, they exist in a world with computers that are networked to each other. He can look up people. He can check out census reports like, they have.

44:41
Addy
Does he never google himself? Skywalker, he googles themselves. Like, oh, my God.

44:49
Ben
He ceased to be what Darth Vader.

44:52
Case
Think of Anakin.

44:55
Addy
Oh, they really like the pod races.

44:58
Ben
Nobody likes the goddamn pod races, Addie.

45:01
Addy
Didn't he hold a record or something?

45:02
Case
That'd be great. If they, like, in the rogue one or something, they show his meditation chamber, and then finally his pod race. Well, yeah, they shifted the angle. And you saw all these trophies.

45:13
Ben
Oh, I thought you were gonna say you see him playing, like, a ps four game of the pod racing.

45:20
Case
And.

45:20
Ben
Then the James Earl Jones voice. Now this is pod racing.

45:25
Addy
Impressive.

45:28
Case
Actually, you know, that would not be a horrible line to throw. Not that exactly. No. If it was a really dangerous flight mission that he was on and it was, like, to think, I used to, like, think pod racing was hard or something like that. Like some sort of line or, like.

45:42
Ben
Some sort of callback.

45:43
Case
Yeah. Just a little throwback to it. Like, dehumanizing a little bit.

45:50
Addy
Why are you, like, quoting all the really bad ones? Cause they're so bad.

45:54
Case
Wait till we got two more episodes to go before you really get into that one.

45:58
Addy
Let's be honest. If the title already wasn't taken for the podcast, now this is podcasting, you know, you would have gone for it.

46:05
Ben
Oh, I totally would. It was the first one I looked up. So you guys out there who have that. Well done. Well done, and screw you indeed.

46:13
Case
I think we're all happier for an original trilogy reference instead of a prequel trilogy reference.

46:20
Ben
Yeah, for sure. So I think we did a pretty good job of rewriting this movie and making it pretty interesting. There's a lot of really good beats there.

46:26
Case
A lot of really. I think we built off each other pretty well.

46:28
Ben
Yeah.

46:28
Case
Especially because my, like, I was about to be like, we're gonna go. We're gonna start with the jungle world underneath the ship.

46:34
Ben
Totally.

46:34
Case
Damn it. Yeah, I looked at your notes because.

46:40
Ben
Those are my notes. Really well done, guys. I'm excited about this one. I kind of want to see.

46:49
Addy
I kind of want to make it now.

46:50
Ben
Yeah, this would be a fun movie. Like, hopefully, you know what would be great is if we get far enough down the road with the Star wars universe where they do a reboot.

46:59
Addy
Well, forget a reboot for a moment, I think. And were talking about this earlier, especially with how abruptly Clone wars ended with the Disney buyout. It would be great to go back to Clone wars and revisit that era. I mean, there's so much story left to tell in Clone wars, and they were scratching. I felt they were only really scratching the surface. I mean, we clearly have interesting enough characters with Saw Gerrera that they can come back to. You've got the era of Clone wars after Ahsoka has left the Jedi order. You know, I mean, like, this. This is a story. I think some of these elements that we've talked about today are interesting elements. You can work into Clone wars stories.

47:39
Addy
Like, you can tell, like, there was a scene in, like, a deleted scene for revenge of the Sith where Padme does meet with bail organa and Mon Mothma and some other characters to start, and they start planting, you know, the.

47:51
Case
Beginnings of the rebels back in my edit.

47:54
Addy
And, like, you could start taking those elements and you could start seeing these characters. You could start seeing these bonds start to set up the rebel alliance. We're seeing some of this stuff with rebels, but it'd be, I think it's still possible to go back to clone wars. And do this and whether that's a live action or animation. But the problem.

48:11
Ben
The problem with Clone wars is the same problems that we're having kind of with this whole idea is that you're still tied to a lot of those previous movies, whereas if you go to actually do a hard reboot of the entire series, you can make grievous a far more interesting character. You get. You know, there's a lot that you can do and fix some of the problems that are. Were created by Lucas by doing a hard reboot.

48:35
Addy
Yeah. Grievous at this point is a tough to fix character, but I think there is backstory for grievous you can fill out because there is, like, on the Wikipedia page, I. For grievous, you do have the fact that he was a general, like a Khaleesh general before he was put into. Into the armor.

48:52
Ben
Yeah.

48:52
Addy
And, you know, you could. You could do a whole story where he was manipulated into joining the separatists that he was, you know, this warrior that.

49:00
Ben
That you love your bad guys to be manipulated and think that they're doing something great, that's like your go to play that. And killing the protestant protagonist is your.

49:12
Case
Favorite thing in the world.

49:13
Addy
I'm continuing. The main reason I'm continuing with grievous on that path is because of Lucas wanting to use grievous as sort of the precursor for Vader. So drawing that parallel is the main reason I think that fits grievous. So.

49:28
Case
Yeah, no, and I'm with you because that line in the opening crawl where it's like heroes on both sides. Yeah, like, you never get that, and I would have loved it. Next time, when we talk about clones, I've got a big thing about making it more like the trojan war that I think you guys will really dig. But in the meantime, we've got the characters we have, and I'd love for them to be more complex and not just, I'm evil and I serve the dark guy. I would rather it be like I'm doing what I believe in, and I'm gonna try to.

