Another Pass at Another Pass at Attack of the Clones

Case and Sam are continuing their journey through the Star Wars prequels and reflect on the history of the show.

“What changes would you make to improve Attack of the Clones? Ben, Addy and Case have their ideas in the second episode of a series fixing the prequel trilogy. What changes would you make?”

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Case’s Fix: Count Dooku is a good guy

• Legitimize the Separatist Cause

• Ben: Mace Windu is more militant

• Addy: Anakin the loner

• A different idea for who the clones are

• Jedi clones

• Ben: We didn’t need the Fetts

• Case: Use the Mandalorians

• Turn Naboo into Alderaan

• Padme and Anakin are already in a relationship

• Make Anakin more charismatic

• Anakin should become Vader at the end of this movie

• Hostile Force Ghost

• General Grievous

• Combining these ideas

• No Yoda fight

• The nature of Jedi Powers

• The Chosen One Prophecy

• Star Wars a reflection of history

Meeting summary:

●      The Podcast discussion and planning meeting revolved around a retrospective analysis of "Attack of the Clones" from the Star Wars prequel trilogy. Hosts Case Aiken and Sam Alasea discussed issues with the film, proposed character development ideas, touched on political themes and the Separatists, explored the Clone Wars and Mandalorians, delved into Anakin's character arc, suggested improvements for Padmé's character development and the love story, talked about expanding the Star Wars universe, reflected on the prequel trilogy as a whole, and planned future episodes on "The Phantom Menace" and "Highlander 2: The Quickening." Action items included Case preparing for the upcoming episode and Sam participating in Discord discussions.

Notes:

●      🎬 Introduction and Background (00:00 - 11:11)

●      Hosts Case Aiken and Sam Alasea introduce the episode

●      Discussion of "Another Pass" podcast retrospective on original Star Wars prequel episodes

●      Mention of previous episode focusing on "Revenge of the Sith"

●      Current episode focuses on "Attack of the Clones"

●      🎭 Issues with Attack of the Clones (11:11 - 20:47)

●      Criticism of the love story between Anakin and Padmé

●      Discussion of missed opportunities in the film

●      Suggestion to make Count Dooku a good character

●      Proposal to introduce Grievous as a legitimate general

●      🌟 Character Development Ideas (20:47 - 31:22)

●      Suggestion to make Mace Windu more militant and antagonistic

●      Idea to separate Obi-Wan and Anakin for character development

●      Proposal to have Anakin find glory under Mace Windu's orders

●      Discussion of Yoda's role and potential force abilities

●      🏛️ Political Themes and Separatists (31:22 - 39:21)

●      Idea to portray the Separatists as the foundation for the future Rebellion

●      Suggestion to show corruption within the Jedi Order

●      Proposal to make the movie more political and darker in tone

●      🤖 Clone Wars and Mandalorians (39:21 - 49:31)

●      Discussion of introducing Mandalorians as mercenaries

●      Idea to have competing clone armies

●      Suggestion to explore ethical implications of cloning

●      💔 Anakin's Character Arc (49:31 - 58:53)

●      Discussion of Anakin's path to the dark side

●      Suggestion to give Anakin a tragic flaw related to his past as a slave

●      Proposal to show more circumstances pushing Anakin towards the dark side

●      👩‍🚀 Padmé's Character Development (58:53 - 01:09:23)

●      Criticism of Padmé's lack of agency and character development

●      Suggestion to make Padmé a more capable and influential politician

●      Idea to have Padmé actively working against the creation of clones

●      🎭 Improving the Love Story (01:09:23 - 01:20:08)

●      Suggestion to use the "enemies to lovers" trope for Anakin and Padmé

●      Idea to have them meet again as adults to avoid creepy implications

●      Proposal to minimize love scenes and improve dialogue

●      🌌 Expanding the Star Wars Universe (01:20:08 - 01:30:51)

●      Discussion of missed opportunities to explore the wider Star Wars galaxy

●      Suggestion to show the impact of political decisions on everyday people

●      Idea to explore the ethics of cloning and its impact on society

●      🎬 Reflections on the Prequel Trilogy (01:30:51 - 01:40:30)

●      Comparison of "Attack of the Clones" to other prequel films

●      Discussion of the trilogy's overall narrative structure

●      Mention of upcoming episode focusing on "The Phantom Menace"

●      🎙️ Podcast Network and Future Episodes (01:40:30 - 02:12:36)

●      Promotion of other shows on the podcast network

●      Announcement of upcoming episode on "The Phantom Menace"

●      Mention of future episode on "Highlander 2: The Quickening"

Transcription

00:00
Case
All right. Yeah.

00:01
Sam
So why don't we just, let's just do it.

00:03
Case
Get into our episode.

00:04
Sam
Let's just do it. You worked a whole day. I'm already sleepy. Let's do this.

00:10
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. Welcome back to another pass podcast. I am case Aiken, and as always, I am joined by my co host, Sam Alasea. Hi. And today we are doing a walk down memory lane. And again, we are continuing our retrospective on the original episodes of another past that were part of certain pov back in the day, back when it was its own singular podcast, before it had spun off and then added shows and become a network. And then that show ended and other shows keep going because thats the circle of podcast life.

00:52
Case
Last time there was a lot, like, last time, we actually ended up cutting out a bunch of stuff that was just like, nerd news of the time that is, like, really dated at this point since it's like, being like, oh, there's new updates about the upcoming rogue one movie, which obviously wasn't worth it. But this episode talking about attack of the clones, we just get into it.

01:14
Sam
Yeah. I feel like you guys are primed.

01:17
Case
Well.

01:17
Sam
Cause the last episode was the first time you'd kind of played this game on the podcast of another pass. And this time, you guys are just ready to throw down and debate on how to fix this disaster of a film, because this is arguably the biggest disaster. Yes. Phantom Menace sets it up right. So, like, there's a lot of things that you have to like, but there's just so many things. There's so many corrections that they could have made that they didn't make. There's so many missed opportunities, and the love story is horrendous that, like, honestly, this movie is probably, for me, the hardest one to try to rewatch.

02:05
Case
Yeah. Especially because given that this was, at the time, a Star wars podcast, we allowed the domino effect to sort of play out. So we started talking about what would be then revenge of the Sith or, like, whatever the third movie in the trilogy would because it was officially a trilogy from the get go. So we always knew there had to be a follow up to it. Right. Discussing attack of the clones sort of was like, all right, well, now we're saying Phantom Menace came out, but you get to do attack of the clones and revenge of the Sith however you want or as much so as you could, which was kind of interesting.

02:35
Case
You know, with, like, revenge of the Sith, it was like, very much like, all right, there's only so much we can do because we are so tied down by the previous ones. And so all of our ideas kind of worked in the same kind of universe of, like, all right, so how do we streamline all this to get to where we need to go? Whereas this is the movie where really, like, you have a lot of options, right?

02:53
Sam
Cause it's the middle of the story, and I think middles of the story can be the most interesting part and can also be the most treacherous. As we've learned in a lot of movies we've watched, there's a lot of movies where we're like, oh, and in the middle, it just got really. I don't know what happened. Like, just. I fell asleep. I've said that so many times on this podcast. So I think that because there's so many possibilities, and I think going into this, you know, fair warning to all of you that are going to be listening, this is going to be a raucous, I'm going to use the word raucous debate about all the possibilities that could have happened, that did not happen.

03:36
Sam
And I will say that individually, like, listening to this episode, I was like, yeah, all of these would have made a better movie. And at the end of this episode, when we come back, I'm going to cherry pick from what you guys decided on, because I think there are a lot of good things in here. I just don't think that you guys cohesively sold another pass movie.

04:00
Case
No. This episode did a lot of what was more characteristic of early episodes of the show, and I like, but for the sake of sanity, we've kind of moved away from, which is really deep breaking and reconfiguring of our ideas into additional kind of formats. There's a lot of building on it. It's really much more the game component of it, the sort of fun of, yeah, we're all coming up with ideas and spitballing off of each other, and that's all really good. And especially because it was a movie that we all knew really well. We all knew the franchise really well. We all knew the references outside of it. There was a lot to talk about that said, man, this is an episode of its time in some areas, such as this was Pokemon Summer.

04:40
Sam
The true summer of peace.

04:44
Case
And like I said, I think there's an element that I kind of miss about that. And when we come back, I sort of am curious what your thoughts on all that were, but it certainly was more a full conversation as opposed to each person coming with their idea and then just sort of presenting it. Yeah, pretty much all of us, like, within two minutes. And I'm to blame. At the time, I was not, like, I wasn't the host of the show. I was the guest on these episodes. So I didn't feel the impetus to try to, you know, respect everyone's point of view. And I realized that I jumped in with ideas because I got really excited. And you can definitely tell that I'm not trying to be the shepherd of.

05:25
Sam
The show at this point, honestly, I think the excitement will pay off for everyone listening, though. I think you all made some really amazing, valid points, and the debate was lively. And so I think this is going to be an enjoyable episode, especially for anyone who feels love for the Star wars franchise and a little bit of disappointment on how this movie could have been improved.

05:50
Case
Yeah. On that note, Sam, did you end up rewatching this like you did for revenge of the Sith?

05:55
Sam
I could not bring myself to do it.

06:00
Case
No, that's fair. That's totally fair.

06:03
Sam
I was going to try. I was very much going to try it. This was. This was definitely a movie that was very difficult for me. You know, after I saw the Phantom Menace in the movie theaters, I was disappointed as someone who had read books because I felt like there were other directions that they could go. But I was still hopeful. I was still hopeful in where the movie could go. And it did introduce really cool characters. Like, I was sad that Darth Maul had passed, and, like, I was like, oh, that was kind of a waste of all that really cool choreography. But overall, like, I still had hope for the next installment. This movie was such a train wreck with a lot of different things.

06:49
Sam
I don't know if it's just, like, trying to do too much or mostly the love story killed it for me, and the tone of creepiness and just. Yeah, there was just a lot. There was a lot about this film, and I just could not bring myself to turn it on. Like, I think I'm still traumatized from my theater experience. I've seen this movie once and only once.

07:16
Case
Oh, snap.

07:17
Sam
Yes. In the movie theater. And I was like, nope, never again. And I love Star wars. Like, and I've watched the last movie, clearly, and I've watched Phantom Menace, but not this one.

07:30
Case
As I reference in this episode, I actually did try to do a cut of the movie down to. So we talk a lot about the Machete Order in this, which I'll go, actually, this might help for people who are not familiar. So the Machete Order for the Star wars movies was a thing that went around on the Internet, around, like, 2015 ish. And the whole basic idea is don't watch Phantom Menace, watch Star Wars Episode four, a new hope, then watch Star Wars Episode five, the Empire strikes Back. Then watch two and three, and then watch Return of the Jedi.

08:01
Case
And that Order makes it so that the prequel stuff with Hayden Christensen and Ewan McGregor and all that co becomes an extended flashback that happens between the reveal of Luke being the son of Darth Vader and the actual confrontation with Vader in Return of the Jedi. And I think it works pretty well. It's not perfect because two is rough and three is rushed. Yeah, I tried to do, like, an edit down to one movie, kind of like the Topher Grace cut that I've never seen, but I've heard about. And one of the things I really wanted to do was cut out all the villainous scenes of Dooku, because you can actually. There's only a couple when you actually look at it. And he does try to pretend to be a good guy.

08:39
Case
And then I wanted to recolor everything, but I'm not good enough at after effects to do that quickly. So that was kind of a rough thing. But I allude to it, and that's what the machete order is like. It is a better way to watch it because you get dramatic stakes. You have the nice introduction to the world, and two and three feel actually pretty good in that context. It actually gives some weight to Vader in episode six that he did not have previously, which is kind of how I like prequels to be anyway. Like, I want them to raise the stakes for the finished product. That's the thing I rant about. Every time someone puts out a movie that's set in a timeline before the, you know, before, like, anytime there's a prequel, like when Captain Marvel came out of.

09:19
Case
Thing I disliked about it because there's a lot to like in that movie. But the thing I disliked was that it didn't really raise the stakes for endgame.

09:26
Sam
Yeah, it was just kind of an introduction, which I was, which is fine. It was a kind of a. What the character needed in terms of an introduction and a phase one movie, but it didn't fit into the phase that Marvel was already in, so.

09:43
Case
Right. And contrast that with Captain America. Captain America does actually increase the stakes for the first Avengers movie.

09:50
Sam
Absolutely. Yeah. Agreed.

09:52
Case
Yeah. So that's just like the thing that kind of makes these movies work a little bit better. And I reference it a lot. So if people want to know what the hell that is, that's what it is.

10:02
Sam
I mean, here's the thing. If I ever decide that I am brave enough to watch two again, I'll do it in that order. And maybe it'll make it palatable. Maybe.

10:12
Case
Maybe it's not perfect, but it's better.

10:15
Sam
I can also skip things now, right? You can just take your mouse and click along, be like, okay, I've had enough of this.

10:23
Case
But, yeah, like, I think that we don't really need that much of a preamble for this one. This episode just gets into it.

10:28
Sam
Yeah.

10:28
Case
You know, I think that attack of the Clones is a much maligned Star wars movie for a reason. I think people, if you're tuning into this episode, you're aware, like, you know, that it's. That it is a movie that notoriously has some issues, and most of those issues are the same issues that all the prequels had. But it's pretty bad here, which is that it didn't feel like you got multiple takes and multiple drafts. And really, that screenplay could have used another pass. So why don't we get into that episode? We'll listen to that rockin original, certain point of view theme song. We'll listen to the episode. When we come back, we'll have a plug for one of the other shows on our network, and. And then we'll be back with the two of us giving our thoughts on the episode.

11:07
Sam
Woo hoo. Hey there, screen beans. Have you heard about screen snark?

11:12
Case
Rachel, this is an ad break. They aren't screen beans until they listen to the show.

11:17
Sam
Fine. Potential. Screen beans. You like movies and tv shows, right?

11:21
Speaker 3
I mean, who doesn't?

11:22
Case
Screen Snark is a casual conversation about the movies and television shows that are shaping us as we live our everyday lives.

11:28
Sam
That's right, Matt. We have a chat with at least one incredible guest every episode, hailing from all walks.

11:34
Case
We've interviewed chefs, writers, costumers, musicians, yoga.

11:38
Sam
Teachers, comedians, burlesque dancers, folks in the.

11:41
Speaker 3
Film and tv industry, and more.

11:43
Case
We'd be delighted for you to join us every other Monday on the certain.

11:46
Sam
POV podcast network or wherever you get your podcasts, fresh and tasty off the presses.

11:52
Case
What? That's. No, that's not.

11:54
Sam
Can I call them screen beans now?

11:57
Case
Fine.

11:59
Sam
Screensh.

12:04
Case
So tune in, and we'll see you at the movies or on a couch somewhere.

