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krpalmerEven before encountering the very ambiguous news that some of Mystery Science Theater 3000's writers would be recording an MST3K-like commentary track for The Phantom Menace (the danger that they would start from the casual assumption that the movie has no redeeming features and let this sap the humour with bad feelings seemed all too real to me), I had decided to follow up watching Revenge of the Sith with reading a MSTing I once contributed to of a fake outline for "Star Wars Episode III: Fall of the Republic." Completing that just may be more important than before. Is this comparison the most unfair one ever made? Perhaps, but I'm doing it anyway. Why? Because I can.
In my first formative forays into the Star Wars Usenet newsgroup, I noticed an FAQ for the "new movies," which in passing dismissed an outline for "Fall of the Republic" by "John L. Flynn" as nothing more than speculation. The two names did appear every once in a while afterwards, though, and my interest was piqued just a little... so that when someone announced that he was organising a group MSTing of "Fall of the Republic" and some further speculation by Flynn on all three prequels, I volunteered my rookie talents. I was interested in seeing the outline at long last... but also intent on contributing some "riffs" to the whole that wouldn't springboard off to beat up on TPM in passing.
This aim led to a small experiment in which I wrote opening scenes for the MSTing, in which the Satellite of Love crew was convinced they were going to be shown "Star Wars Episode I," but were happy and enthusiastic to have the opportunity to "riff" on it, even dressing up as characters from TPM. (Of course, even if they weren't in an angry and disappointed mood at the film, they were still intending to make fun of it...) The point of the opening would be that instead of seeing a movie more visually rich than the usual bargain-basement cinema they're subjected to, they would be tricked and stuck with some uninspiring outlines. While I was writing that, though, the MSTing's editor had decided to set the work in April of 1999. This may have blunted the worst dangers, but did add notes of apprehension every so often. In looking back, too, there still seems to be a certain amount of cynicism in some of the riffs about the hypothetical outline being for a "kid's film."
As for the outline itself... it's pretty obvious that it makes no effort to build on the two hypothetical films preceding it: exactly, of course, as if it had been whipped up by someone just contemplating the events that might immediately precede the fall of the Republic. It starts with the Anakin-Obi-Wan duel, that long-anticipated event everyone at Lucasfilm was trying to make match close to three decades of speculation, what the whole narrative arc of the new movies was bending towards... and it starts (after an opening crawl set against "several moons, a planet, and a bright-colored nebulae," prompting the comment from Mike, "George is going all out for this opening crawl,") on the volcanic world of "Sigma Vulcanus" (which inspires a Star Trek comment). Anakin finds the Kiber Crystal on Palpatine's suggestion using his lightsabre as a dowsing rod, which fills him "with a false sense of power and importance," ("And luscious French pastry cream!"), only to have Obi-Wan show up and demand an explanation. A fight breaks out, but ends when "a cataclysmic earthquake rocks the planet"; a fissure cracks open and Anakin falls in. Obi-Wan assumes he's dead and leaves, stopping on Dagobah to lament this to Yoda (who's already on the planet. This is the only place where he shows up in the outline; of course, given that it was dated "September 6, 1983," Flynn wouldn't have known much else to do with the puppet Yoda...)
In the meantime, mysterious cloaked figures have pulled Anakin from the fissure and taken him to the Sith monastery conveniently located on Sigma Vulcanus, where he's rebuilt into Darth Vader and given a full course of training in the Dark Side, during which he builds fragments of the Kiber Crystal into his new lightsabre. Palpatine finally shows up and convinces Vader that his wife has been killed by the Jedi; Vader chops up the crystal ball he was shown this in with his lightsabre, and his journey to the Dark Side is complete.
"Lady Arcadia Skywalker," though, is not dead. She's on the city-world of "Jhantor" ("Isaac Asimov's lawyers are on line three,") attempting to flee chaos of Palpatine's making that doesn't seem to have bothered anyone else in any other scene. When she's captured, though, it's up to Obi-Wan, Artoo, and "Captain Antilles," the captain of a "saucer-shaped freighter" that's never actually named (with a "ten-year old, Correllian cabin boy" who's also never actually named) to go and rescue her. The end result seems to be to produce more closeness between Arcadia and Obi-Wan (who embrace twice) than between husband and wife.
There is the occasional resonance with how Episode III actually turned out, though. To give Darth Vader backup wiping out the Jedi, the Emperor hires Boba Fett, who's described at one point as having a "battle-scarred face." I'll admit that I tried for some humour at the thought of Fett actually having his helmet off, and yet it could be said we did just about see him that way in the new movies... Fett, of course, has backup of his own in the montage extermination scene, which prompts a reference to the Godfather from the riffers, which reminded me of George Lucas's own comments in the Revenge of the Sith commentary. It so happens that enough Jedi gather for a last stand, described very briefly; Obi-Wan manages to be late for it to be left as the last of the Jedi.
More ambiguously, after giving birth (in the hold of the "saucer-shaped freighter," with Captain Antilles and Threepio assisting), Arcadia survives to help raise Leia just as everyone thought she would. The very last scene of the outline does happen to be Obi-Wan delivering Luke to Owen, though (who's still Obi-Wan's brother, mind you).
While I do look back on some of the riffs I contributed to the MSTing and think "I could have done better," on the whole I do still enjoy how things turned out. Even so, the outline has combined with some other AU fanfics I've seen over the years to move me from idle speculation about how things could have been different to being pretty well satisfied with the actual movies.