49:59
Ben
And there are valid reasons for what you're doing.

50:02
Case
Yeah. Cause your frontliners aren't gonna be the ones who are, like, pulling all the strings. They're the ones whose strings have been pulled. And how much more interesting is it if they are the ones who either feel like there's no other choice or that this is absolutely the right thing?

50:14
Ben
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And you don't get that sense, especially because there's a robot army.

50:18
Case
Yeah.

50:18
Addy
Devoid of personality.

50:20
Ben
And the personality they have is just pure crap.

50:23
Addy
Right.

50:23
Ben
They're just so inept and stupid.

50:25
Case
So what if the separatists were made up of a lot of, like, twileks or something? Like, where it was a race that we saw that was pretty human, and it was, like, one that we've seen enough of.

50:34
Addy
Well, someone that could actually emote.

50:36
Case
Yeah, exactly. Like, if there was. So it wasn't just all, like.

50:38
Ben
Wasn't just a droid army.

50:40
Case
Yeah. Well, droid army. And then the people running it are like, how many, like, weird, squiggly, bug looking people can we make and put on screen? Like, if it was a race that we saw a good amount of, and it was like. That was, like, the way humans are the main part of, like, the, you know, the Republic, and then there's other aliens, but it's mostly humans.

50:56
Addy
Right.

50:56
Case
Like, if there was another, like, big humanoid species and hopefully one that we had seen before.

51:02
Ben
Right, so that's where you could reintroduce the chess.

51:06
Addy
Would be cool. Yeah, exactly.

51:08
Ben
Would be very cool. So. All right, good stuff, guys. I appreciate this has been a fun episode. I think we pretty much exhausted it.

51:15
Case
So let's wrap it up.

51:15
Addy
And don't forget, you can join the conversation as well. Just let us know what ideas you think could have, you know, you would add to, or you would change to make revenge of the Sith a better movie. What would you do to rewrite Revenge of the Sith? You can join the conversation. Just go to our website, certainpov.com, to find all the different ways to contact us on social media. You can even email us if you prefer that. But we're on Facebook, we're on Twitter, we're on Instagram. All of that is available to you, certainpov.com. And don't forget, until next week, steak scrub.

51:45
Case
You're so close. You're so close. We almost didn't need a single edit.

51:51
Addy
Stay scruffy, my nerf herders.

51:55
Case
Thanks for listening to certain point of view.

51:57
Ben
Don't miss an episode.

51:58
Case
Just subscribe, rate, and review the podcast on iTunes.

52:01
Ben
Head over to certainpov.com dot.

52:10
Sam
We've made difficult decisions, and there are.

52:14
Ben
Still more ahead of us.

52:16
Sam
Two people aren't enough to save the galaxy.

52:19
Ben
We need the toughest, smartest, deadliest allies.

52:24
Sam
We need you.

52:26
Ben
We need you to join us and.

52:28
Sam
Listen to reignite a certain point of.

52:31
Ben
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52:36
Sam
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52:42
Ben
You can find us everywhere.

52:44
Sam
You get your podcasts or@certainpov.com reignite.

52:51
Ben
We're counting on you.

52:53
Sam
We should go.

52:54
Case
And we're back, Sam. So for me, this was a weird walk down memory lane and trying to be like, oh, yeah, I said those words. That's weird. Do I share those thoughts?

53:05
Sam
And so forth. I feel like that with every episode I listen to, I'm like, I said that. That was good.

53:15
Case
Yeah, sometimes, like, off the cuff things, I'm like, oh, I'm very proud of that. And then other times, I'm like, oh, wow, I couldn't get those words out. That was terrible.

53:23
Sam
Oh, sometimes I want to hide under my desk. Like, sometimes I'm listening to us, and I'm like, oh, why would I say that? But, yeah, otherwise, yeah. So that was fun, though. Going down 2017, though, that's hard to remember.

53:39
Case
Yeah, some crazy memory lane bits. Like, I give a shout out to Moonan at the beginning of the pitch process, and that indicates a couple of weird things. Like, first of all, this is back when certain point of view was exclusively recorded locally. Like, Ben and Addie had set up a studio in Addie's basement that was, like, the default, like, recording area. And so Skype calls were a thing we just didn't do. And as a result, like, Jeff couldn't be on the show because he wasn't local, and so he'd have to, like, come and, like, to the studio and, like, record, which is, like, mind blowing now because it's 2021, and we've been doing Zoom calls exclusively for the last year and a half for everything because.

54:20
Sam
Of a pandemic, definitely.

54:23
Case
And even before that, we had done plenty of stuff that were Zoom calls just by virtue of, like, wanting to get cool guests and so forth, so long time ago. And eventually, Munin would get fun and game started. I think this is about the time he had started that show. And the first couple episodes were not part of certain point of view. And I talked to him, and he introduced me to Matt, and that's how the network part of certain point of view really became a thing, because we had another pass. And Scruffy Nerf heard was initially as bonus episodes on certain pov, and then they spun out into their own shows. And roughly around the same time, Matt and Jeff agreed to come on over to certain pov.