12:09
Sam
Cause you're whole screen beans now.

12:20
Case
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. Just go to certainpov.com. And now your hosts, Ben Milton and Addie Thomas.

12:36
Addy
Hey, Nerf Herders. I'm Addie Thomas.

12:37
Speaker 3
And I'm Ben Milton.

12:38
Addy
And we got case with us today.

12:40
Case
Hey, Nerf Herders.

12:41
Speaker 3
Welcome back, my friend.

12:42
Addy
Well, just to let you know, you can join the conversation, we're continuing our series from last week. You can join in on the conversation if you have ideas to add to ours. You can do that at certain pov.com. You can join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, twitch if you want to. If you feel more comfortable emailing us, that's fine as well. All of that information, it's on our website, certainpov.com dot. So, Ben, what are we doing this week?

13:08
Speaker 3
We are continuing in our three part series. This is episode number two. Last week we did a really cool series, one of my favorite series that we've, or episodes that we've done so far in our 30 plus shows. We went back and we did a fix of episode three of Star wars, of things that we would change to make that movie better. And we all came up with different ideas, pulled them together through ideas back and forth to kind of make a better episode three. Previous two movies have already been in place. Everybody is cast, so you can't change the previous two movies. You just have to go from there to try and salvage that episode. We're going to do the same thing today, but we're going to do it with episode two. The rules are simple.

13:53
Speaker 3
Episode one, as we know it today has already come out. We got, this is, now this is pod racing. And we got c three po. And we.

14:03
Case
We got.

14:03
Speaker 3
We got a mess.

14:04
Addy
Yeah.

14:05
Speaker 3
On our hands. Okay. We got Jar.

14:07
Addy
Yeah, you mentioned three Po before.

14:08
Sam
Jar Jar.

14:09
Addy
That was weird.

14:09
Speaker 3
We got a mess. I'm not happy about three Po is pretty bad. It was really disturbing. It is the worst type of fan service.

14:16
Addy
Yeah.

14:17
Speaker 3
So we have to deal with all that stuff, but move forward from there. Okay. Everybody understand?

14:23
Case
Yep.

14:23
Speaker 3
Okay, case, you're on the clock, my friend. How would you fix episode two?

14:28
Case
Okay, so I'm gonna take the first swing at it, saying let's take the movie fairly close to what we have. Okay. And make it good. Okay. So this one was a little victory lap I had when I was having fun playing around with what scenes could be cut to make the movie more coherent. And here's the big one. Count Dooku is a good guy, and it works pretty well as it is. All you have to do is cut out a couple of scenes where Palpatine and Dooku talk to each other, get rid of those, and change the color of his lightsaber to greenhouse.

15:03
Case
Because if Dooku is a good guy and actually found out about the Sith taking over the Republic, like he tries to tell Obi Wan at one point, then all of a sudden he is a hero on the other side, maybe humanize the other, the separatists a bit more, instead of being like, let's throw in all the weird aliens we can come up with and have them all have droid armies, change all that. Maybe have both sides of clones. Maybe they have, what was it from thrawn, the Spartouille or Spartanix cloning, the super fast cloning. And then the Republic's got the slow clones that have to, like, age up, and they're all the Boba Fetts, but have Dooku leading an actual good side that have great points, like, just differing points.

15:45
Case
So that this is a war between two sides that have legitimate conflict as opposed to good guys and bad guys, yet the bad guys are actually not that bad, because ultimately the good guys become the bad guys. Like, have it be a real honest to God war for real reasons, and have Dooku be that green Jedi, so that when you see confrontations later, because this what happens in the next movie, then all of a sudden, it's Anakin fighting a green Jedi in a battle in front of Palpatine, very similar to the one, and he wins this fight, but the next time he does that, he loses the fight.

16:19
Speaker 3
Interesting. Yeah, I had sort of a similar feel about that, too, about. About Dooku and making him a more complex character. I think that it would be really interesting to kind of flip the tables on that and actually have, like, start the movie, you know, with the crawl, and then we see just like, an empire strikes back kind of doing sort of the ring theory with this and having all the probes going out to all the different planets. And then cut to mace Windu standing one of the Republic star destroyers, seeking out the separatists led by Dooku and that. So you kind of paint Windu as more of a menacing, war mongering type Jedi so that there's some conflict within the Jedi order itself about their role and what they should be doing to protect the Republic for which they've sworn to.

17:18
Speaker 3
And then, you know, play into some roles with Dooku again being sort of, he's left the Jedi Order. But that doesn't mean that he's necessarily a bad guy. He just has seen the corruption. He has seen some of the bad things that's happening with. Within the whole system, and in his own misguided way, trying to correct those things. And maybe not even misguided, perhaps. Dooku is, in and of himself, sort of the foundation for the rebellion that we later come to know and love. Yeah, I think that's a really cool idea.

17:51
Addy
You know, I think it's interesting because, for me, my dooku is. It's kind of similar. I think we all like this idea of.

17:58
Case
God damn it. We're supposed to have different points of view. You need to have a certain point view, and you need to have a certain point of view.

18:04
Speaker 3
No, no, that's where you're wrong, because there's only a. A point of view. It is singular, sir?

18:10
Addy
Well, it's funny, because art, like, our dooku, is, like, not really that bad of a guy. Like, I keep on thinking, like, he's sort of, like, coat. Like, just a. Coincidentally kind of a villain. Like, he's gonna be in that. Like, I keep on thinking of that scene from wreck it Ralph. Like, the council. Like, where the scene where all the, like, villains anonymous.

18:27
Case
Like, I'm dooku. I'm bad guy.

18:30
Addy
You're not just. You're a bad guy, but you're not a bad guy.

18:36
Case
Yeah, well, I mean, part of that's, like, the failure of the writing of Dooku as a villain. Like, they write scenes that honestly should have been for if he was Hector in the trojan war, like, the hero on the wrong side or the hero on the side that loses. And thus, history tells us he was a villain.

18:49
Addy
Right.

18:50
Case
That is sort of a glaring flaw that, like, as it is already written, you can almost make that case. And it really. You just cut out two scenes, and you change the color of his lightsaber, which you can do in after effects. And maybe some people have tried and maybe some people found that it takes a lot of work to go through and frame by frame, change the color of someone's lightsaber. But it can be done if somebody.

19:11
Speaker 3
Had that much time on their hands.

19:13
Addy
There's someone out there.

19:15
Speaker 3
There's maybe somebody in here, too.

19:17
Addy
No, no, I think we've got time. I think were a little bit more busy here.

19:21
Case
I don't know who you're talking to. I was at work for 15 hours today.

19:24
Addy
Exactly.

19:24
Case
All right, mister.

19:25
Addy
I'm going to school for blackjack anyway, so I was a little bit more focused, like, all right, so what were the big issues for me in attack of the clones? The long lull with the romance was one of those issues, but I decided to move away from that and just kind of continue my thought process with our last episode with Revenge of the Sith, was making Anakin's path to the dark side kind of make a little bit more sense. And I was also kind of thinking, all right, who are the clones? Do they have to necessarily be the clone troopers that we know in this form at this point? So I kind of like the idea of Anakin starting out this movie being ostracized from the rest of the Jedi. They know he's part of the order, but they don't.

20:10
Addy
Nobody else likes him, honestly. It's just Obi Wan is his only real friend at this point, so it's a much more lonelier, angrier Anakin already, right from the authorization, the other Padawans don't like him. The other Jedi don't trust him, because it carries over from where we.

20:27
Speaker 3
Qui gon.

20:28
Addy
Yeah, exactly. In this whole, like, well, we don't know what. Like, there's the prophecy, but then there's like, he's too old, you know, like, all these other kids are people who've been raised in the Jedi order, and he's already carrying over issues and attachment to begin with, you know, again, we see the reckless Anakin. I would like this arc to be Anakin, in his recklessness, actually saves the Jedi and becomes a hero as the Clone wars begin. And I kind of see actually a fairly similar structure as far as it starts out with the assassination plot, because I think starting out as a little bit of a political thriller is actually an interesting idea. And then going into the beginning of the Clone Wars, I think that was a cool idea that Lucas had.

21:14
Addy
Instead, if you have these attacks, instead of just being like, what was it? Sam Wessel hired by Jango Fett. It would be interesting if there were various attacks all over the galaxy. So the galaxy is being destabilized, and there's less trust for the Republic. You can even open with the attack on Padme if you want, but these attacks are being carried out by clones of Jedi who've gone missing or bounty hunters. So these clones aren't and aren't actually the clone troopers, but other people. Like, maybe we see a clone of Darth Maul, so we have him for more than just one scene in the phantom menace. You could have a clone of Qui Gon. You could explain that other missing Jedi, if you don't want to go with Qui Gon and Darth Maul for whatever reason.

22:01
Addy
But you could kind of, like, they already did have the story of Sifidaeus kind of going off and starting off this clone army being sort of, yeah.

22:11
Case
Oh, my God. This works so well if you wanted to do with, like, connected to the heir to the empire and stuff, and if you had, like, I don't know, Jorus Cbaoth and, like, Jerus C'baoth, like, you could start introducing clones of Jedis. Like, that would be a lot of fun there, actually.

22:25
Addy
And what I like about bringing in clone of clones of Jedi is now you start seeing the rest of the galaxy lose faith in the Jedi order. So, you know, it comes to this big vote that's about, can we just rely on the Jedi now to protect the Republic, or do we need to raise a grand army of the Republic at this point? So it becomes about centralizing the power of the republic and actually putting, like, a physical army out into the field, and so it can be people from different systems, and then you have a separatist movement who isn't comfortable with that. So now you start seeing the Republic crumble into different pieces. At this point, what were you gonna say?

23:07
Speaker 3
Well, I mean, those are all interesting ideas. I don't know that it works logically. It's an idea. Let's go with it. Let's see if we can make it work, because I think that the problem with that, it gets really confusing for the viewer of the movie to tell who's a clone, who's not a clone. Like, oh, this is a clone.

23:27
Case
I mean, this wouldn't work for this movie. But I remember before the prequels came out, there was a fan theory that Obi Wan Kenobi was one of the clone troopers and that he was ob one Kenobi. Like, that there were a lot of clone Jedi's and that, like, possibly Luke was being trained by one of them.

23:46
Speaker 3
Zenobi two.

23:47
Case
Yeah, exactly. Like, three kenobi. That they're, that was the, like, the clone war was that, you know, something that may have been done to sort of, like, preserve Jedi who had fallen in battle, all of a sudden became way overblown and, like, they were, like, doing it too much as they were going into this, like, serious warfare. Yeah, I mean, I think there, I kind of like your idea of, like, showing sort of the darkness. But the idea I was thinking about the other day, that's unrelated to what I was saying before would be, what if instead of it being the dark middle, like, it already is kind of designed to be sort of like the dark middle, even though, like, really revenge should be sort of the parallel empire?

24:32
Case
What if it was the inverse and it was, like, the brightest story in the group? Now, this would be hard with phantom menace, because phantom menace is already kind of on the bright side. But do a story where it's, like, Obi wan and Anakin at their prime. Like, first off, like, solving a mystery and then going off and saving the day and having Anakin being reckless, like you're saying. Yeah, like, really, like, fixing things in a way that shouldn't. And, in fact, it actually advances Sidious's motives, but it looks like it's such a huge victory for everything. Massive.

25:02
Addy
Yeah. So let me actually finish up here. So we'll have this sort of like, this. It comes to this vote, but before it kind of gets to that, you have the entire Jedi council captured, and we'll even throw in geonosis here for the heck of it and have the arena. You have the Jedi put in the arena so that they're taken out of the picture, and you have Anakin and Obi Wan come to save the day. You can have them with the grand army of the Republic. They don't have to be clones this time, but they've been rallied. The vote has passed. And so you have Anakin and Obi Wan as the big heroes, and these are guys who were previously borderline outcasts in the Jedi order, and now they've become major heroes.

25:41
Addy
So it's a huge moment of victory, but again, it's sort of that unintentionally dark victory because sidious is kind of maneuvering through here. But then you have, of course, the split of the republic into the separatists and the republic in the beginning of the Clone wars, similar to what the movie kind of has. But this time, you're not just dealing with droids anymore. You know, you're like, I would like.

26:03
Speaker 3
The idea of casualties on both sides.

26:06
Addy
Exactly. So it's. It's actually, it is straight up. It is a separatist alliance, and you can have the Mandalorians as part of that alliance because they are very fiercely. Where were they?

26:16
Case
God damn it. I mean, thank God for the Clone wars, for that.

26:21
Speaker 3
One of the things that I was looking at when I was looking at this Washington things that we did not need in this movie, and one of the things that I felt was not needed was the fets yeah, the Fett.

26:32
Addy
The way that they were. Yeah.

26:33
Speaker 3
I don't need the fetts to be the parents of the clones, and I don't need Boba to be the mystery behind.

26:40
Addy
Boba was always really nice.

26:43
Speaker 3
Yeah. So I would. So I would have cut that out completely and just, like, the clones are clones. Yeah.

26:49
Case
Let's say that they really, really wanted to have a Boba Fett analog in this movie. Like, they desperately wanted it for whatever reason, let's say. Well, yeah, exactly. Go with Mandalorians and have Jango Fett be one of them. Like, what if they were, like, the mercenaries? Like, their mercenaries that are in it, and it's a band of them and they're doing, like, the dirty work, supposedly. And this big, grand adventure that maybe ends up with most of the Jedi's getting kidnapped and, like, sparking the war is one where Anakin and Obi Wan go in and save the day, and that could be really cool. And then you can end with the same scenario where, like, a young Boba Fett sees Django killed and all that and banned Europe.

27:27
Speaker 3
How about this? How about Palpatine hires the Mandalorians to make attacks on both the separatists and the Republic, much in the same way. You were talking about using the clones. Right, but uses the Mandalorians to go out and do these political hits and create unrest on both sides while playing both sides into thinking that the other one is responsible for the attacks on their people. So the Mandalorians are in the middle being, you know, being pawned by Palpatine.

27:57
Addy
Right.

27:57
Speaker 3
And it creates the conflict for him.

28:00
Addy
I like that.

28:01
Case
Oh, you know what? It could be really cool to just tie in a character to make him actually really badass. What if the way that they're playing the Mandalorians is that Palpatine has, like, deep control of whoever the leader of the Mandalorians is.

28:14
Addy
Yeah.

28:14
Speaker 3
What's his name?

28:15
Case
The great. Well, Mandalore.

28:16
Speaker 3
Mandalore. Well, yeah, sometimes it's Mandalorian.