In my first formative forays into the Star Wars Usenet newsgroup, I noticed an FAQ for the "new movies," which in passing dismissed an outline for "Fall of the Republic" by "John L. Flynn" as nothing more than speculation. The two names did appear every once in a while afterwards, though, and my interest was piqued just a little... so that when someone announced that he was organising a group MSTing of "Fall of the Republic" and some further speculation by Flynn on all three prequels, I volunteered my rookie talents. I was interested in seeing the outline at long last... but also intent on contributing some "riffs" to the whole that wouldn't springboard off to beat up on TPM in passing.
This aim led to a small experiment in which I wrote opening scenes for the MSTing, in which the Satellite of Love crew was convinced they were going to be shown "Star Wars Episode I," but were happy and enthusiastic to have the opportunity to "riff" on it, even dressing up as characters from TPM. (Of course, even if they weren't in an angry and disappointed mood at the film, they were still intending to make fun of it...) The point of the opening would be that instead of seeing a movie more visually rich than the usual bargain-basement cinema they're subjected to, they would be tricked and stuck with some uninspiring outlines. While I was writing that, though, the MSTing's editor had decided to set the work in April of 1999. This may have blunted the worst dangers, but did add notes of apprehension every so often. In looking back, too, there still seems to be a certain amount of cynicism in some of the riffs about the hypothetical outline being for a "kid's film."
As for the outline itself... it's pretty obvious that it makes no effort to build on the two hypothetical films preceding it: exactly, of course, as if it had been whipped up by someone just contemplating the events that might immediately precede the fall of the Republic. It starts with the Anakin-Obi-Wan duel, that long-anticipated event everyone at Lucasfilm was trying to make match close to three decades of speculation, what the whole narrative arc of the new movies was bending towards... and it starts (after an opening crawl set against "several moons, a planet, and a bright-colored nebulae," prompting the comment from Mike, "George is going all out for this opening crawl,") on the volcanic world of "Sigma Vulcanus" (which inspires a Star Trek comment). Anakin finds the Kiber Crystal on Palpatine's suggestion using his lightsabre as a dowsing rod, which fills him "with a false sense of power and importance," ("And luscious French pastry cream!"), only to have Obi-Wan show up and demand an explanation. A fight breaks out, but ends when "a cataclysmic earthquake rocks the planet"; a fissure cracks open and Anakin falls in. Obi-Wan assumes he's dead and leaves, stopping on Dagobah to lament this to Yoda (who's already on the planet. This is the only place where he shows up in the outline; of course, given that it was dated "September 6, 1983," Flynn wouldn't have known much else to do with the puppet Yoda...)
In the meantime, mysterious cloaked figures have pulled Anakin from the fissure and taken him to the Sith monastery conveniently located on Sigma Vulcanus, where he's rebuilt into Darth Vader and given a full course of training in the Dark Side, during which he builds fragments of the Kiber Crystal into his new lightsabre. Palpatine finally shows up and convinces Vader that his wife has been killed by the Jedi; Vader chops up the crystal ball he was shown this in with his lightsabre, and his journey to the Dark Side is complete.
"Lady Arcadia Skywalker," though, is not dead. She's on the city-world of "Jhantor" ("Isaac Asimov's lawyers are on line three,") attempting to flee chaos of Palpatine's making that doesn't seem to have bothered anyone else in any other scene. When she's captured, though, it's up to Obi-Wan, Artoo, and "Captain Antilles," the captain of a "saucer-shaped freighter" that's never actually named (with a "ten-year old, Correllian cabin boy" who's also never actually named) to go and rescue her. The end result seems to be to produce more closeness between Arcadia and Obi-Wan (who embrace twice) than between husband and wife.
There is the occasional resonance with how Episode III actually turned out, though. To give Darth Vader backup wiping out the Jedi, the Emperor hires Boba Fett, who's described at one point as having a "battle-scarred face." I'll admit that I tried for some humour at the thought of Fett actually having his helmet off, and yet it could be said we did just about see him that way in the new movies... Fett, of course, has backup of his own in the montage extermination scene, which prompts a reference to the Godfather from the riffers, which reminded me of George Lucas's own comments in the Revenge of the Sith commentary. It so happens that enough Jedi gather for a last stand, described very briefly; Obi-Wan manages to be late for it to be left as the last of the Jedi.
More ambiguously, after giving birth (in the hold of the "saucer-shaped freighter," with Captain Antilles and Threepio assisting), Arcadia survives to help raise Leia just as everyone thought she would. The very last scene of the outline does happen to be Obi-Wan delivering Luke to Owen, though (who's still Obi-Wan's brother, mind you).
While I do look back on some of the riffs I contributed to the MSTing and think "I could have done better," on the whole I do still enjoy how things turned out. Even so, the outline has combined with some other AU fanfics I've seen over the years to move me from idle speculation about how things could have been different to being pretty well satisfied with the actual movies.
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Date: 2006-11-03 02:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-03 10:57 pm (UTC)One other assumption that I might have shared with John L. Flynn was to draw on the novelisation and think that Anakin wouldn't have known his wife was pregnant at all. (From time to time, I wonder why those who make such a big deal about how Owen was once to have been Obi-Wan's brother don't seem to bring that point up.) I even thought right after Attack of the Clones that Anakin and Padme wouldn't see each other at all during Episode III... not as a reaction to Hayden and Natalie's performance together, of course!