55:04
Case
So at first, it was certain pov and its spinoffs, and then we actually had our first other show. And now there's so many shows on this network, it's so crazy to go that far back in time.

55:15
Sam
Oh, wow. This episode's like a time capsule.

55:18
Case
Yeah, but, yeah. So you noted that we really jump into it without any sort of preamble about the movies. And I think that's because, as I was saying beforehand, it was a Star wars show. And so we had waxed and waned about the prequels plenty of times in small chunks up until that point, because I think this was episode 15 of the show and I'd been coming on since episode five or six. So we all knew roughly what we thought about the prequels and pop culture was. I don't know. It's so weird how rise of Skywalker has killed a lot of momentum for Star wars. It's kind of coming back for me now. Like, Mandalorian obviously was great, but it kind of felt like its own thing.

56:03
Case
Outside of the fact that it had so many references, it still felt like a different genre than, like, the main Skywalker movies.

56:10
Sam
Yeah, I mean, I think, like, in general, the new Star wars, things will see out, like, coming out in the future, because there's no way Disney is going to let go of this cash cow. I think that the future things will kind of feel other than. And I think that's okay. I think it's fine. I think it's fine for kind of, like, the Skywalker saga to be over. Like, I think it's okay to just kind of move on from that world and just kind of, or still be in the same world, but maybe not related to the family completely. But you're right, there is a sense of closure, maybe, which, you know, is what it is.

56:55
Case
Yeah. Yeah. It felt like at the time, like, as Star wars fans, were much more in it on, like, the, like, what's, what is the direction of this. Of this franchise, of these characters? Like, how's it all going to go? It, especially with the initial Disney bite, it felt so rejuvenated and so, like, all the conversations I had in high school and college and as an adult were all, like, bubbling up and being like, well, these are the things I used to think, and now they're doing these movies and how are they going to wrap it all up and kind of the same energy I had when the prequels first came out, because the prequels, the time period was not defined, but it was certainly well trodden.

57:35
Case
They had gone into great detail in the books, but usually as like, oh, here's a veteran of the Clone War, or here's the Clone in the Thrawn trilogy, the. The clone Jedi master who makes a clone of Luke Skywalker, for example. Yeah, yeah, Luke Skywalker. But that time had a lot of stuff already associated with it. We all kind of felt like we knew roughly how things went. So we all had our own headcanon versions of it, and were all very excited when the prequel started coming out to get then, no, this is going to be the canon version of that story you've had in your head. And, like, did you read the Star wars books as a kid?

58:18
Sam
Yeah, I read a good. A fair amount of them. I also read, like, comics related to it. I was fairly into all of these things, and I think that's why. And I know, like, now we have, like, generations of people who really defend the prequels and, you know, kind of grew up with them. But I want them to understand that for those people who were disappointed with the prequels, part of the reason is, and I'm not defending a toxic fan base, because I do think that Star wars can be a toxic fan base, and attacking actors for roles is not cool and not okay, and it's not their fault. But I will say that, like, we had so much material and things built up by writers and novelizations and comics and.

59:06
Sam
And all of these things that went back into the Clone wars or even went forward into the future, you know, things that would happen to Leia and Luke and things like that by the time we got to the prequels and we got what we got, as flawed as they were, it was really hard for people our age to not complain about it. It was really difficult to not be like, well, why would you do that? And this contradicts this and that contradicts that because we had already, like, had successful novels and writings about what could happen and what did happen. And so it was just kind of, I don't know, definitely one of those things where it's just like, oof, it was hard. It was hard.

01:00:00
Addy
Yeah.

01:00:01
Case
Obviously, nothing that is actually created is ever going to live up to our headcanon, to our expectations that we had built up so much. And now looking back at the prequels as having been fairly well established and built upon, now I can more readily approach it from the standpoint of, okay, this is what happened, as opposed to being filled with regret about all the things and all the ways that I would want to have done it that weren't going to be there. But it kind of creates what I think is, like, the perfect another pass movie. Like, there's a reason this was a good idea for the show. And I still think this was a really good episode of certain point of view, as well as just being a good episode of doing the another pass format, because I think it worked really well.

01:00:47
Case
A further conversation about Star wars that were having at the time, and then the movie itself is, like, so well known. Like, the errors that are, like, actual errors are so well covered in fandom that it's hard not to know about those things, that the promise is so much out there for people. Everyone has that they want a love it vibe, and that's one of our kind of taglines for the show. It's a movie that you wanted to love in spite of a flaw. I think it worked really well as a launching point for these kinds of episodes, and there's a reason why Return of the Jedi was the first episode of another pass when it became its own series.

01:01:29
Sam
Right.

01:01:29
Case
Because that format was the type of thing or that kind of passion for a property, even though it was well known that it had its limits in terms of its actual quality, I think really makes another pass function as an idea. And I think looking at this episode, you're like, yeah, I can see why this one, like, I can see why we wanted to do this then for the show that existed. And I can see why were so excited when we did this episode and then the next two, that it felt like it should be its own thing.