28:19
Case
Mandalore. We'll just say Mandalore. So whoever's Mandalore, like, palpatine is, like, deep control over. And, like, if you actually tried to have, like, a real conversation with them, you'd be like, this guy's like a zombie. And all the Mandalorians are, like, following him because they respect him and, you know, never takes off his mask. And, like, they don't. They're all like, well, he says, this is what we have to do, and we do love to fight. Let's go fucking kill them. Okay, cool. And then finally, like, maybe it's a young Boba fett who kills him and, like, break. Like. Like, realizes that it's a pawn, and then in the act of killing him, like, unfortunately, like, everyone else dies or something like that. Like, it's some scenario that brings about.

28:58
Speaker 3
Well, yeah, because that's the one. That's the one uniform. Mandalore is the one unifying thing to all the different, you know, tribes and groups of Mandalorians. So once he's gone like that splinters all the clitor apart, and the clans would dissipate and go into chaos.

29:13
Addy
Right.

29:13
Speaker 3
Or, like, unintentionally, he's basically ruining the mandalorian culture.

29:18
Case
Yeah, or even if they're not, or to make it more like, this is, like, Boba Fett's the last Mandalorian. Like, if you really want to hit that. Yeah, like, what if. What if he sends them on, like, essentially a suicide mission, and Boba's so young that he doesn't go on the mission with him, but he realizes it's a suicide mission, and he kills Mandalore and tries to warn them, being like, dad, it's a trap. And it's a trap. I'm sorry, I couldn't stop. So we get a young Boba fett in, like, dad, Ursula, trap. And Django looks at him and goes, like, stay back, son. You're no good to be dead. And then. And tries to disintegrate him. Well, we're just throwing. See, this is the kind of fan.

30:03
Speaker 3
Service we don't need.

30:04
Case
No, no. Yeah, okay. That's all way too much. And I'm not seriously saying, but, like, a scenario where, like, he. He realizes that Mandalore's leading him into doom, kills Mandalore. It's a huge deal that he kills Mandalore. Everyone's, like, shocked at this detail. And then he tries to stop everyone else from dying, but it's already too late.

30:20
Addy
Horrible.

30:21
Case
Like, whatever suicide mission that they were on is already underway. A big clone trooper thing is about to hit them or something. You see the last of the Mandalorians stand up and fight, and Boba Fett watches it from a screen and is forced to observe this entire thing. And then that's the last we see of him for the trilogy. Same effect that Lucas wanted, that clearly producers are going to push. Everyone fucking loves Boba Fett. Let's make sure Boba Fett, goddamnit's in this movie, and we can have a tie in video game with Django, have it be a logical thing to really set up, like, this emotional connection that they wanted to set up. Like, why is Boba Fett out there? And he doesn't like Jedi and, like, what?

31:00
Case
You know, this and that, but make it actually have some pathos and have some consequences, because already we're down to the last Mandalorian, and then all of a sudden, he's getting a clone son. So we get, like, a. So we get a mulligan on, like, mandalorians out in the universe. Like, that's it. Like, Boba Fett's, like, a mulligan in that scenario.

31:21
Addy
Yeah.

31:22
Case
That we have actually been given. And that sucks. It would be so much more interesting.

31:27
Speaker 3
That he was the last one, but.

31:30
Addy
They kind of retconned that with clone wars.

31:32
Case
Okay.

31:32
Addy
By letting Mandalore actually exist and bringing them in.

31:35
Case
Yeah.

31:35
Speaker 3
I was gonna say, yeah, okay.

31:36
Case
Like, I'm not as up on the animated series stuff, but, like.

31:40
Addy
But they did. They heavily implied that.

31:43
Case
Yeah.

31:43
Addy
So.

31:43
Case
Well, it had been implied for a long time that Boba Fett was the last. And it was sort of implied that, like, the reason Django had a clone was so that he could have a son that was a. Like, a full model.

31:53
Addy
Yeah, a full clone of him. Yeah.

31:55
Speaker 3
Interesting. Yeah, those are good ideas. The other thing that I would get rid of is the Gungans and Jar.

32:01
Case
Jar, which is a full on nuclear holocaust.

32:03
Speaker 3
Naboo.

32:04
Case
Yes.

32:04
Addy
Naboo.

32:05
Speaker 3
We never go back to weapons test. We don't talk about Naboo. Nothing happens at Naboo. Naboo ceases to exist. Naboo.

32:14
Case
You know, just, what if they're, like, by royal treaty, we have new. We have renamed Naboo. Alderaan.

32:20
Speaker 3
Alderaan.

32:23
Addy
So now we all cheer when target orders it.

32:26
Speaker 3
Belated media has done a series about this, about how to redo these movies, and that was one of his suggestions as well, which was to make Naboo Alderaan so that we have some sort of connection to Alderaan when it does get blown up.

32:39
Case
Oh, yeah, absolutely.

32:40
Speaker 3
And that makes all the sense in the world to me. Like, there. Like, why would you leave?

32:44
Addy
Why would we never visit?

32:46
Speaker 3
So you could have. You could have easily called Naboo Alderaan. We never would have known the difference.

32:50
Addy
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

32:52
Speaker 3
The only thing we. The only reason we would have never known. The only thing we would have known.

32:55
Addy
Well, it would have been weird.

32:57
Speaker 3
Was from Naboo.

32:58
Case
Yeah.

32:58
Addy
Well, it'd be tough to hide Leia in Alderaan.

33:04
Speaker 3
No, not necessarily. Depending on how you handled it belated media's idea, and I'm ripping this off completely from him.

33:12
Case
I'm a little frustrated that you were able to reference someone this much, because I thought were having fun and nothing. Not an original idea. But I didn't realize that someone else did a series like this.

33:22
Speaker 3
He did, and it was good. I've seen it. I saw it a long time ago.

33:24
Addy
Yeah.

33:25
Speaker 3
I just watched recently to kind of refresh myself. So I didn't steal directly from him, but since we're bringing it up, his idea, and I thought it was kind of a cool idea, was that.

33:38
Addy
Who.

33:38
Speaker 3
Ends up raising Leia? What's his name?

33:40
Addy
Bail organisations?

33:41
Case
Jimmy Smith.

33:42
Speaker 3
Smith.

33:42
Addy
I usually say Jamie Smith. Do it correctly.

33:46
Speaker 3
Padme's like stepbrother or something like that. Okay, so there is a relationship already. Not just, hey, random dude.

33:55
Case
Wait, wait. So that Leia gets taken to her actual uncle, and then Luke gets taken to his actual uncle on the fraternal side. So we're just gonna.

34:04
Addy
It all makes sense, guys.

34:07
Case
So everyone, like, all right. We understand that you. You people are related to now, like, the second ranking despot in all the galaxy. You're gonna take care of his kids, and, in fact, you. The wife's gonna live with you. How do you feel about that one, guys? Pretty bad plan. Pretty bad plan.

34:29
Addy
So we've kind of addressed mostly, like, the big plot. What do we do with Padme and Anakin? Because it is a very. It is a key part of.

34:40
Case
You could open the movie with them already together.

34:42
Addy
Yeah. I mean, do you have any tension in their relationship? Well, because here's what kind of tension?

34:48
Case
Here's the thing about attack of the clones. When I first saw it, I was like, oh, there's a lot in this movie that I like more than what Phantom Menace had. Like, Phantom Menace had these trappings that were very similar to the original Star wars, and it had a great lightsaber fight that we hadn't seen a fight like that before, and that was really cool. And they had, like, these very broad strokes, kind of like, oh, Obi Wan picks up the green lightsaber to show that he has matured into an adult. And it's very basic. Here's hero tradition 101 stuff going on. And on top of that, it actually was very ambitious in the political manipulation stuff in the background.

35:28
Case
If that had been the pilot for a tv show, that would have been a really cool first episode for a season that should have played out of manipulations of Palpatine. But it was a bad movie. It was a very bad movie. And it didn't tie in at all, really to what we associate with Star wars. I've said it feels like a different franchise and it really doesn't have a lot of relation in terms of the characters. We barely care about most of them. There's a reason the Machete Order exists. You can just cut out Phantom Menace and the other two work fine as kind of a flashback for Anakin. So this movie having that big time jump.

36:06
Case
And obviously you're gonna do a big time jump because we need to get rid of Jake Lloyd because that was how it was in the first one. So let's move on and get to, like, a middle aged Obi Wan Kenobi, or at least older still young man Obi Wan Kenobi and give, like a very young man teenager kind of anakin. They could already be in a thing. Like, there's that time jump. The fact that, like, that to. If that time jump took two months longer, they already would be in a thing. Like if, like, the movie starts and they're dating pretty fast or not dating, but, like, they basically are. They're, yeah, they're in this, like, weird courtship. They could just be around each other because she's a senator, so she's around all the time. Or like a huge representative of Naboo.

36:49
Case
He's a Jedi who's moving through all these circles. They could have weird fucking sexual tension. Like, they don't need to be just reintroduced to each other. So that could be a thing that's going on and it's already setting it up the way that Han and Leia have an empire. Like, they already know each other and fight and bicker and have this tension. Like, they could just open the movie. Arguing about shit like that would be a way to set them, like, to. Because they want to parallel all this stuff.

37:15
Speaker 3
Yeah.

37:15
Case
And like, an attack of the clones has some really nice parallels to it. Like, if you think of Star wars as being a Arthur Pendragon's story and Luke is King Arthur and it's him going on this hero quest to get Excalibur and then rise up and defeat Mordred, except Mordred also happens to be Uther. Like, this is Uther's story. And they, like, these are great details. Like the, like, losing the arm has this cool symbolism to it. Like, sure, the ring theory aside, but it's Uther Pendragon. It's Arthur Pendragon. And that Uther turns into Mordred is just sort of a twist that they can do that makeshi makes the ultimate confrontation all the more real since we're following Arthur as a young man, so him siring someone who he could fight wouldn't really happen, and that will ultimately happen now with Ben Solo.

38:04
Case
This movie already has great, cool details to it, but it just doesn't do it well. And so what are the twists that you can make it work? And I think they love empire. Everyone loves empire. Let's have Anakin be Han. Like, he's a crazy, badass pilot, and he's roguish, and he's charming, and everyone goddamn loves him, even though they're all really mad at him all the time. Cause he fucks up shit, but at.

38:30
Speaker 3
The end of the day, he ends up saving everybody.

38:32
Case
Yeah, exactly. If he's running around and he's got Obi Wan who's just like. Doesn't know what the hell he did to be stuck with this kid, and he's bickering with this administrator who they happen to have done a mission with a few years back, and she's all like, somehow the person that they get thrown in with every time they have to go on a mission. Like, they're thrown in to go on diplomatic stuff, and she's the ambassador that he has to be the bodyguard for or something like that. And I don't know.

38:59
Speaker 3
And there's all sorts of sexual tension between. And he's trying to teach Anakin to let go and to not have attachments, and he sees this relationship forming in front of his eyes. Even though they're bickering, I mean, even when they're bigger, you can see the sexual tension between Leia and Han, and you can see it between Padme and Anakin in that scenario. That'd be really interesting. And that can start to create that wedge between Obi Wan and Anakin.

39:27
Addy
Yeah, I like that a lot.

39:28
Speaker 3
I'll tell you the other thing that I kind of wanted to do with this movie, just to make the third movie more interesting for me, I wanted to actually walks. No, I would have accelerated this movie a whole lot and gotten right to the end of this movie, Anakin and. And Obi Wan having their duel and Anakin turning to Darth Vader. So setting up the third movie.

39:54
Case
Yeah.

39:54
Speaker 3
Have a complete movie with Anakin as Darth Vader and get to see Darth Vader in his prime. Badass.

40:01
Case
I'll be honest. That's what I thought they were gonna do when I saw Phantom Menace. I thought the third movie was gonna be Vader hunting down the other Jedi.

40:09
Speaker 3
This order 66 Washington was such.

40:10
Case
Well, yeah, it's very dumb. I mean, I've often killed them all in a montage. Like, what would have been a great sequence of movies is if episode two was episode one and episode three was split in two. Because the biggest problem with episode three is they have to rush through everything to catch up to all the Star wars stuff that they skipped out on in the first two movies.

40:30
Addy
Yeah. So in a sense, you could have the clone wars be through all three episodes.

40:37
Case
Yeah. I mean, the move, the opening.

40:39
Addy
Also, the way we've talked about the.

40:40
Case
Opening of the trilogy should have been the clone, like, the beginning of the Clone wars. And then the Clone wars was the backdrop for these three movies. And the fact that they didn't do that with the first one is why I say it's both ambitious but also poorly executed. Setting it up in the background could be cool. And wanting to do this as the beginning of the wars also could be cool, although it happens way too late. It should happen mid movie, that this, like, attack of the clones happens.

41:07
Speaker 3
Yeah.

41:07
Case
And then that should have been the thing that drives forward all of their. All their action like that. All of a sudden the status quo is disrupted and now they're at war instead of just being like, the keepers of the peace and wandering around. Like, you can argue that's what they try to do, but they get it.

41:24
Speaker 3
Well, it gets bogged down with that whole, like, trying to figure out who the clone, like, who ordered the clones and who are the clones? And that whole mystery.

41:32
Case
Why is it a mystery to have that technology?

41:34
Speaker 3
Yes, that was completely unnecessary.

41:36
Case
They've got goddamn back to tanks. You can grow basically arms back for people. Why is it that weird that there would be clones for all the.

41:44
Speaker 3
Yeah, you can travel faster than light.

41:46
Addy
Yeah.

41:48
Case
The idea that clones, like the. And, I mean, part of this is me having, like, a love for the novels. So, like, having these, like, fast growing clones that are really unstable and don't last very long, that shows a limitation of the technology. And then having these slow clones really requires an investment like the ones that they have in attack the clones and revenge of the Sith really would require you to invest 20 years before you'd have a reasonable force, or ten because of fast aging. But ten years is a lot of time to be like, well, someday we'll need them.

42:24
Speaker 3
We're going to fight a war in ten years.

42:27
Case
So really, if you wanted to have the stakes properly, whichever side was the aggressor, should have had the long running clones, because those are the reliable ones that you can trust. And then the side that is not the aggressor in the situation should have been the ones that were forced to panic, break out all these clone tubes that can fast grow people that only last for, like, nine months before they die. And that should have been this big war between clones and not just here's robots and here's basically robots that we have that happen to have a human inside this white suit that we can't see their features, and they all talk the same and talk like goddamn robots because they've been just programmed.

43:01
Speaker 3
Yeah, yeah. The Clone wars was disappointing. You could go in all sorts of different directions to redo that, for sure.

43:08
Case
And you can do cool stuff. Like, we talked about Republic commando being a cool take on it and doing, like, a Vietnam style. Like, these people are going through PTSD at rapid pace because they're also aging super fast. Like, there are cool stories you could do, but they didn't do it. No. And this isn't a bitch fest. So let's talk about what else would make it good.

43:28
Speaker 3
Here's what else I would do. Maul returns.

43:31
Case
Yes.

