What if STAR WARS: EPISODE III Was Good? Like, REALLY Good?


That’s the question which Belated Media has posed to us once again, as he finally wraps up his three-year rewrite of the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy.

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Three years ago he managed to rework The Phantom Menace into something which actually sounded kinda good (take a look – which also involves looking back at UTF’s early days which were, quite frankly, embarrassing). That was a big hit, and a year later he was back with a revamped version of Attack of the Clones. Again, it made a lot more sense than the final product and would have been a pretty decent movie. However, he hit a couple of roadblocks in developing his ideas for Revenge of the Sith and it stalled, leaving approximately 0.003% of the world’s population in agony.

Fortunately, he shifted into gear quickly enough to get the 23-minute-long video out just before The Force Awakens (it was released in some European countries today) and it’s worth the wait. Check it out!!

I find it incredibly interesting how passionate fans have gotten in regard to writing the Prequels – I mean, this video series spans three years and around 45 minutes of content. It emphasises the fact that none of us want to celebrate their awfulness. Quite the opposite, actually. We want them to be great, and I think what these videos capture perfectly is if you just re-arrange some certain events and add a scene here and there you get something which is much stronger.

Case-in-point: rather than have it as the opening of the movie, Anakin and Obi-Wan’s rescue of Palpatine happens later on after he’s denied a seat on the Jedi Council. As we know, that happens much later in the actual Revenge of the Sith, but by linking them together it gives the story a lot more narrative cohesion as Anakin now has a clear motivation in the battle and it begins to mean so much more, rather than a simple action scene to get everyone pumped.

There are a few points I disagree with him on. Right at the beginning he states that the Luke/Leia reveal and Anakin becoming Darth Vader should be withheld from the movie in order to keep the surprises for the Original Trilogy if a person were to watch them in chronological order. However, he’s missing the fact that if you do watch them in chronological order then Luke and Leia being twins and Vader being their dad aren’t big twists, and it becomes more about the continuing story of these characters which began above Naboo. Plus, pretty much everyone knows those twists by now anyway. If you watch them in release order, though, then the excitement of the twists is maintained and the Prequels are just filling in the blanks – which is what they were for years and years.

But hey, his “what if?” was pretty good, so it’s alright.

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