01:02:01
Sam
Yeah. Yeah, I agree. I think objectively, where these movies fail, I mean, there are a lot of things that are not really cohesively great about the prequels. There's good things, of course, but I think the biggest issue that I have with it from just, like, just a structure wise, is that it relies so heavily on someone experiencing and knowing other media, like knowing the Clone wars. Like, I feel like in the animated series, I feel like everything should be encapsulated in a film. Like, the film should be able to explain itself. And the one of the really great points brought up, which everyone just heard, was that Anakin's fall into darkness and his descent is kind of like, the trigger in this film is not pronounced enough. Like, it just happens too quickly. Right. Like, there's no real.

01:03:03
Sam
There's nothing that really kind of pulls you into it. And so I think that was an amazing point made during this discussion because that has been one of my biggest issues with this particular film is just that, you know, you don't really understand that. And I think that the other flaw in this, and you all touch on it briefly towards the end, is just Amidala's character and how she's completely wasted in this film. You know, the first film, you introduce her, and she's this. Well, again, writing is always a little muddled, but she's a seemingly savvy politician who's trying her best to get out of things. She's very young, but, you know, she's doing the best that she can with the experience that she doesn't have. The second film, she actually has scenes where she's fighting this film literally.

01:03:59
Sam
I mean, she's just in love. She's just pretty. She stops being the consummate, like, politician that she's always been. You know, she's not really there for Naboo the way that she was. And if I were. Cause you guys took a stab at it. But what I would like to say is that what has always been my rewrite, my head canon, is that first scene where she tells Anakin that she's pregnant. I wouldn't have it. I wouldn't have her tell him. I would have her still insist on keeping their marriage a secret, and I would have her still being a politician, so not hiding in the background when he's met by all the people going into the council and understand that.

01:04:46
Sam
And I would have her enter and, you know, kind of, and I would show a relationship between her and Organa, and I would have him be her out. I would have some inklings of a relationship or rumors of a relationship with her and Anakin. I would have her freak out about that and know that it's going to ruin whatever political and aspirations he has as a Jedi. And I would have her decide that it was best for both of them since they could never truly ever come forward, for her to enter into an engagement, to also back up, have Alderaan back up Naboo and have an alliance that was, you know, kind of a relationship ish, or rather through marriage, a political marriage.

01:05:28
Sam
That way towards the beginning, middle of the film, once she's already kind of, you know, make it a quick marriage ceremony, like, you know, courthouse kind of ceremony, and have her just whisk away that way. First of all, he's lost everything. Anakin has already lost her. And when he gets kind of word that she's pregnant, he does fly there before, this is before any killing children. She says that she confirms that she is, and he asks if they're his, and she says, I'm sorry. She doesn't lie, but she says, I'm sorry. And then he assumes that she's just pregnant with someone else's child, and then he can be more easily manipulated because now he's lost, you know, his relationship due to, like, just the political status. He also doesn't agree with things that happen.

01:06:22
Sam
I would still jump into everything that was said in this pitch about the way that palpatine and the complexities happen, but I think that would add another layer to kind of making him lose it. And then later once everything's said and done and he's dead and all that jazz as Anakin, Obi Wan can go to Alderaan and take Luke, because together, the twins just give off too much of a vibe of the force, but separate. They can be hidden. And so then he takes Luke away. That way, he never knows that there was a possibility of children, like, ever. And that solves the children issue. Right. Because he'll never hit. Like, he'll assume that if Luke is with his brother, like, even if he looked. I heard that part. He's never looked up his brother.

01:07:08
Sam
Even if he looks up his brother, he'll assume that Luke's his brother's kid. Like, he won't assume that's his kid because he didn't have any kids because paname fucking, like, abandoned him and went to marry that fucking politician. And then, like, his hatred of Leia makes so much more sense because not only is she, like, this rebel spy scum, but she's the daughter of the man the woman he loved left him for. And that's my rewrite on just that.

01:07:38
Case
Part, you know, because I was thinking, like, is that going to work with the leia in the future stuff? Like, would Vader be tolerant of the girl that he knew for a fact was his ex wife's daughter? And then the man he left her for, or she left him for that. I'm like, would he be angrier? Would he be studying her more, or would that actually give her some outs? He tolerates her a little bit more as a result.

01:08:13
Sam
Well, maybe it's a creepy snape thing. He's still part her mom. She might look just like her mother. So it's really hard. He hates her, and he's hunting her, but he can't really, like, kill the part of her that is Amidala.

01:08:31
Case
I do love that because that is exactly the snape Harry situation right there.

01:08:36
Sam
Yeah. So, yeah, that's how I would fix that. And what I do like about that, and I will say, because for me, that fixes the flaw of Amidala. In the last film, I feel in the last film, she was kind of just put at as kind of like the Virgin Mary, right? She's supposed to be, like, so kind and good. And she's like, they're still good in him. I know she goes after him even though she's, like, pregnant and about to give birth, and she dies of a fucking broken heart, which I fucking hate. I hate. I hate it so much. So I think what this would do, this rewrite would do would give her agency because it would be her decision to give up love for her love of both Anakin's career and also her love of Naboo.

01:09:25
Sam
Because the thing is, by the third movie, she stops being this, like, queen that's just trying to protect her people. She's just like Anakin's wife. And that was very disappointing for me. Like, the second movie was already hard enough to watch because the love story was so fucking awkward. But the. But this gives her agency back, right? This makes her a tough queen that is willing, as all through history to put aside what she really wants and what would be her heart's desire for her people and for the safety of her children. Because here's the truth. He's not supposed to have kids. She's not supposed to have his children. They're not supposed to be married. Those children's lives are in danger.