43:31
Speaker 3
Absolutely returns. All right, metal legs. I love the idea of having sidious find him and get him and put him back together, much in the same way that we see him do for Vader. But it's sort of like his practice run on what he does. Cool.

43:47
Addy
I like that a lot.

43:48
Speaker 3
So that you may even get a scene where he says, doth maul rise.

43:56
Case
That would be cool. And, I mean, that is what grievous was. In a similar sense, what could also be cool to do? Like, the parallels with empire is what if Darth Maul came back as an aggressive force ghost? Because we haven't seen one of those in a movie. And this would be the parallel to Obi Wan showing up as a force ghost in Empire for the first time. Like, what if Anakin or Obi Wan, let's say Obi Wan, because he actually was. He actually met Darth Maul, whereas Anakin kind of saw him once. Like, what if Anak. Or what if Obi Wan was constantly hearing voices of Darth Maul taunting him throughout the beginning of the movie? And, like, mid movie, he's confronted with the ghost of Darth Maul. And, like, you get.

44:35
Case
You get the glowing Red Ghost instead of the glowing blue ghost, because, like, why not? I like that you could even sort of parallel the fight in the cave against this force ghost. Or just, like, them arguing or something to that effect.

44:51
Addy
The one thing I'm not crazy about that is I like the idea of the Force ghost being something only the light has as part of Obi Wan saying, I'll become more powerful in death and not allowing the Sith to have that as a trade off for how powerful they are because of the untapped emotion. But the thing is, a dark side force ghost would be really cool.

45:17
Case
But to counter argument that point, Palpatine's ability, in all the later fiction that I'm going to feel free to reference when talking about the prequels, because the prequels are deeply steeped in all the expanded universe fiction. Yeah. Palpatine's ability to put his essence in other clone bodies, that they rapid grow was because he could keep his consciousness together with the force. The Force ghost probably should be something where you have to be super strong with the Force, which, as all of us who have played knights of the old Republic know, you've got to be either really light side or really dark side. You can't be neutral. Neutral doesn't get the good powers. So if you're light side, you can be a cool advisor. Force ghost. If you're super strong, dark side, you can be a taunting tormentor demon ghost.

46:06
Case
So you can't show up to your friends to tell them good advice. What you can only do is show up to the people you hate just to be like, I fucking hate you.

46:13
Speaker 3
Which would be a great maul.

46:14
Case
That would be a great maul.

46:16
Addy
I have to come back to your moment when you're talking about the rise, Lord Maul moment. I just all of a sudden thought Darth Maul asking, where are my legs? I'm afraid in your anger, you lost your legs. My mind just had to complete that scene.

46:40
Case
Hilarious.

46:42
Speaker 3
And there's just, like, a pair of pants in the corner.

46:44
Addy
Yeah, just a very lonely pair of jeans.

46:48
Case
All right, so here's a take if we want to do it kind of what kind of as the parallel structure, let's say that the. The trade federation from the first one goes off and goes completely rogue. And the movie starts with them trying to track them down, and we see giant robot walkers that then Anakin and Obi Wan has to fight on, let's say planet. I don't want to say desert planet, but I was trying to think different than frost.

47:11
Addy
I think it would be kind of.

47:12
Case
Cool volcano planet, just to set up that foreshadow.

47:15
Addy
Actually, you know what I think would be cool? And this was, you know, going to Mandalore I think, would be really cool to let the final land battle take place on Mandalore, because you have the, like, the snowy vista, but you also can go with the fire and ice type of thing going with, like, a volcano. Yeah, exactly.

47:30
Speaker 3
Like, so the reason they could be there is they both, like, both sides kind of figure out that Mandalore, the Mandalores have been doing all this, and that the guy pulling the strings is on Mandalore, so they converge to.

47:41
Addy
Right. And there was some also, like, going to the Art of Force Awakens book.

47:46
Speaker 3
I know.

47:46
Addy
Obviously, it's much later after the fact, but there was some really cool concept art of a volcano snow planet type of thing, and it was just some really.

47:55
Case
What about an ash world? That's probably what you're talking about, but a world where it's in the volcanic version of nuclear winter, where all the volcanoes went off. So there's a lot of geological activity, geothermic activity, but the sky is completely covered in a dust cloud. And when you come down, it's like snow, but it's just ash everywhere. And just in the distance, there's always those things. Yeah, so they have to be in, like, protective suits that kind of look like the ones from empire, because they're, like, cooling suits, and they have to, like, block, and they, like, they have a mask. That's a really cool idea. And so we get these giant robot walkers that they have to fight in some sort of speeder, and maybe, I don't know, trip them somehow. That's crazy talk.

48:39
Case
And so they're like, their probes being sent out.

48:41
Addy
That movie, Empire strikes back. Nobody. No, nobody. For a civil war reference.

48:47
Case
Hold on, hold on. Addie, come here.

48:50
Addy
I'm speaking of Civil War reference. Come on. Are you guys still butthurt over that?

48:56
Speaker 3
What?

48:56
Case
No, I wasn't butthurt about the fact that they did an empire thing. I was annoyed, because I'm like, he's a murderer. He would know that movie. And they called it old.

49:06
Speaker 3
That's what I found offensive.

49:07
Addy
Yeah, I know.

49:08
Case
Not even that he called it old, but he was, like, this obscure, really old movie is the way he phrased it.

49:14
Speaker 3
Not verbatim.

49:14
Addy
He said obscure, but he didn't say obscure.

49:17
Case
He's like, you get like, have you guys ever heard of that? Or did you guys ever see that really old movie? Like, that was the annoying part about it not being like, hey, guys, do you remember this old movie, Empire strikes back, jackass. I actually. I would hated him saying that too. I wish I had left it alone.

49:36
Speaker 3
Much like I wish you had.

49:40
Case
Okay, so.

49:41
Speaker 3
So they're on this ash world, and there's a big battle, and they're coming. I guess this is what the separatists and the Republic do we want. How do you guys feel about Grievous? Should grieve? I think grievous should be introduced in this movie.

49:56
Case
Oh, yeah.

49:56
Speaker 3
As a legit general and a force to be reckoned with. And I want us kind of see him face off with Mace Windu.

50:04
Addy
Well, I think now we're starting to get. I think, at this point. So there's.

50:09
Case
There's a lot we gotta talk about how we want the third movie to play out. If we're gonna talk about the second one like that, you have to pitch basically the rest of the trilogy. Other.

50:18
Addy
Are we still maintaining what we had from our last episode?

50:21
Case
No, because this is now a John bar point.

50:23
Addy
That's true. Well, so I think there's one thing. So you've introduced Maul as sort of the foreshadower for Vader. So what is.

50:31
Case
I mean, if force goes maul.

50:34
Addy
That's true. Yeah. If you were talking about cybernetic maul.

50:37
Speaker 3
Right.

50:38
Addy
As opposed to force Ghost Maul, what's the point of grievous then?

50:43
Speaker 3
I think as a foil to Obi wanna.

50:46
Addy
Okay.

50:47
Speaker 3
As a continued foil.

50:48
Addy
Think mall would. Would be that guy. As the continued foil.

50:52
Case
I mean, the beauty of force goes maul is you can also have grievous. And it doesn't feel like that's true. They're stepping on each other's multi think.

50:59
Speaker 3
I like. I like grievous. I like introducing Grievous as a. As a general in this movie and in this situation. And I kind of like having him being the counterpoint to see.

51:10
Case
I view.

51:11
Speaker 3
I would cast mace window. Especially if you're using Samuel L. Jackson in that role as sort of like this.

51:20
Addy
The militant.

51:22
Speaker 3
Much more. Yeah. The militant side of the Jedi order. Exactly. And that whole, like, taking the idea of we're here to protect the Republic to the extreme, to the far right. And becoming very militaristic about it, very forceful about it, and doctrinal about it.

51:39
Addy
Yeah.

51:40
Speaker 3
And having him sort of being, like, kind of fighting with. With grievous and Obi Wan and Anakin being pulled into that.

51:47
Addy
Yeah.

51:47
Speaker 3
Fight as well. But I think the idea I would make, instead of having Dooku as another apprentice of Palpatine, I would keep bringing maul back to be the other Seth. I think that would be far, much better use of him.

52:04
Case
How about this? So we open with attack on this ash world. Speeders. It's Anakin and Obi Wan saving the day. Like, them taking on these robots is them winning and, like, taking out this base. General grievous, still human, or not human, but alien, like, whatever. Same species of, like, as, like, the trade Federation. Like, guys, so we can get rid of newt. Gunry is really frustrated, kills one of his aides, goes off in a super giant ship, and then everyone's, like, chasing after these guys throughout the movie, but it's, they're on the run, and, like, the Jedi are winning. And, like, Obi Wan or mace is, like, super aggressive. Obi Wan is hearing these voices that really freak him out every now and then, and he's wondering what it is, so he goes off to study.

52:51
Case
Meanwhile, Anakin is left with this really annoying person who's, like, overseeing it from the Senate. And they bicker all the time while they're, like, trying to chase down this one, like, ship that got away, and.

53:05
Speaker 3
Nothing stops bickering like a good nickering, if you know what I mean.

53:08
Addy
IO.

53:09
Case
IO. Yes, indeed. So they're chasing down this thing, and it happens to be the Mandalorians that they're trying to chase. And they're like these mercenaries that have been hired by the trade federation, it seems. And the movie sort of follows that going on. Obi Wan goes to confront his demons, which turns out to be actually the, like, the force ghost, well, the force ghost of Darth Maul, and then finds out about, like, as he leaves, he finds out about an, a lot, like, a meeting being held where this, at this point now, like, really officially evil general Grievous, who is, like, well, has murdered his subordinates who have failed him multiple times. Vader style actually has a meeting with a good Jedi, which is Count Dooku.

53:55
Case
And they start the form, the basis of this separation from the Republic, because Dooku has legitimate information and he's siding with people who are bad because it is desperate to, like, it's a desperate time, and he needs these bad people also to bring good people and to provide the firepower to, like, lead the way for all these systems to, like, break off from the republic, which he has found out is under control. And this whole, like, chase down of the trade federation is just a scapegoat that they're using to, or that palpatine is using to perpetuate this thing like, this. The movie structurally then resembles Empire, which is what they want and which we do want. We want the second movie to have that kind of structure, but it starts off looking really victorious, and then we realize it's actually all a failure.

54:51
Case
Like, they're the ones in pursuit of these people and really their shoes on the other foot. Exactly. And this is the one where, like, Anakin, because he's separated from Obi Wan, is like, no, you have to, like, go and destroy these people. Like, no, those ones aren't the bad guys. They're just trying to, like, get away, and they're lining up with people who are probably bad guys, but we don't even really know because we're forcing it on them. Like, systems are. Like, we're abusing systems. Like, maybe there's a lot of destruction, not like war destruction, but collateral damage, destruction to systems.

55:21
Addy
So Anakin is trusting Dooku at this point?

55:26
Case
No, no. Dooku is actually a good Jedi who is separate, who has left the order. Right.

55:32
Addy
So he's somewhat disgraced.

55:33
Case
Obi Wan is the one who sort of, like, finds himself tracking down Dooku or, like, finding out about Dooku going to have this meeting. Anakin is the one who's sort of leading at Mace Windu's orders, is leading this pursuit of the Mandalorians and of grievous. And ultimately, they sort of collide as Obi Wan sort of explores what's wrong with the force, but he can't quite figure it out. And Maul is coming after him, but he's exploring his own powers, and he realizes that there's this weird imbalance, and he finds a person who has balance, and that's Dooku. Dooku is a balanced Jedi, which is why he's got a green lightsaber and that he's nothing, like, so easily manipulated by either side, and he's the one who's trying to, like, lead them down the right path.

56:19
Case
And then that's when it starts off appearing to be like, I don't know what exactly I would do with it, but, like, the Jedi go too far, and that's where, like, open rebellion actually occurs. And call them rebels. Like, call the separatist rebels. Yeah, the separatist rebels.

56:33
Speaker 3
Yeah, totally.

56:34
Case
Like, who needs the terms to be different? Like, they are rebels, and then all of a sudden, like, they're all leaving the Republic.

56:40
Speaker 3
I like the idea of having the separatist as the basis for the rebellion.

56:44
Case
Yeah, love that. And then we can sort of follow the next movie where, like, the wars, like, got, like, opened up, but there's, like, some people at fault. Like, I don't know what I do that the Jedi. It would have to be.

56:55
Speaker 3
It would have to be Windu.

56:56
Case
It would have to be.

56:57
Speaker 3
Windu's, like, extreme aggression, right? You know, what do we do?

57:01
Addy
So what do we want to do with Yoda in all of this? Do we do anything with him? Do we. Do we even bother with him in this movie?

57:08
Sam
I mean.

57:08
Addy
Well, he's already been introduced in Phantom menu.

57:10
Case
I wouldn't let him fight.

57:14
Speaker 3
I agree. Yeah. I mean, as cool as it, like, I remember when it first happened, I.

57:17
Addy
Was like, that was amazing.

57:19
Speaker 3
And now looking back, I'm like, it was kind of uncharacteristic of him.

57:23
Case
Yeah, it doesn't really matter. In my machete cut, like, I immediately skipped the fight.

57:28
Addy
Well, let me ask you this. Does it make sense to have. So let's. So would Yoda be part of the Jedi order? Would he still be the head of the council?

57:39
Case
Yeah, it could be that he's dismissed as being too much of a pacifist by someone like Windu, and so he's actually reaching out, maybe to his former apprentice, which is dooku, and, like, trying to urge him not to go down the path of war. But Dooku's like, no, the problem is that you guys are on the side of wrong right now, and war is the only way for these people not to be under the thumb of the city.

58:02
Addy
That's an interesting. Okay, so in that sense, I think the justification makes sense for Yoda not to be fighting, because I think if, for whatever reason, he was still part of the council, it seems to make sense for him to still be part of the problem. And I think you can justify a fight if you have at some point, Yoda realized later on in the series that he was wrong. I would rather be part of why.

58:27
Speaker 3
He goes if he was pushed into confrontation, I would much rather have him do it without a lightsaber and defend himself without a lightsaber and just use force powers.

58:36
Case
Just the force.

58:36
Speaker 3
Just to see just how incredibly powerful.

58:39
Case
He really is with the force.

58:40
Addy
Right.

58:41
Speaker 3
And be able to, you know, not just do force pushes well, and again.

58:45
Case
All seen the red letter media thing where you talk about, like, does a lightsaber work when you're 3ft tall and you have to jump around super crazy just to make it work? It doesn't. It doesn't like, the lightsaber is designed for humanity and not even that. Well, that whole thing was just like, let's have some fun with Yoda doing this. We've all wanted to see it, except we didn't really. We were just told, like, haven't you always wanted to see Yoda fight? Not really. I remember really thought about it. I remember having a lot of arguments with people about, like, how powerful he would be with the force and what he would do with. If he ever confronted Palpatine. Right. And never came up to being lightsabers. Like, it was always force.