01:10:13
Sam
The safest way to save her kids and to save him is to get married to someone else and pretend those children are that person's. That is the safest route as a woman. And her character in the first movie would have done that.

01:10:31
Case
I buy it. I think that makes a lot of sense. It's sad because there are so many scenes that were cut from revenge of the sith that involved sort of the background political stuff that they're on the deleted scenes for it. And it's like, oh, here's a sit down with Mon Mothma and all of those. Here's more stuff with Jimmy Smith. It's such a bummer because as much as the vote of no confidence scene in phantom menace is garbage just in terms of the way it's presented and how structured, because it's, like, so over the top manipulative and whatnot, part of that, like, some of those politics should be there, especially in the third movie. Like, you know, the first movie where we're kind of getting our footing for the current political spectrum.

01:11:20
Case
It feels weird to just sort of, like, stop everything and, like, cut over to that. Like, you know, if it was like an Empire strikes back kind of situation where the parties had split and were watching them simultaneously, like the political stuff, while the Jedi were dealing with Darth Maul or something to that effect. That could have kind of made it work. And we'll get to that with phantom menace. But by the time we get to this movie, the politics fucking matter. The switch from the republic to the empire is a thing that you need to deal with in some regard. I've enjoyed bad batch recently, since it's set right when order 66 occurs and how clones who are not affected by it. This is not a huge spoiler. This is the first ten minutes of the show.

01:12:06
Case
The clones who are not affected by order 66, how they perceive the changes to the world around them. I think that's a really cool kind of setup. Order 66 is kind of bullshit anyway, but I want to know about that switch over where we go from a thousand generation republic to a full on empire that is this dictatorship being controlled by a dark wizard. Like, when that shift occurs, I want to know how that happened in more detail than just, I did it. Absolutely. Because there's a lot of comparisons you could make to Rome and where you could deal with this whole thing about how secretly he had kind of become it anyway, to the day he died. I may have said this in the episode to the day he died. I guess this was considered the person who saved the republic.

01:12:55
Case
He was called princeps, like the first citizen, but he was presented as being a citizen in the republic of Rome. And it was only later that it was sort of formalized into being this imperial power, even though it had become such at that time.

01:13:10
Sam
Yeah, and I think you're right.

01:13:13
Case
I'd want to see something for Palpatine.

01:13:15
Sam
There had to be some sort of way other than just like. Like a mass fight to have you see the rise of fascism, to have you see the rise of this empire, of this controlling space, and you don't really get that. And I know that makes this movie darker, and I know that this is supposed to be family fair, but I just feel like there needed to be kind of. That. Those kind of things. You have to see. You have to see Anakin kind of, like, fall and be seduced and understand, and, like, I feel like there had to be more fleshed out with the complexities of the Jedi order and how political that was, too. And I like that in the episode, you all talk about how there had to be more ambiguity.

01:14:11
Sam
There had to be more good guys and bad guys on all sides. There had to be more gray space, because that's when you can actually make arguments that the good guys aren't always good. Like, you can kind of chip away at credibility. You can manipulate someone. And I think that, like, if towards the middle of the movie, Anakin already felt completely alone, right, then it's easier for Palpatine, who's seemingly just bringing order. Just bringing. I'm just bringing order. This is chaos. Don't you see? This is chaos. Do you see what the order's doing? Do you see what that school does? It manipulates these children. It teaches them this. It teaches them that. But what about this? Don't you see? They're the reason you can't be with the one you love. They're the reason she's married to someone else now.

01:15:05
Sam
They're the reason that they don't like the way that you do things. I like the way that you do things. You're so smart. I. You've done so much for them. How could they not realize you're worth Anakin? There had to be more coaxing. There had to be more gaslighting. Papatine to Anakin. You had to see him really feel like the Jedi order needed to be put down, that this school was somehow more harmful to these children than living, that, you know, like, you know, like, that's not in this film. Like, and yes, that scene where he, we see that cute little innocent face and you see him raise the lights. That's a great scene. I mean, like, I wouldn't cut that. Like, that'd be great. You could still do that.

01:15:54
Sam
There just needs to be more from point a to get you to the point of killing children, right? You know? Like, there just has to be more in between. And so I think, like, that's the thing. And here's the thing. You, the way I've rewritten it, you still end on a hopeful note because you end in Alderaan. You end with Amidala kissing her baby boy behind, putting him in Obi Wan's hands, and watching them walk out into light towards a spaceship. And that's your new hope heading out to the rest of the world, right? So you're still, like, you know, because we know that there is a hope on the horizon, and many years later, an Alderaan's gonna die. But still, we know that there is hope out there. We know. We know that this is not the end of the story.

01:16:46
Sam
We know that the balance to the force is going to be brought eventually because we've already seen the last half of this film. This is the middle, right. This is the middle of an epic tale of six episodes. This episode needed to be heartbreaking. It needed to be tragic, and it needed to be tragic right in the middle, leading into a new hope. Like, yeah, so I think, like, that's, you know, but everything everyone said in this episode was really good, and, yeah, I mean, I. Although I'm voting for leaving grievous just a villain. Just leave him a villainous. Just let him be villainous. I like villains for villain's sake. I don't like backstories. I don't like Maleficent. I don't like the remake of Cruella de Vil. I don't like when you tell me that my baddies are, like, bad because of reasons.

01:17:39
Sam
Just let them be bad. Let Maleficent be petty. You didn't invite her to a party, so she killed you. General Grievous was made to kill Jedi, so he kills them. That's it. Like, just let him be a baddie. Like, let him serve his purpose. Some people are just bad. They're just bad. And that's okay.

01:17:57
Case
Yeah, I just think in that scenario, then I would like more explicit manipulations by palpatine of the trade federation, like, feeling like that they were in on that they weren't actually trying to win, but just be a bad guy for the republic to fight.

01:18:13
Sam
Yeah.

01:18:14
Case
I don't know. This is really a movie where when you look at it, you can really see how it's such a draft of the ideas that Lucas wanted to do, and I think that a lot of the ideas that have come out of it, like the Clone wars and so forth and this and any other kind of project that has sort of fleshed out the world or articulated what was missing from the finished product, is just. I mean, it's the benefit of hindsight, but it's also just makes it more apparent that with all of these, especially phantom menace, but with all of these, like, Lucas just had no one pushing back on him and not enough of an editorial process to shape the screenplay to a finished point.

01:19:01
Case
I'm not saying that there weren't multiple drafts, but it does feel like no one really gave him notes about this. Chunk isn't working at all. It was usually like, hey, I love this bit, but one thing I think would make it better is this kind of, like. Yes. Manning trying to critique.

01:19:19
Sam
Yeah.

01:19:20
Case
Which I realize you have to do sometimes, but the first Star wars movie, like, man, it is very different from the original draft to what actually made it on screen. And even the shooting script, obviously, there's the Star wars wildly different script that was made into a comic and has been leaked around. Not leaked, just available everywhere. That's very different. But the shooting script for Star wars and then how they edited it is so wildly different. There's the infamous screening that Lucas did with all of his buddies from UCLA just to show off, hey, this is what I'm working on right now. And Spielberg and all these other guys were just like, brian de Palma, like, rewrote the opening crawl for him, and they, like, chopped it all down. Cause they all believed in him, but at the same time, it just wasn't there.

01:20:20
Sam
It's good to have friends. It's good to have friends.

01:20:23
Case
Yeah. Like, Star Wars, a New Hope is the movie that got another pass.

01:20:29
Sam
Yeah, we all need friends like that, honestly. And that's the truth. I just feel like his friends needed to show up and edit, starting with the phantom menace and kind of just push back. But you're right. I mean, like, again, I think that Star wars films, and I've said this before, and I will say it again, I think that Star wars films are wonderful fantasy films that should not be taken too heavily. My biggest issue with the prequel films is that they just. Yeah, yeah. There was a lot of hand cannon going on for me, but there are lots of things that I just think that he needed pushback on. And they ultimately do not stand well as individual films, like, at all, where I can sit down and. And watch Empire and watch Jedi.

01:21:29
Sam
And even though they're flawed, it's still an enjoyable thing to just watch it. There's so much backstory that you have to know for the prequels, and there's so much individual things that. And things that are not involved in. Four, five, six. I'm talking about. You have to watch a cartoon to understand the motivations of some of these characters. I remember thinking, I mean, back then it was, like, only $11, but I remember thinking, like, I paid $11 for something that doesn't hold all the answers. Like, that doesn't make sense to me. Like, make this movie make sense without a supplemental appendage. Because if I'm going to spend real money to come and sit here, I want you to explain to me from beginning to end what's happening from beginning to end in this particular film.

01:22:22
Sam
Don't, you know, like, don't jump off and expect me to go do extra readings. Like, you're giving me homework, dude. Don't give me homework.

01:22:32
Case
Right.

01:22:32
Sam
So that's still that still annoys me about these films. Are there good things about them? Yes. Are people still going to talk about them? Yes. Are people enjoying them on Disney right now? Of course they are. I don't know who these people are, but I commend you because whatever you like is okay. It is okay with another pass. We are fine with you liking what you like. Absolutely. Even though it does need another pass. It needs some rewrites, guys. Maybe like 20.

01:23:05
Case
Yeah. Especially with revenge of the Sith, where you get. I mean, especially with all of them. They all have their own.

01:23:10
Sam
I was like, you want to say Revenge of the Sith? I mean, come on. The whole second movie.

01:23:13
Case
Like, no, it's love story.

01:23:16
Sam
Oh, we're going to get to that. We're going to get into. But, guys.

01:23:19
Case
But revenge of the Sith had the most heavy lifting to do because by the time you got to revenge of the Sith, so much of the status quo, Star wars hadn't been established in the movies yet that they had to get to all of the stuff for us to get to a new Hope in that chunk. And, you know, to the day I die, I think they should have smushed episode one and two together. You know, got whatever you needed from one and put it into two. And then Revenge of the Sith should have been split in two and that should have been two and three because they just had so much to get through that they just weren't going to get through.