59:23
Addy
Was it more like the fight?

59:24
Case
Yeah, except.

59:27
Speaker 3
That is lame.

59:29
Case
I mean, that ultimately is the fight we kind of wanted to have, except it ended weirdly.

59:33
Addy
Yeah.

59:34
Case
And.

59:34
Speaker 3
And there wasn't enough. There wasn't.

59:35
Case
And there's a lot of lightsaber fighting. He was, like, hopping around, and that's.

59:38
Speaker 3
True fighting, and there was really. They were only, like, using, like, two powers. Like, you'd only ever use a force pull or force push and pull.

59:45
Case
And jump around force lightning.

59:47
Speaker 3
Yeah.

59:47
Case
Yeah. Which, again, is a power that you use torture, not a power you use to win a fight. Like, it's just they're not being very creative with the force when they do. Like, oh, this is a thing we saw once before. Let's do the same thing again, just.

01:00:00
Speaker 3
To pump it up a little bit.

01:00:01
Case
Like, it'd be more interesting if he was, like, in an actual fight in some sort of terrain, if he was causing earthquakes or causing things just to fall or actual lightning or just shooting lightning from his fingers is such a one note kind of power. And the fact that it's like, oh, I hit the level where I can do it is so annoying.

01:00:21
Speaker 3
Or, like, what if it was really, like, mind bending and he grew?

01:00:24
Case
Like, he hulked out?

01:00:26
Speaker 3
Like, he could make himself larger, not like a monster, but, like, just really.

01:00:30
Addy
It's kind of a funny. Like that, and I'm just like, purple shorts.

01:00:37
Case
I don't necessarily know, like, what thing I would say is the best application, but I think the idea of limiting the force to only a certain set of abilities is kind of annoying unless you put limitations on the force beyond that. Like, I've seen things where it's like, oh, it's a technique to shoot lightning, but we never see that in the actual material. It's just like, oh, you got powerful enough. Lightning all of a sudden shoots from your fingertips, and you happen to be evil lightning shoots from your fingertips. It should be like, if you're going to have lightning, be a big thing and, like, a step that is, like, the logical step for them to get to. It's got to be like, oh, well, if you do this particular, if you're able to manipulate energy in this way.

01:01:17
Case
You've learned how to do this lightning thing. But it should be difficult if it's going to be.

01:01:23
Speaker 3
And there should be steps. There should be steps leading up to that you see. It shouldn't just be. And that's the one thing you, and.

01:01:28
Addy
We'Re seeing in the extended universe, and we've seen it before, and we're seeing it again now in rebels like, Ezra has the ability to interact with animals, right. You could have an Aquaman type of moment where, like, Yoda brings in some.

01:01:41
Case
Random animal to, in the cartoon clone wars where they used, like, forced bubble, like, I forget the name of the amphibious one with, like, the dreadlocks. Like, when he was underwater, he was, like, making bubbles with the force to, like, rip through stuffisto. Yes, that's it. Like, the thing is, if the force shouldn't be limited, maybe people are limited, and then I can understand if, like, oh, the force is limitless. If you are great with the force, you could do everything. But we are humans, and we are limited, and we don't know all the ways you can do it. So to do force lightning, it is really complicated.

01:02:16
Case
You have to know how to, like, remove all the protons from all of the atoms right in front of you with the force so that a lightning bolt strikes out or that you know, you properly shift the motion of the air so that all of a sudden, it becomes a little bit hotter one side and a little bit colder on the other, and that creates static electricity. Like, it has to be some. Like, if it's gonna be, like, there's only so many powers we know how to use, that limitation has to be on the people side, not on the.

01:02:40
Speaker 3
Force or not even, like, a limitation. It's just that, you know, like, certain people just have a talent and a yemenite certain area.

01:02:45
Addy
Yeah, well, the way that they specialize each lantern in a. In a different way, and they have their own flaw, like, how their character kind of plays into. Right into it.

01:02:55
Case
Yeah, I'm sorry. You're talking about the spectrum.

01:02:58
Addy
No, no, I was talking more about how, like, the difference, the way Jon Stewart thinks versus Hal Jordan.

01:03:04
Case
Oh, okay. That I'm okay with.

01:03:06
Addy
Yeah.

01:03:07
Case
You're not a fan of the spectrum of.

01:03:11
Addy
The Rainbocorn.

01:03:12
Case
It is another podcast, but mainly because it's too fanficy, and it kind of feels like the. A lot of ways. Like.

01:03:21
Addy
But, yeah, so, again, but I like the idea because when you come back to having the person be the limitation. Then you get back to character focused stories and what is opposed to just like, oh, this is a guy who's powerful and is able to do these things. And that's because I think there's always this thought that Jedi are so powerful that they can do anything and they shouldn't be easy to kill. But when you put it. When you put the limitation on and, all right, this is what they're capable of imagining. Or the moment that they lose focus, then, of course, you have much more. You have higher stakes, and you have actual character stories at that point.

01:03:56
Speaker 3
Right.

01:03:57
Case
Or maybe they're not that powerful.

01:03:59
Speaker 3
Well, what would be great is showing how powerful Anakin is by allowing him to do multiple things that we see Jedi struggling only to do one thing with.

01:04:09
Addy
Right.

01:04:09
Speaker 3
You know, like, where, like, you know, Ezra is able to communicate with animals, and so is able to, you know, throw lightning, and so is able to force push, you know, have Anakin able to do two, maybe three of these things, whereas, you know, Jedi traditionally are only able to do one, and only the most powerful have ever only been able to do two. Anakin can do three as a very young Jedi.

01:04:34
Addy
Right.

01:04:36
Case
Yeah.

01:04:36
Speaker 3
To kind of, like, you create that mythos around him and again, create jealousy within the Jedi ranks of this guy and also, you know, like, fear of him. You know, like, wow, maybe he. Maybe he really is the chosen one, and you can, you know, and then you can kind of get away from the whole Midi chlorian.

01:04:53
Case
I would have removed all references of the chosen one from the get go. I mean, like, yeah, I don't think it works very well.

01:05:02
Speaker 3
Like, it's to bring balance to the force.

01:05:05
Case
I like it.

01:05:06
Addy
Yeah, I think that works for me, because I think there's a hero competition that it gives Anakin and that it puts a certain burden on him so that it forces him down certain paths as well.

01:05:18
Speaker 3
Well, I don't think it forces him. I think it tricks him.

01:05:20
Addy
Yeah. Mentally, he feels this burden of being someone who is more special than those around him.

01:05:28
Case
I hear what you're saying. I've got three problems. One, they're never very clear what they're saying, and I understand that misinterpreting this prophecy can lead to some of that, but they kind of change what they say throughout the course of the series.

01:05:48
Addy
I think that's the nature of prophecy, though. If you go biblical standpoint, prophecy is, like, every week. Yeah.

01:05:56
Case
Your interpretation could change, and that is problem one.

01:06:01
Addy
But if you go back to Lucas's view on different religions. I think that lines up perfectly, like, this whole idea of this, like, who the Messiah is, in a way, if.

01:06:12
Speaker 3
You want to go right down what his purpose is.

01:06:14
Addy
Right.

01:06:15
Speaker 3
So there's an interesting belief, and just to get kind off topic of this, but there's an interesting belief that in a book that I'm reading right now, is that Jesus came not to fulfill a judaic idea prophecy, but to destroy it.

01:06:32
Addy
Right.

01:06:33
Speaker 3
And you could have the same. The same sort of misinterpretation of Anakin with, he's the chosen one, and he's coming to bring balance to the force. No, he's coming to destroy the Jedi and the Sith and kind of ruin it all.

01:06:45
Addy
But, yeah, but, yeah, sorry. Go ahead with your other problems.

01:06:49
Case
That was point one. Point two. It puts a lot of. Or projects a lot of things on to loot I that previously had not been there. The original Star wars movies did not have that element of, you are the destined person. It was a hero's journey. Certainly. It was a story of someone rising to a height that there was no one who had met that height in that current generation. Sure. But all of a sudden, when you put it. And again, this kind of gets into the problem of, oh, it all comes down to the Skywalker line. Like, it is frustrating to think that this casts a shadow on Luke to live up to these broader religious expectations for any sort of future media.

01:07:38
Case
If we're gonna have a talk about the Force Awakens now, it's hard not to picture Luke playing out part of this role of bringing balance to the force, and maybe now he's gonna shepherd in. He trained Ben solo to be the great evil, and now he's gonna train Rey to be the great good. And now they are in balance, and everything goes off in that direction. It puts a weird spin on what was previously a very simple story of boy finds the strength within himself to be a hero, finds out that he also has that strength due to his lineage to be the villain, and how he still makes sure that he's still the hero.

01:08:18
Addy
I think, though, the moment you decide to go into Anakin's story in the prequels, though, you've already put those bigger expectations on Luke. Even without the chosen one prophecy, it still becomes a matter of destiny. As far as well, his son is the only one who's powerful and who may be powerful enough to reach him in one way, whether it's through love or something else.

01:08:40
Case
Well, it's always going to be destiny, because were coming at it from the angle of seeing the future and then going backwards. But that doesn't mean it has to be destiny, that the past also informs the future. Like, it doesn't have to be going.

01:08:54
Speaker 3
Back to ring theory. Yeah, it does in the way Lucas has written these films and the.

01:09:00
Case
Way he's writing these, so that millennia past inform the informed the timeline of the prequels as well as 25 years in the future. Like, we're not talking about, like, thousands of years in the future. We're talking about, you know, only 20 ish years in the future.

01:09:16
Addy
Yeah, yeah.

01:09:16
Speaker 3
But I think. But I think that's sort of the cycle that. That Lucas wanted to create with this story. And you saw his attempts at it with the prequels of mirroring and echoing the same themes and ideas. Because I think he does view it as sort of a mobius strip of storytelling with this family of the rise and fall of people and how they're all intertwined.

01:09:44
Case
See, I don't think that lacking a prophecy about the matter invalidates that component. Like, I.

01:09:52
Speaker 3
It doesn't, but it does inform it.

01:09:55
Case
Especially if you're a spin on it.

01:09:57
Addy
Well, especially if you're continuing with sort of this system of dogmatic Jedi, you know, and this idea that it is very much a religion that's become defunct, you know, that's become so doctrinally focused, I think adding a prophecy may that.

01:10:12
Speaker 3
Gives it a little mysticism.

01:10:14
Addy
Yeah.

01:10:15
Case
Yeah. But this is my third thing, which is that it feels, and I don't care how well done it is, but it feels really lazy, and it makes the movies feel lazier than they necessarily need to be. And I, because I love Star wars as a whole, where it is this distillation of cool ideas about Sci-Fi all boiled together. And you take, you know, you take flash, gorgon and take King Arthur and you. And then all of a sudden, you've got a movie that ends with, like, someone blowing up a thing that looks like a moon but has a laser cannon. Like, that's crazy and weird. And you can keep all of these elements of, like, of mysticism and of, like, you know, like a great parent who fell horribly and stuff like that. But I.

01:11:06
Case
Despite the fact that they have the force and they have, you know, very active religious implications, the movie, like, the first three movies didn't have some of those things that were part of these legends that they are taking notes from. And so I don't feel that the introduction of those into the prequels made those movies stronger. And I think considering that we generally agree that the prequels are pretty bad movies. It sort of reinforces my view that it didn't make them stronger. The movies are fairly weak. King Arthur always had a story about, or like, was always going to be the once and future KiNG that will come again someday. And there's all these implications of that. And you could sure argue that, well, uther had a destiny related to that, but Luke doesn't like Luke.

01:11:55
Case
Luke's story is three movies long at the time that we. That were talking in terms of canon. And that story sure had echoes to previous movies, but kind of the bent of doing, like, a long time ago in a galaxy far away is that this is almost like, here's a version of the story that doesn't need to have some of the, like, the backstory of, like, christian myth and modern history tie into.

01:12:24
Speaker 3
I understand that. I get that.

01:12:26
Case
But I like it.

01:12:27
Speaker 3
To be honest with you, that was one of the things I was really kind of excited about with these prequels. And I agree with you. Those movies sucked, but I think it was because they didn't give us what any of that where it made sense. I think you're right. I think the chosen one prophecy is lazy, and I think it is kind of lazy is the best word for it, but I think it makes sense in the context of the Jedi, and I think it would.

01:12:54
Speaker 3
And kind of what you were talking about with, like, the Jedi being dogmatic and the Jedi kind of like getting off track and away from the mysticism of a religion because, you know, the things, and we see this in Christianity today, especially in America, of getting away from the mysticism and really holding on tightly to the dogmatism, the doctrinally, and the doctrines of it. And I think what really made that interesting is if we had seen the Jedi order being weakened by that, by getting away from these prophecies and this mysticism that's been, you know, and having maybe Yoda being part of that mystic tradition and being more of a mystic Jedi.

01:13:32
Sam
Right.

01:13:32
Speaker 3
And Mace Windu being the more dogmatic.

01:13:35
Case
The valley.

01:13:35
Speaker 3
Yeah. And then that's how you create.

01:13:38
Case
And then anakin's the instinct. Okay.

01:13:43
Speaker 3
All right, all right. Sorry.

01:13:45
Case
Editor had that in there.

01:13:47
Addy
But see where you're lining up?

01:13:48
Case
Because here's the thing, team.

01:13:50
Speaker 3
Read all the.

01:13:51
Case
The fact that it is a story that is not tied into our modern setting.

01:13:57
Speaker 3
Yes.

01:13:57
Addy
It allows it to escape.

01:13:58
Case
Yeah. Frees it from requiring that implication.

01:14:01
Speaker 3
It doesn't require it, but I think it makes it relatable. And I think it makes it cool. I think it does. I think if you take it too far away and you take it too far out of what we're familiar with and you take too many of those elements out of it, I think it ends up being like, just like really weird Sci-Fi and I think there was.

01:14:21
Addy
Always a familiarity to Star wars as well, as much as it is, you know, the pastiche of, like, other, you know, of other movies and but also, like, some really cool and weird out there stuff. I mean, there is, you know, obviously the, you know, the nazi imagery and, you know, the stormtroopers and all that fun stuff. And then, you know, painted on the backdrop of the cold war at the time. I mean, I think that all plays into it as well. So I think. I think with the prequels early two thousands, you're starting to deal with more disillusionment. Well, further disillusionment in government and institutions. At that point, I think it makes sense for what the prequels were trying to do. They're very poorly executed.

01:15:13
Case
So I had an interesting thought that I don't know if this really. I mean, we've totally moved away from making episode two better, but so here's an interesting thought that came to me while you're saying that. So one of the weird conversations to have about the original Star wars movies is the first one came out in the seventies, and then the next two came out in the eighties. And the sort of view of the world kind of shifts between those movies. Like, Star wars is a much more, I don't want to say hippie because it's the wrong decade, but, like, there's.

01:15:43
Speaker 3
Little more free fall. Yeah, disco to it.

01:15:46
Case
Yeah, exactly. And then, like, you get to the eighties and it's. You're starting to get into, like, the Cold War being much more omnipresent, whereas it was not quite so much during the seventies. Like, the seventies, it felt a little more distant. And that the big war that people were still thinking about was World War Two. And, like, the generation that grew up of the Cold War hadn't quite come into their own yet. Right. Episode one came out before 911. Episode two came out after it, but didn't really have the chance to be too impacted by it, but it still was. But there is a split there.

01:16:20
Case
And episode one has the feeling of the problem of the nineties, which was there was a thought that were at the end of history, that with no superpower to challenge America and to see this capitalist world come to fruition, it was thought that the only way we would fall was completely from the inside. And that's one to be true. Well, not completely, but that episode one is that story. It's about the government being twisted from the inside. And episode two goes back to having sort of an outside power. But that. So I wonder, like, I wonder if these movies are a little more, like, timely than we give them credit in that regard. Probably because essentially I think about, like, by the time we get to episode three, there's religious extremists and we're talking, we're putting that.

01:17:05
Case
And when we're having that, when we're having this talk about how to make the movie better, like, we can't help but put that element.

01:17:10
Addy
We are like, Osama bin Laden was already actively a terrorist well before 911.

01:17:14
Case
Yes, but he wasn't omnipresent in the american consciousness.

01:17:16
Speaker 3
No, no.

01:17:17
Addy
But I think for people who were paying attention to the problem, like the Middle east was a big deal. Like the peace talks in Israel were a major deal with Clinton. I think the middle. And you had the first Gulf war already in the early nineties. Like, the Middle east was a rising. Was. I mean, it was already an issue in this in the seventies, if you really go back to it in the Cold War.

01:17:41
Case
But again, it wasn't an omnipresent, like, shadow cast across people. The Cold War was a thing in the seventies, but it does not cast a shadow over the first Star wars the way it does Empire and Jedi.

01:17:52
Addy
Right. That's fair. That's fair. Yeah. Well, yeah, that's an interesting thought there.

01:17:59
Case
I don't know what my thesis is for that. When you said that, and I'm like.

01:18:03
Speaker 3
It'S obvious that is the case, that the times influence the story that is told and how it is story, if for no other reason, then we kind of see it through that lens. So it informs the decisions that were being shown, and we kind of see things differently based upon how we view it. So I think you're absolutely right. I think that we've got a lot here. I think we've done a lot of really good ways to fix this movie.

01:18:31
Addy
Yeah. Honestly, I do like that we kind of delved into the philosophy behind what motivates this movie. I think that's taking it to another level other than just plot. So I like that we came like we made this sort of deep cut into sort of the history of the time as well and how that reflects into the movie.

01:18:48
Case
And frankly, we knew this movie was going to be the most divisive in terms of ways to make it work properly.

01:18:54
Addy
Yeah.

01:18:54
Case
Because the second we get into our pitches for episode one, where we then have to pitch the whole trilogy, you're gonna give a pitch that, like, oh, that sounds really good. Your pitch. That sounds really good. Your pitch. That sounds really good. We're hamstrung, but we're not stuck. Yeah. Like, episode three, we're like, how to make it better. Here's all my ideas. Those work really well with my ideas.

01:19:14
Speaker 3
Your ideas, so many different directions you can go.

01:19:17
Case
You only have two and a half hours max that you can do to make it work. Meanwhile, here, we've got five ish hours.

01:19:25
Addy
Well, it was funny because when I was putting mine together, I was kind of, like, thinking, oh, okay, so my pitch for episode three still kind of maintains. True. So I was trying to tie it. Yeah, I was trying to tie it in sort of in a backwards way. So anyway, so we'd love to hear what ideas you have for episode two. Do you have. Do you hate our ideas? Do you like our ideas? Do you have some ideas of your own? What's your sort of. Of philosophy of the lens that we would look at episode two in the times? Different plot ideas, different character arcs. You can let us know again, just go to our website, certainpov.com. Dot. You can get in touch with us. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Twitch, email. All of that is on our website, certainpov.com.

01:20:08
Addy
And until next week, stay scruffy, my nerf herders.

01:20:12
Case
Thanks for listening to certain point of view.

01:20:14
Speaker 3
Don't miss an episode.

01:20:15
Case
Just subscribe, rate, and review the podcast on iTunes. Head over to certainpov.com. Hey. Oh, hey, Jeff. What's going on, guys? Oh, you know, talking about Superman. Oh, cool. I could talk about Superman. I could talk some more about Superman. We know. I'll bet a few people would want to get in on this. I'm down. You know it.

01:20:41
Addy
That sounds like fun.

01:20:42
Case
I'll do it. Cool. Let's do it. We can call the show Men of Steel, and you can find it@certainpov.com. Or wherever you get your podcasts. Yay. And we're back.

01:20:53
Sam
Yes, we are.

01:20:55
Case
So, Sam. Oh, memory lane. A time before you were part of this network.

01:21:02
Sam
Yeah. What did you think? Beautiful episode. Okay, so definitely. Absolutely. Feeling dooku, being good. Like, you all sold me on that. Like, I think you make him, like, the. The founding of a rebellion. You make him this separatist thing that. That lives in a gray area. I mean, I think that's the thing is that the original films are allowed to be, like, good and evil, black and white kind of thing. Right. But I think it's not. It would be nice in these films for there to have been more complication. And I think it kind of. It always kind of sort of was scratching at the surface of that, but it didn't commit to it. I think that. I think as I listen to these, I feel like that is a main issue with it. Right.

01:21:58
Sam
Like, they always want to be like, oh, there's twists and turns, but there's no actual twists and turns. Like, people are kind of exactly what you thought they were all along. And so I feel like, yes, I totally agree with what you guys said about him. I think that he should be living in that gray area, a separatist who is going to be part of the rebellion. You don't even have to. I know, like, all of you said, oh, let's, you know, just call them the rebellion. You don't even have to do it the whole time. You could call them the rebellion towards the end, you can have someone, you know, label them, like, oh, that's the start. Oh, shit, here comes the rebellion. Right? So I think, like, that's fine. I also agree with the yoda take. I don't.

01:22:47
Sam
Like, I don't think Yoda should have fought. I think he should have had crazy force abilities. And if there was a fight, I thought, actually, it might be interesting to have the fight be part of him being, you know, kicked off the council or removed from his place of power. Maybe even, like, a hostile takeover by mace Windu of the whole order. Kind of go to that other extreme where it's like, no, I'm doing what's right. I'm protecting the republic. I'm investing in this. This is war. Your way of just sitting back and waiting is not gonna happen. And having Yoda decide, like, having him decide he's not going to continue the fight, like, having him basically be close to winning, but then walking away, because it almost makes more sense as to why Yoda would be in hiding on some planet later on.

01:23:45
Sam
I guess they wouldn't like that, though, because then he would not be in the last movie.

01:23:50
Case
Well, this would be the start if you wanted to kind of have him carry through into the next movie. Movie. Yeah, were very harsh on mace in this one. I think we all were like. Because, like, you know, it's such a. It was such a weird throwaway, which is that Sam Jackson wanted a purple lightsaber. Like, he just, like, said, that as, like, one of his terms. And they. It also says badass motherfucker on it, apparently.

01:24:10
Sam
Amazing.

01:24:12
Case
And, you know, that was just the thing that he said he wanted going into this movie. And there's all this, like, backfill of canon that supports it as being like, oh, it is a balance of light and dark, which is why it's like a blue lightsaber and a red lightsaber together and all this and that. He's like a master of the. The most forbidden arts or the ones that touch on the dark side. And we really glommed onto that idea where it was like, all right, let's give Sam Jackson a more extreme part and actually kind of turn him into not exactly the villain, but certainly antagonist to the good guys in this situation.

01:24:46
Sam
Well, I think actually it's perfect because I think that there are people who truly believe that they are doing the right thing and that they're truly righteous. And I think that in Mace's mind, in this version of it, he is good. He is doing the right thing. He's not tampered by anything. He's just doing what needs to be done to continue the Republic the way that he believes it should be going. And I think sometimes the most compelling villain slash non villains are the kind of villains of, that really, truly believe in their cause and believe that it is the right thing and believe that they're good. And so I don't know if I necessarily paint him as a villain. I just paint him as aggressively on his own side.

01:25:41
Case
Yeah. Villain might be too harsh. Like I said, more of antagonist.

01:25:45
Sam
Right.

01:25:46
Case
I think that we all kind of took him as being almost like a general patenthood, like a real hawkish figure just so that we could have someone like that in the Jedi order, which we don't see in the. In the movies that were presented with, but we know it has to be there. Right.

01:25:59
Sam
Which, by the way, the. The person who could definitely pull that off is Sam Jackson. He's the person who could pull off this idea of a. Of a person who can seem calm and cool and collected on the outside and have a fire within him. And I think that's what you need to kind of pull that kind of antagonist off. You need to be able to very calmly be like, no, this is the right thing. Now let's go kill some kids. You know, like, just kind of. Just kind of deliver that, and Sam Jackson can give that to you because we've seen him do that kind of thing in other movies.

01:26:41
Sam
We've seen him be that person in other movies where he's comfortable, kind of living in that space that is not, like, truly good, but believes in a higher cause, and he's good at that kind of stuff. And I feel like in these movies, he's wasted. Like, yeah, he's got a cool purple lightsaber, and he sits around and he kind of nods, and I just feel like it's a waste of it. And if he were.

01:27:15
Sam
I really loved the idea of having, in this film, which is something I think you brought up, having Anakin and Obi Wan separate, and in that way, having Mace kind of, you know, have Anakin following Mace's order and kind of, like, finding kind of glory there, because I feel like the other thing is being greedy for acceptance and glory, and that kind of stuff can also lead you down the dark side path. So I feel like that was really good. I think that would be something that'd be interesting, because all of this time, he's kind of been in this fold where, like, Obi Wan is like, a brother and also a parent and a mentor and almost his entire world.

01:28:11
Sam
And so to have Obi Wan go off on another journey, and that journey could actually be set off by Yoda, like, asking him to go find Count Dooku, I don't know why he's been sent away, but that could be part of it. That could be, like, you need to seek out a. Because if the Jedi order continues to fracture the way that it is, things are going to get worse. So I need you to go to these separatists and go find out what's happening, because mace, on the other hand, is doing all sorts of crazy stuff. And I need you to help me, Obi Wan. Cause you're still rooted and kind of balanced. And so leaving the kid behind because he can't necessarily take him because it's a very secretive mission.

01:28:59
Sam
And then, you know, that's when Anakin finds glory like that, and that can lead him to kind of meeting Palpatine and meeting the counselor and like, oh, yes. Oh, you're so interesting. Oh, I'm interesting? Yeah. Hell, yeah, I'm interesting. Finally, someone who appreciates me. So I think that would be really, you know, really something that is way more interesting than what we saw in this film. How the love story fits in, though. And I know you guys kind of, like, it's very hard to fix. Okay. Like that. It's a very awkward part. And I know that you said in this episode, we've just jumped forward. They're already dating.

01:29:54
Case
Well, we spitball a few ideas. I suggested that as one way to handle it. Another one was have them already be familiar with working with each other and treat it like a Han and Leia situation.

01:30:03
Sam
Yeah.

01:30:04
Case
Which I come back to liking more and more. Like, there's no reason that, like, they have to have, like, not seen each other for years. You know, he could just. He could have just grown up around her and maybe, you know, that's why there's, like, friction. Maybe she always treats him like her kid brother and that bothers him, but he's also, like, super into her.

01:30:23
Sam
Yeah. And all of that always bothers me, you know, how I feel about this relationship and the first movie, so.

01:30:29
Case
Oh, yeah. Again, Jake Lloyd. Like, God bless. I realize he went through some shit for it, but, like, casting a boy who was too young for the part in a part that was awkwardly written to begin with, and then all of it's just poorly written is bad, sucked, and, like, there's gonna be a mark against the character forever because of that.

01:30:50
Sam
Yeah. So I think, like, last time we talked, we kind of. You touched on, I don't know if it made it into the episode or not, but we touched on the fact that, like, part of the thing of the love story in this particular film is that he's the one who's truly pursuing her. Like, he's pretty aggressively hitting on Amidala, and you said that it would have been more interesting, and I feel like this is true. It would have been more interesting if she was kind of more into him. The only problem I have with it is because the first movie's casting, it feels creepy. It feels like grooming to me, and I don't like that. So I feel the only way to really fix it is to have them remit. Have them bump heads. Like, have.

01:31:52
Sam
Because you have to erase childhood Anakin from her brain. She's got to re meet him as an adult. Like, she's got it, like, because if not, then it's just. I mean, it's still quite kind of creepy no matter what, but it's extra creepy if she watched him grow up. So I feel like they have to remeat, but it's okay for them to remeat on a mission and bump heads on the mission and then have some sort of, like, I don't know. You're gonna have to use a romance trope of them being in danger and saving each other and finding care. I don't know how this fits into everything, but probably where he finds glory under.

01:32:37
Addy
Wait, wait.

01:32:37
Case
I got it. I got it.

01:32:38
Sam
Okay. You do.

01:32:38
Case
Enemies to lovers.

01:32:40
Sam
Yes, it's enemies to lovers.

01:32:41
Case
Yes, we do. An enemies to lovers where she does not want a war situation, and he is hawkish because he's being influenced by Mace Windu, and that's why they're button heads. And then she gets kidnapped and he rescues her or something to that effect. So some situation brings them together.

01:32:59
Sam
I'm sure there's a cave somewhere. Someone's got a fever. I'm not sure which one. And then they realize they care for each other from all of their banter, and then we're good. And secret wedding can still happen at the end. Once he's found glory. Once. Once the emperor has kind of. He won't tell the emperor still, like, because he's. He's learning to lie to everyone. But he will, He will feel emboldened to do something behind the Jedi orders back because of the ego push that he's gotten from mace and also. Especially from Palpatine. And that's how I would fix that. And I would. It would be minimal love scenes. You know, it would just. It would be where it counts. You know, also the lines would better, and it would be where it counts.

01:33:56
Case
Yeah. One of the challenges here is also just being, like, were just saying, oh, just have a better script. Like, just. Just write better dialogue.

01:34:03
Sam
Yes. Just.

01:34:04
Case
Which is a true part of taking another pass at a script, but it's difficult to do on a podcast.