01:23:53
Sam
Yeah. Also make Anakin older. It's creepy. The love story is creepy. He's a child. She's already, like, practically an adult. That it's creepy. I don't like it. I don't like to think about it. I don't like it. It feels like grooming. I don't like it. Don't like it at all. I'm just saying, I know we're going to go there. I know we're not going there yet, but I just want this point.

01:24:20
Case
It doesn't feel as weird, right? By this point. Hayden Christensen.

01:24:24
Sam
And again, I didn't watch the first movie, right? Because I'm doing the rewatch as we do these episodes. So I rewatch this. This feels fine, right? Hayden Christensen, appropriate age for Natalie Portman. This is not like a horrendously awful thing by the third film. So it's fine. It's fine. In this film, they're a fine couple, despite the fact that they have to be secretive and whatever. And he also says some really weird, toxic shit lines to her. Like, it is ugh. Like, it's not great in this movie, but.

01:24:56
Case
Oh, it's a Lucas script.

01:24:57
Sam
Like, it's. It's so bad. Like, it's so bad. Like, I don't even remember.

01:25:01
Case
I empathize with the man so much, but. But, yeah, his dialogue needs. Needs some touching up at any given.

01:25:07
Sam
Point when he's like, you're beautiful. And she's like, you're just saying that because. You're just saying that because you love me. And then he's like, no, you're beautiful because I love you. I remember being like, what? Like, back. Like, back in the movie theaters. I was like, what is this nonsense? What is that? You're beautiful because I love you. No, bro. You're always beautiful. That's what you should say to her. You're always beautiful. No, that's weird. That's weird. I mean, I guess you're a Sith lord, so I guess it's okay. Okay. I guess it's in character, but that shit is weird.

01:25:43
Case
I don't know. I feel like you could make that work with some sort of pan kind of love situation in this big alien world that they exist in, where it's just like, oh, yeah, you love. I was about to say person, but really, the sapient. And then you find what you find attractive about them. You can make that work, but it's not good. It's a bad lie.

01:26:05
Sam
I guess. I guess I.

01:26:07
Case
It just feels like me playing Sith's advocate.

01:26:10
Sam
Yeah, definitely. Definitely Sith. Because to me, it just felt like. Like her beauty was validated in his eyes, and that's what he's saying. And it's just like. It's just so bad because one level, it's like, maybe he's just agreeing with her. So then you're just talking again to agree with her. Right. You know, you're just saying that because you love me. Yeah. You're beautiful because I love you. Yeah, no, that's the same. That's the same statement that you're not. You're actually disagreeing with her, but you said no, and that doesn't make sense to me. But then there's the other way, which is like, yeah, because I love you. You're beautiful. I bring that out of you're welcome. And it's gross. It is gross, and I hate it. I hate that a lot.

01:26:56
Case
I get what he's trying to say. It's just the line was not well written. And notoriously, Lucas is not an actor's director.

01:27:07
Sam
Yeah.

01:27:07
Case
So. Because so much was shot in either a vacuum or in a green screen. Like, by a vacuum, I mean, like, only getting one person's side of any given scene, or just like, they're in a green screen and you don't get any of the context outside of the actor you're playing against Athenae, you know, which is the best case scenario for almost all of this movie. Yeah. No one's, like, necessarily, like, finding the proper delivery on lines because they're not being afforded the environment to work with. Yeah, it's.

01:27:41
Sam
That's true.

01:27:41
Case
Yeah.

01:27:43
Sam
I do not have any hate for anyone who was in this film. I want to officially say that I do not have any hatred for any of the actors or what they did. I know poor Natalie Portman really, like, had a hard time after she was done with Star Wars. I would never hate on actors, but this script, I will forever kind of hate on this script. Less the script than movie two, but we'll discuss that another day.

01:28:17
Case
Yeah. On that note, we have been talking for a bit about this one, and that was also a full episode of a show.

01:28:23
Sam
Yeah. So we should stop.

01:28:25
Case
Yeah. But I hope everyone enjoyed this walk down memory lane for another pass. We'll be back next week with. We're breaking tradition. We're not preparing for a different type of thing. We'll be back next week to talk about revenge of the Sith.

01:28:41
Sam
Yeah. This case is getting married. It's kind of a history lesson for those of us who aren't walking down memory lane, too. So you're welcome, everyone. Welcome to a certain point of view history with case Acres, Samantha, Alicea.

01:28:58
Case
But when you're done with this tour down history, you can actually go and check out and see how certain pov is doing currently. So head on over to certainpov.com where you can find more episodes of this show and continue that walk down history lane. Or you can check out plenty of the other great shows that we have on the network, like fun and games. The first show to actually join the network, Matt and Jeff have been doing an amazing job just talking about video game culture. And then their spinoff series, side quest, gives people the ability to just. Just rave about a game that meant something to them for five to 15 minutes. Both are just a really great series that I'm so proud became part of this network so early and really led to the growth of everything else we've been doing.

01:29:43
Case
Check that out. After that, you can head on over to our Discord server. We're doing this call right now on Discord. We've got great conversations going on. Our community has become very strong. So come join us and talk about video games or Star wars stuff. We love all of this nerd stuff 100%. And so you can find us both there. But if you're not on Discord, Sam, where can they find you?