01:34:10
Sam
Exactly. Like, we're not here to write. Rewrite entire scenes. Like, that's not going to happen. But I do think, in general, that structure, by allowing the movie to be, at its core, more political, just within the Jedi world, you know, not even mirroring anything else, but allowing this gray area of the formation of the rebels, which is the separatists, allowing the Jedi order to become corrupted in this or show corruption in this movie. So that you really see the breakdown of what's happening. And kind of a split. Right. Is a split of a church. These are some people who have this power, and they're leaving. And then there's. There's, like, these people who are staying and becoming zealots. They're becoming very fanatical under Mace.

01:35:07
Sam
And you've got a leader like Yoda who was more calm and more pacifist, being completely booted and kicked out, and you've got Obi Wan and his padawan in the middle of it, being ripped apart. Their relationship, you can see the cracks in this version that I see in my head that is pieced together from all the debates you just had, you can see the cracks begin in their relationship and start forming. Because while Obi Wan is following this old path, which is Yoda's path, no one in the Jedi order is following that path anymore. Right. They're either joining the separatists and leaving the order altogether, or they're becoming fanatical about supporting the Republic and everything that it means to be a Jedi and doubling down on all of the rules.

01:36:03
Sam
And so you have Anakin doubling down, but then as he doubles down, he's also being corrupted and seduced by the dark side with his ambition. And then you have Obi Wan still following Yoda, but ultimately, honestly, like, exiling himself along with Yoda because there is no place for him anymore. Like, even in the last movie, even though he's still on the fringes, there would be no place for him, really within the order anymore. And that would be something that he would deal with, which would be really interesting in the last movie because he wouldn't realize that to the last movie that the Jedi order is dead. And. But this is. This is when it starts dying. This movie would be the. The first, you know, stab in the heart. And the last movie would be the rattle.

01:36:58
Sam
Like, just the last rattle of the Jedi order. Just dumb. And I think that would be really interesting. That would take this to really, like, because everything you said in the middle, it can totally be fun, right? You've got the big battle. You've got Anakin saving Amidala. You've got mace. You've got him being a hero. You know, kind of like how Luke is here. You can have. You can have a medal ceremony. Fuck, let's give Anakin a medal. Like, let's do a whole ceremony in the middle of the movie. Let's have Amidala put it on his neck. Neck. You know, like, let's have, like, all of that happen. Like, them. They like, wow, you're amazing. You know, like, you. You did this. You saved things. They can even save Naboo. Like, you know, I don't. Listen, I'm not getting rid of the Gungans.

01:37:48
Sam
I know that they're kind of minstrel y, and I don't appreciate that, but, you know, they exist in this world, and I'm not here to hate on Jar ever. I feel bad about Jar. We'll get into that when we talk about the first movie.

01:38:01
Case
Yeah. And the gunkins. You can do some fun stuff with, like, you know, not toot, my unhorned but slippery Jim is, like, my main NPC character in Scruffy Nerf herders, and he is a smuggler gungan, who is just great to have, like, a badass pirate but be a gungan.

01:38:15
Sam
Exactly.

01:38:16
Case
And it works, Zachary.

01:38:17
Sam
See, and that's. That's all that matters, you know? And. And so I feel like. I feel like you could have done, like, a great thing there. You could have had, like, an entire, you know, thing. I. You know what? I'm. I'm gonna put Jar. I know people hate him. I'm gonna put Jar back in this movie, just a cameo. He's somewhat. He is Queen Amidala's assistant now. He takes notes and he files things.

01:38:44
Case
He's our bag man.

01:38:45
Sam
Yeah. He's grown up, and he knows how to do stuff now. He is a personal assistant, and he's wonderful at it.

01:38:53
Case
Yeah. If, like, he had no lines, he just, like, brought coffee or tea. Every scene, like, every time they, like, sat down to do anything, he, like, drops down to, like, the little tray.

01:39:02
Sam
And it would be amazing. You'd be like, look, he's redeemed, okay? He's not as clumsy, and he'd be like, hi. And then he'd leave, and that'd be it. And you'd. And he would be absolutely redeemed. So, yeah, that is my. Another pass. I'm going to stick Jar binks back in this movie.

01:39:25
Case
One thing you said about Anakin losing his arm the way that he does in the movie made me think about how they rewrote the loss of Aquaman's hand in Justice League unlimited, where instead of it being in a fight, they made a decision to have him actually cut off his own hand as a way of freeing himself so he could save his son. And I was thinking about how, oh, that actually could have been kind of cool if Anakin took a wound specifically in the service of protecting Amidala. Yeah. It was something that he. He stepped in the way of, or he lost it because he had to cut it off. Like, what if he got off his own arm?

01:40:04
Sam
Yeah.

01:40:04
Case
And the contrast there is that this is a moment where an act of good was part of this eventual fall of him becoming less and less human, you know, becoming more machine than man. It's good intentions at the beginning for him, in contrast with Luke, where it is actually, well, for one thing, it's his own father doing the cutting, and it is a part of battle, and it is a little bit more of random chance. Like, he doesn't need to glom on to the reasons why he did it. You know, Luke, it just. It just happened while he was. It sucked, but. And, you know, there's a lot of terrible shit that happened in that fight, but, like, losing the hand ultimately was the least, like, mentally shattering for him. Like, it just. It was a war wound.

01:40:42
Case
Like, you know, he's got a fake hand. By the end of the movie, it's. It's fine. But for Anakin, it should be one where he actually almost, like, feels like, I took this wound for you. I. Like, I'm. I am less of the man than I used to because of the things here. It must have meant something. It must have been for something, you know, really, like, emphasize some, like, element of, like, PTSD in pushing him along this path where he has to, like, really try to be like, no, I can't have made a mistake. I lost my arm for this. It can't have been a mistake.

01:41:13
Sam
Yeah.

01:41:14
Case
Like, I love you. I love the Republic. I did all this stuff for all of us. I sacrificed so much. You can't tell me to just throw it all away because sidious is behind. You know, you can't tell me to throw it away because Palpatine's behind the whole thing.

01:41:29
Sam
Right, exactly. And I think. I think that would be amazing, too. I almost said swoon, but also, like. Like, when you're like. And then he cut off his arm to save her, and I was like, oh, swoon. I was like, wait, not really. Please, please never mutilate yourself for your partner.

01:41:45
Case
But there are scenes in the movie that we got where that could have worked. Like, he could have done it to get free when they're in the pit. And, like, man, I don't think we talk about the pit in the actual episode. No, but, man, that's an episode where it was, like, clearly, lucas had seen Gladiator, like, a year earlier and was like, oh, man, this is really good. We should put this in my movie.

01:42:05
Sam
Yeah, yeah. Clearly he. This. It was definitely a gladiator vibe kind of thing. I think also, like, for this particular film, I feel like. Or for this particular series, I feel Lucas, like, did a lot of, like, borrowing from the Bible and borrowing from, like, tropes in that way. And so I feel like early christians were often thrown into gladiator pits, and I feel like there's a lot of stuff that he's trying to do with this prophecy of the one and with having amidala seem just so pure all of the time. You know, like, just, like. Yes, she fights, but, like, she's just. She's good. She tries to resist his advances. She tries to, like. Which. All of that drives me nuts. Cause she's older than him and. Which we know, which is creepy, but she's older than him. She's more experienced than him.

01:42:58
Case
Again, it's only supposed to be, like, two to four years.

01:43:01
Sam
Yes, I know, but she's older than him. She's more experienced than him. She's an actual politician. She has been running her country since she was a teenager. Like, this is not a person who should be shy or kind of ignorant of the way that things work at all. And I have very many problems with her character and her lack thereof of development and kind of shallow empowerment that is kind of sort of thrust upon her, you know? Because in this. In this movie, she kind of gets to fight. She kind of gets in on the action, but, like, it. I don't know. It just doesn't matter because she doesn't have the agency that she should have. She's not the badass that they want her to be. Like, they paint her as a badass, but she's not actually a badass. And I.

01:44:04
Sam
And I feel bad. I don't know. I feel like Natalee Portman has enough moxie, but they just paint her. She's just a doll. She's just. The way they write her is. She's a very pure, wonderful, lovely doll that Anakin can love. Cause she's just so pure and lovely.

01:44:24
Case
Yeah. Unfortunately, these movies were too much in the phase of, like, lightsabers kind of dominating pop culture. Like, this is right around the time people realized that they could do their own lightsabers in videos that they made. So, like, fan films were becoming huge for that kind of stuff.

01:44:39
Sam
That's true.

01:44:40
Case
It was just so dominating. And there's so many fucking lightsabers in all of these things.

01:44:45
Sam
Yeah, so many. It's lots and lots of jousting.

01:44:50
Case
But the downside of this, that means that, like, most of the major characters who are good combatants are lightsaber people. Like, there's no, like. Yeah, she uses a gun a little bit, but, like, all the. All the action scenes we care about are lightsaber fights or people with lightsabers defending themselves from people with guns.

01:45:07
Sam
I mean, but here's the thing. Like, I would have just taken her being, like, actually being a badass senator. And I know that this means that they would have to actually work on this script. Yes. But, like, the truth is that there's more than one way to be brave and to be capable. And I think that, like, the first set of movies does that very well with Leia. And I think that the last set of movies, even though they are flawed, does a good job doing that with characters that do not have the force. These movies did not do that. And especially for Natalie Portman's character, like, especially for Queen Amidala, she literally is just, she's just a mother. She's just the vessel that will one day carry the twins. And it always bothered me. It still bothers me. Clearly.

01:46:06
Sam
I've seen this movie once, and I am having very deep fear about this. It just, it has always bothered me. And I feel like if the script was written in a way where it was enemies to lover, where they meet again, and she is staunchly anti war, like, there's gotta be a way. Like, cause in the first movie, she is definitely, like, you know, she wants to have discourse, right? She's always saying, like, no, we need. We need to talk this out. No, we're gonna go. We're gonna talk this out with the Federation. So she still staunchly believes in discourse. We can still have her believe that. We can still have them argue about it, and we can still have her. You know, maybe after he cuts off his hand to save her from whatever it is. She's the one who bandages him.

01:46:54
Sam
She's the one that takes care of him overnight. She's the one that supplies the medicine that's still badassery. That is still capability. But she's nothing, not really portrayed as terribly capable. Like, yes, she has a gun, and strategically, a mid drift appears at some point, and she's got a different outfit and she's running around and she's being active, but she's being active a lot of the time without substance because the script doesn't give her substance. And then really she's just there for the romance. Romance. And that always pissed me the fuck off.

01:47:34
Case
Yeah. I feel like with a movie that opens with people trying to assassinate her, they should really, like, have her be important to the later parts of the plot in this episode.

01:47:42
Sam
Yeah.

01:47:43
Case
And it kind of isn't.

01:47:45
Sam
Yeah.

01:47:46
Case
You know, I feel like if the movie opened in media res and we got, like, a cool action beat off the bat as opposed to, like, the ship blows up kind of thing, which is, like, kind of boring. Like, it sure, it's an explosion. You know, it's an assassination, yada, yada. But it's not any of the main characters and all it does is be like, oh, someone's out to kill you. And then, man, all of the assassination attempt scenes in this movie are not particularly good or exciting and kind of don't make sense.

01:48:12
Sam
Yeah.

01:48:12
Case
And again, man, I wish there was a scene we talk about. What if this was already in the Clone wars? Because it could have just spilled over from the conflict with the separatists in the first movie or, like, with the trade Federation, or it could be building up, you know, even further and it's about to explode.

01:48:27
Sam
Like.

01:48:27
Case
Like, there's. There's battles all the time as, like, different groups are, like, really frustrated. But, you know, this movie, choosing to end the movie with, like, the, we're gonna open the Clone wars as it is. You know, the major political figures outside of Palpatine don't really have a hand to play in why it happens. And then we don't see a lot about why these people want to leave the Republic.

01:48:52
Sam
Yeah.

01:48:52
Case
You know, they don't have, like, a listed, you know, set of grievances.

01:48:56
Sam
There's no protest at all. I mean, come on.

01:48:59
Case
Right, right. Like, there's no. There's no thing that's, like, driving them forward. There's no. There's no. There's nothing about it where it's like, oh, the Republic is preventing us from our way of life or it's limiting us. It's, you know, protecting our enemies. You know, whatever reason none of that is here, which is kind of a bummer, it would have been nice to have an influential political figure, who's one of your main characters, who could sort of explore those themes.

01:49:24
Sam
Yeah. And again, I get it. The assassination attempt is the lazy writing way. And I'm sorry, I feel so guilty saying this because I know people worked on it, but it's a lazy writing script to make sure that these two characters get to hang out with each other. Right. It's the excuse that happened so that Anakin, a Jedi, has to be assigned to be with her to protect her, which, again, we don't know why she's that important because they don't really expand, unlike what it is that Naboo's holding on to, like, at least fully. I think the biggest problem, and we're touching on it right now, is that this movie is trying to be political without getting into politics.

01:50:12
Case
Right.

01:50:12
Sam
It's trying not like it's trying its best to be as political as possible without giving political reasons. Because, guys, political reasons are things that affect people. When people say, I don't talk politics because I just talk to people. Politics affect people. That's why politics is important.

01:50:35
Case
Yeah. It's of the polis, right?

01:50:36
Sam
It's of the polis. The population of the people. Like, it affects the people 100%. It may not affect you, but it definitely affects someone. So here's the thing. We don't know what the stakes are for the rest of this universe. We don't know, really. There's, like, whisperings here or there about stuff, but we don't see what's happening underneath all of these other things. Like. Like, you know, what you know is the federation skimming off the top. Are people starving because of it? Are they creating these clones? Like, are they stealing people to create the clones? Like, are they stealing DNA? Like, I know, like, the Django Fett thing, but, like, let's say that, like, there's, like, an actual, like, human trade trafficking thing going on, or, like, a alien trade trafficking going on.

01:51:31
Sam
That cloning has become, like, a really big business, that it's illegal, that people are being kidnapped because of it. I don't know. The stakes just have to be higher. There has to be real reasons. And why her specifically, what it is about her and her voice that is so threatening to the people who want this to continue or want, you know, whatever status quo in the universe or fascism to rise in the universe to continue? What is she doing specifically, instead of just hiding on a planet, what is she doing specifically that is basically making her good trouble? How is she John Lewis of this universe?

01:52:19
Case
Or alternatively, how is she preventing or how is she being prevented from interfering in plans? Like, in this? We've got the whole, like, Jar gives the speech to, like, give emergency powers to palpatine, and the argument is that they wanted Amidala away so that he could be manipulated. But it seems like. Well, I mean, he could have manipulated anyone else. He's the chancellor. Like, sure, Naboo is where he's from originally, but he could manipulate anyone. He manipulated Amidala in the first one.

01:52:47
Sam
Yeah.

01:52:47
Case
You know, like, I don't see that. Like, it has to be jar Binks to do it. I enjoy that. It's Jar Binks that does it. But that's its own thing. Like, I feel like Amidala has to have, like, an objective of her own, and that's actually me saying that part out loud is the thing that's kind of frustrating. She's not, like, working towards a cause within the republic. She's not trying. She's not trying to make the peace talks work. Like, she's not involved with any of those things. She's just like, oh, she's a little bit too crafty, and I can't manipulate her anymore because she's 18 now instead of 14. Back in the day, when I could talk to her and make her think that this was a good idea. Yeah, like, that. That's sort of it right there.

01:53:26
Sam
Like, yeah, you've got, like, it's. And this is, like, an overall, like, this is not just the problem with Amidala. Like, this is the problem with the film overall. You don't really, they never flesh out the separatists, so they don't really talk about the issues with the Jedi order. They wait for a supplementary. And you know how I feel about that. Like, I just feel like if people are going to spend money to see things in a movie, you can expand on it, but it should be, it should be touched on in this movie. This movie should begin the schism. This movie should show you the corruption within the Jedi order. This movie should show you them kind of just breaking apart and breaking down. And that way in the final film, when the Jedi order can do nothing to stop the tides.

01:54:26
Sam
You know why? You know why? Because they've, you've already seen the beginning of them not being able to even be together as one team. Right? A house divided cannot stand. Well, this house gets divided, and it should be in this movie. And that should be pronounced. That should be like, something that happens in this second movie. This movie should have gotten terrible reviews for being too dark and political. That's what this movie should have gotten. Be like, why did they do this? It's so. Why is it, why are politics in my Sci-Fi that's what should have happened for this film.

01:55:11
Case
Yeah. Yeah. So let's move on from the main cast, which we talked to death about in the episode. What did you think about some of the ways that were playing with the clones? Parts of things. I propose, what if it was two different types of cloning texts, but both were using cloning as their solution to be at war, or clones versus Mandalorians as a whole, rather than like, all the clones are clones of Jango Fett, but be like, oh, we actually have the Mandalorian. Them, this ancient enemy of almost the Federation. Them, this ancient enemy of the republic coming and actually being the catalyst for the war. And then the Republic defends itself by rapidly cloning things.

01:55:56
Case
And this could, you know, I referenced the Thrawn trilogy, where they actually do clone Jedi, which could have been kind of cool, but even if you're not doing that and you're just cloning soldiers, you know, it, like, the having them be rapid and weird and kind of broken could have all been really cool things. And I know that. Like, look, I love the bad batch. I love the stuff that I've seen from Clone Wars. I finally started watching it so I can actually talk about some of that now. Like, it's cool stuff that they've done in this universe, but, like, you know.

01:56:23
Sam
Yeah.

01:56:23
Case
Like, if you're going to call it the Clone wars, the clones should have been kind of freaky as opposed to just like, oh, you fought in the war with all the soldiers in the white armor that are still out there. Like, it's just different people under that white armor.

01:56:37
Sam
Yeah.

01:56:38
Case
Have something that makes the clone part stand out to everyone.

01:56:42
Sam
I agree. I agree on a lot of the things you guys said. Honestly, it would have been super fun to have Mandalorian come in, I think, and just spice things up. Like, honestly, I really wanted a real, like, chaotic war in this film, I think because, you know, when I was younger and before these movies came out, I guess I was younger when these movies actually came out. But when I was younger, before these movies came out, you know, I read a lot of the novelizations and comics and stuff like that, and the Clone wars were very interesting and there were a lot of different takes from a lot of different writers about things that, you know, could have happened. And I think that they missed out on a lot of opportunities.

01:57:33
Sam
Kind of just making a small adjustment to basically the uniform and deciding to clone Django Fett and over and over again. I mean, like, what makes his material so superior that would be the only soldier you want? I don't know if they fully ever explained that. Again, didn't want to rewatch this movie. So I do think that it would be really interesting. I also think it'd be kind of interesting to have, like, competing teams, you know, like, yeah, bring the trade federation back in, maybe have, like, two people making different kinds of clones. You can still keep the Django Fett clones then, and then have a different set of clones, upgraded clones, you know, like, make this an actual war of clones, maybe. Yeah, maybe actually get the Jedi's creating clone Jedi's to fill out their ranks to fight the clones.

01:58:39
Sam
Like, make it so that everyone is playing with this thing that may or may not go against nature. Like, I don't know, I feel like they didn't play enough with that part of it. And you're right. It's the clone wars. So let's make sure that the clones look like clones and not just stormtroopers with the different helmet.

01:59:05
Case
Yeah, yeah. Like, have the clone part matter in conversation about it.

01:59:09
Sam
Yeah, yeah. Have clone lives matter or not matter, you know, I mean, like, I think. I think, because here's the thing. I think that there would be a certain amount of people who would think that clones are unnatural and, like that. That's a pretty fair thing for someone in any universe to be like, wait, but that didn't come from another being. I feel like that's not okay, because we definitely have that reflected in our own universe. There are definitely people that every time a goat gets cloned or, like, look at what they're doing, you know, and Jurassic park is like, kind of like a we can, but should we kind of question. So I think that it would be fair to bring that into this universe. And maybe that's one of the things that Amidala is against. She's.

02:00:08
Sam
She is standing up against people creating the clones. I, again, there just needs to be, like a real. There needs to better stakes, more than just. More than just Anakin turning to the dark side. Side. Because I feel like we are affected by the environments we grow up in. And honestly, this could be, you could add another layer of being. Like, this is interesting to kind of examine nature versus nurture, right. But the thing is that within Anakin, there has always been the ability to be either light or dark, always. Right. And that's true of all peoples and beings and all people with the force, right. Because you have to fight against going to the dark side. And going to the dark side is easy. So, you know, if you give into your anger and your hate, you're on the dark side.

02:01:07
Sam
So here's the thing. What are the circumstances other than he was found so late? And other than attachments, there are circumstances that should lead up to it, because that's not a guaranteed he's going to be evil no matter what. That's just things that are counting against him. Right. That he didn't learn to get rid of attachments earlier on. But the circumstances, which will take him to a place when he has already lived in a world where he's got an OB, one next to him who's nurturing him as much as possible, you have to have things like actual circumstances that happen to push him. And the best way for a person to be pushed is in unprecedented times, is in times, especially if they have.

02:01:58
Case
A tragic flaw, which, like, easily could have been presented as having, like. As a former slave, having, like, some sort of issue with, like, giving up any sort of rights or, like, autonomy could have been a thing where it's like, yes, this is very good for you to want that of people, but maybe it goes too far. Maybe a scenario where he does not, like having the clones be subjugated the way they are, and that could be a driving force for him. You know, it's a lot of stuff that they just never really, like, thought about. Like, they never deal with the, like, anakin having a tragic flaw, you know, some kind of Hamartia, like, some kind of scenario where, you know, it's. It's a valorous point that is pushed too far.

02:02:33
Sam
Right. They rely so heavily on the prophecy and the fact that they've told you the prophecy that they don't give you any. Any other mechanics to get him from point a to point z where he needs to be by the end of the trilogy.

02:02:47
Speaker 3
Yep.

02:02:48
Sam
Yep.

02:02:49
Case
Point Vader. For Vader.

02:02:53
Sam
For Vader.

02:02:55
Case
I'm going to cut that because that's terrible.

02:02:58
Sam
No, it's a mad dad joke. No, I don't want you to cut it now. I want you to leave it in and admit that it was terrible and show everyone your fatal flaw dad puns.

02:03:16
Case
Anyway. Yeah. So, you know, this episode went off the rails, and it's hard for us not to kind of just, like, spiral out because we wanted this to be so much better.

02:03:25
Sam
I know. But here's the thing. Star wars will always be fun. And I think if you like this movie, and you've heard me say all of this stuff, I'm sorry, because I think it's okay for you to like what you like, and I think that is, you know, fine. It's fine for you to enjoy this movie. I still think it's a pile of trash, but you like it, and that's valid.

02:03:53
Case
Yeah. Well, on that note, we probably are just gonna, like, talk in circles because we could do a full episode.

02:04:00
Sam
Oh, yeah.

02:04:01
Case
Addie and Ben have said that they're always down to come back if we ever want to do, like, the. The prequel trilogy again, because there are so many takes you can have for it. You know, like, since this movie came out, we've, you know, at this point, Force Awakens had come out when this. When this. When this episode initially dropped, but we hadn't seen any of anything after that.

02:04:19
Sam
Right?

02:04:20
Case
So, like, as much as I dislike rise of Skywalker, I think it has one of the best uses of force powers in that, like, fight that they have between them, like, in different places in the universe.

02:04:32
Sam
Yeah.

02:04:33
Case
And I thought that was a really cool force thing that, like, would be cool for Yoda, for example. But they, you know, the thing we talk about in this where it's like, yeah, they just have lightning and force push, and that's. That seems to be it. Force powers. Like, all that creativity is not there, and it's not all on Jordan. Like, George by himself can only come up with so much. The problem is that they didn't have more people in the room for all these writing sessions.

02:04:57
Sam
Yeah.

02:04:58
Case
And you end up with a. With three movies that kind of feel paint by numbers in the wrong ways. And the. The ambitious stuff, it doesn't get the nuance it deserves to make it work effectively, you know?

02:05:10
Sam
Yeah.

02:05:10
Case
Next time, we're going to be talking about Phantom Menace, which I maintain has the best ideas of the trilogy. It just was the worst executed of them in terms of actually making it compelling. I think that between the two, I go back and forth on which is worse, between Phantom menace and attack of the clones. Attack of the clones, I think, has more of the stuff that we came here for just not done very well. And Phantom Menace is trying to do some really cool stuff along with some very exact Star wars stuff, and also doesn't do it very well. But both have concepts that could have been really cool, but Phantom menace had better concepts that could have been cool.

02:05:53
Case
And attacking the clones doesn't get enough done so that by the time you get to revenge of the Sith, it's got to blitz through just to be like, okay, now we're at the status quo. Let's get there. But, yeah. So I feel like we're good talking about this, unless you've got something big.

02:06:15
Sam
Phantom Menace has some really fun things. Did it set up a trilogy of disaster? Yes. Are there definitely flaws in it that could be fixed? Yes. Is the pod race too long? Absolutely.

02:06:29
Case
That's fair. That's fair. It also has the really kick ass lightsaber fight at the end. Phantom Menace is more fun.

02:06:36
Sam
We will talk about that next time.

02:06:41
Case
Yes, we will. Because we are going to continue this trip into the prequels to another pass, the first three episodes that eventually led to our spin off. So we'll have more conversation then, and we'll be able to kind of look at the three episodes in total and be like, did we miss anything? Would this be cool? We'll find out next time. But in the meantime, Sam, do you have anything you want to plug?

02:07:04
Sam
I do not. Not at all. Listen to another pass and listen to any of the great shows on our network because I've been really enjoying some of them and. Yeah, go check all them out.

02:07:16
Case
Yeah, we've got a ton of great shows. We've been adding new ones regularly. Books that burn came on the network recently. As of us recording this, I was on, they do like a game night with authors and so forth that they have connections with. And I was invited to participate recently, and that was really cool on their Twitch channel. But they do a great show talking about how authors inflict trauma on characters in the books. So that's really cool. And if you like books, we've got so many other good shows. We also have judging book covers and circle of friendship, you know, just for the more literate people out there, that we've got tons of Star wars conversations going on and all the plenty of our other shows. We've got tons of video games conversations.

02:07:54
Case
For example, reignite just finished their run through the first three games in the Mass Effect trilogy. And that's incredible. And I can't wait to see what Andromeda is like since that. I haven't played yet, and I'm probably gonna have to play it. Cause I do the episode art and I need to know what the hell I'm doing when I do the episode art for that show.

02:08:12
Sam
You're like, I kinda need to take care of that, huh?

02:08:16
Case
Yeah. Yeah. That actually is how I got into Mass Effect in the first place, because I was doing their episode art and about four episodes, and I was like, well, shit, I'm running out of speed on this one. I probably need to know what I'm doing because I, I can't. And we'll see if that happens, they will probably drive me to playing Andromeda, which I've heard mix things about. Some people really like it. We'll find out. That's not this show. This show is another pass. You can find more episodes of this show@certainpov.com at certainpov.com dot. You can also find a link to our discord. We are having this call on Discord right now, but there are tons of great conversations on Discord all the time. It's sorted in a way that actually a person coming in blind could follow what's going on.

02:09:04
Case
We've got a movie section, we've got a tv section, we've got a comic section, we've got a book section. We've got a video game section. It's great. You actually can tell what we're talking about and then jump in and join many of the great conversations.

02:09:18
Sam
Absolutely. It'll be so much fun. Come join. Join us.

02:09:22
Case
Yeah. So please do. If you don't feel like doing the discord thing, you can find another pass on Twitter anotherpass. You can find me on Twitteraceakin. Sam, can they find you anywhere?

02:09:34
Sam
No, I'm a figment of Case's imagination. But you can find me on the discord. Cause I exist in that realm, right?

02:09:43
Case
Solely as a red force ghost.

02:09:46
Sam
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's the only way to be. And, you know, if I used my evil for good, it wouldn't be evil, so.

02:09:54
Case
Exactly. So next time we will be talking about the phantom menace. We'll be looking at that original episode, and then after that, we will be back to our usual format. So we got phantom menace coming up next. And then after that, sam, what can people expect from another pass?

02:10:09
Sam
On the next episode of another pass, we'll be talking about Highlander two, the quickening. But until then, if you enjoyed this, pass it on.

02:10:23
Case
Thanks for listening to certain point of views.

02:10:26
Addy
Another pass podcast. Don't miss an episode.

02:10:29
Case
Just subscribe and review the show on iTunes. Just go to certainpov.com. Yeah, so before we get into it, this episode will have less for me to cut out since there's, like, almost no prattle at the beginning. It's just like, yeah, we're in it.

02:10:59
Sam
We're. Let's do the episode 1000%. I feel like this episode. I feel like last episode, the three of you were able to come up with, like, a more cohesive possibility, and this episode was, like, chaos.

02:11:25
Case
Nostalgia is one of the strongest forces in the human psyche and is responsible for the continued existence of some of our favorite fandoms. From the minds behind the Dole up in Dreams podcast and isolation cast voices from quarantine, Saturday morning confidential takes you on a deep dive into the properties that helped influence the artists and creators of today. So whether you are a goonie, a gym girl, a digi, destined, or you just want to return to Oz, new episodes release on Fridays bi weekly starting January 1 of 2021. And join us on the Wednesdays after the main show for the serial killer radio Hour, where we sit down with the people responsible for the toys, shows, and fandoms that you love. Now you can find Saturday morning confidential@certainpov.com, smcPod or on your favorite podcast platforms.

02:12:21
Case
So don't forget to tune in for another deep dive into the files of Saturday morning Confidential CPOV certainpov.com.