01:30:07
Sam
They can find me here with you, case, and talk in here, and then they can find me on Discord. And if you have any problems with what I said, come at me at Discord. Another pass has a space, and I will listen. I might not respond, but I will listen. And I will give you a bb eight flame sticking up. And, you know, just, you know, out of support. Out of support. Nothing violent. And. But for further complaints, you can find case, who is in charge of our Twitter account at.

01:30:45
Case
You can find me personally on Twitter at case Aiken. You can find another pass at another pass on Twitter. Send messages at us or follow us and just, you know, keep alert of, like, the latest episodes that are coming out or when we highlight anything that our friends are doing, you know, trying to keep it not be just like, too much spam, not just be like, retweets of my personal account. So if you don't want all of the other crap that I am involved in blasted at you all the time, another pass is a great place to follow. And, you know, if you just want to give it a follow, just because, you know, we'd appreciate it.

01:31:19
Sam
Yeah. You can also be case's friend. He's very supportive. He does retweet things of people he loves, so big cases, friend.

01:31:27
Case
I do. I do. If you're a friend of mine, like, I don't know where I was going to go with that. I do, I do. I try to. I do. I try to support everyone. So if I can be of support to you, reach out. Like, I love making friends on the Internet. I've made a lot of good friends on the Internet, especially in this past, like, year and a half of being locked down. Yeah. We'll be wrapping up the rest of the Star wars prequel trilogy in the next two episodes. After that, we will be getting back to our usual format. So, Sam, after we are done covering the Star wars prequels, what are we talking about?

01:32:04
Sam
On the next episode of another pass, we'll be talking about Highlander two, the quickening. But if you enjoyed this for now, pass it on.

01:32:18
Case
Thanks for listening to certain point of views.

01:32:21
Addy
Another pass podcast.

01:32:23
Case
Don't miss an episode. Just subscribe and review the show on iTunes. Just go to certainpov.com.

01:32:48
Sam
Definitely. Revenge of the Sith was my favorite of the three prequels, although they equally, all have equally, or all deeply flawed. But probably the second movie is going to be my biggest nightmare to speed through.

01:33:06
Case
Yeah, that is super fair.

01:33:13
Sam
Hey there, screen beans. Have you heard about screen snark?

01:33:16
Case
Rachel, this is an ad break.

01:33:18
Ben
They aren't screen beans until they listen to the show.

01:33:20
Sam
Fine. Potential screen beans. You like movies and tv shows, right?

01:33:25
Ben
I mean, who doesn't?

01:33:26
Case
Screen Snark is a casual conversation about the movies and television shows that are shaping us as we live our everyday lives.

01:33:32
Sam
That's right, Matt. We have a chat with at least one incredible guest every episode, hailing from all walks. We've interviewed chefs, writers, costumers, musicians, yoga teachers, comedians, burlesque dancers, folks in the.

01:33:45
Ben
Film and tv industry, and more. We'd be delighted for you to join us every other Monday on the certain.

01:33:50
Sam
Pov podcast network or wherever you get your podcasts, fresh and tasty off the presses.

01:33:56
Case
What? That's.

01:33:57
Ben
No, that's not.

01:33:58
Sam
Can I call them screen beans now? Fine, screens.

01:34:08
Ben
So tune in and we'll see you.

01:34:10
Case
At the movies or on a couch somewhere.

01:34:13
Sam
Cause you're a whole screen beans now.

01:34:15
Case
She will be mine.

01:34:17
Sam
Aurora.

01:34:21
Addy
Oh, I already bought it on Amazon.

01:34:24
Ben
I watched it.

01:34:25
Addy
Well, there's no watch.

01:34:26
Case
I thought were gonna watch it together. You cheated on your Batman. Me?

01:34:38
Ben
Man, that movie was excellent.

01:34:40
Addy
It really was.

01:34:41
Ben
Totally blew my expectations away.

01:34:43
Case
I know.

01:34:44
Addy
Right now I really want to tell.

01:34:46
Case
Everyone about it, but I'm not sure how. Yeah, if only there was a podcast dedicated to reviewing films and discussing the latest news and trailers on upcoming films.

01:34:58
Ben
That would be nice. Yes, for sure. And we can call it the Senegai show.

01:35:06
Sam
What?

01:35:07
Ben
No.

01:35:08
Case
It will be called real movie critic unleashed. No. How about Senegai featuring real movie critic?

01:35:17
Addy
How about the real movie critic and his psychic, the synagogue?

01:35:22
Ben
CG and RMC.

01:35:23
Case
RMC and CG. The real moving critic versus the synagogue. Only a certainpov.com or wherever you get your podcasts, you're going down, critic.

01:35:42
Ben
Bring it on, guy.

01:35:47
Addy
But, yeah, I think we'll do riff tracks for a bunch of movies. We could definitely do one for Warcraft. We could probably do a couple.

01:35:52
Ben
That'd be a fun spin off show for us as a whole. Riff track.

01:35:54
Case
Can we do it just in, like, pian voice the whole time?

01:35:57
Addy
Yes.

01:35:57
Ben
That work? Yeah, that would be awesome. That'd be awesome.

01:36:02
Addy
I like it.

01:36:02
Case
Cpov certainpov.com.