My Star Wars

Episode I: The Phantom Menace

Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi arrives at the planet Naboo to help settle a dispute with the Trade Federation that has resulted in a blockade of the planet.  Darth Sideous, concerned that the Jedi will interfere in his plans, orders the Federation representative to have him killed, and to step up the invasion plans.  Obi-Wan escapes capture and, unable to get to his own ship, commandeers a Federation craft and heads to the surface.  He gets shot down when he breaks formation and attempts to reach the capital city ahead of the invading army.

While avoiding the troops sent to finish him off, he is pulled to safety by a boy in his mid-teens.  The boy leads him to a camouflaged entrance.  He soon realizes that he's inside a small cargo ship.  The boy introduces himself as Anakin Skywalker, pilot of the vessel, and to the captain and owner of the ship.  The captain explains that they are cargo carriers who operate on the fringe of the law and they have been trapped here by the blockade.  Anakin opines that he can fly them past the blockade, but the captain had thus far refused to risk it.  Obi-Wan enlists their aid in getting to the capital to protect the Queen.

Anakin pilots the ship stealthily from its hiding place and into what appears to be a small lake.  However, it is surprisingly deep and leads into underwater caverns that eventually lead to the capital.  It does not, of course, lead through the middle of the planet because that is just awesomely stupid.  One thing seen along the way, however, is the hidden, underwater city of the Gungans.  The captain explains that they are fierce warriors that talk in perfectly sensible English and have perfectly sensible weapons.  They are amphibian and don't like to associate with the Naboo.

The more time he spends around Anakin, the more he realizes that he is stronger with the force than anyone he's ever met, possibly even Yoda, his old teacher.  Had he been born in the Republic he would already be on his way to being a powerful Jedi, but at his age, training as a true Jedi would be out of the question.

They get to the capital, rescue Queen Padme Amidala Naberrie from Trade Federation forces and get her and her escorts back to the cargo ship.  By Anakin's expert piloting, they escape past the blockade, sustaining damage in the attempt.  Anakin suggests setting down for repairs on his nearby home planet of Tatooine.  When it is determined that expensive parts are needed to complete repairs, Anakin uses his local contacts to get the parts as inexpensively as he can without drawing undue attention to them.  Anakin, Obi-Wan and the Queen (disguised as one of her handmaidens, and actually using that handmaiden's name, not her own -- How stupid are these people?) travel to Mos Eisley to buy said parts.

Meanwhile, Darth Maul, apprentice to Darth Sideous, tracks the escaped Queen and her entourage to Tatooine.

Due to a lack of appropriate currency and the fact that needed parts are worth more than can be gained in trade for the ship's cargo, Anakin agrees to race a speeder craft on behalf of the parts dealer to win the rest of the price.  Despite cheating by fellow competitors, Anakin wins, they repair the ship.  Anakin and the Queen seem to get on quite well together.

Just before they can get underway, Obi-Wan is set upon by Darth Maul.  They fight each other to a standstill while Anakin does some fancy flying to allow Obi-Wan to escape to the safety of the cargo ship, and they are off to Coruscant.

On Coruscant, Senator Palpatine uses a transparent ploy to oust the current Supreme Chancellor and take his place by convincing the Queen to call for a non-confidence vote.  Meanwhile, Obi-Wan reports his run in with Darth Maul to the Jedi council who are notably alarmed by the apparent return of the Sith.  Obi-Wan also mentions Anakin and how strong he is with the force, and how he'd make a powerful ally were he young enough to properly train.  Yoda reminds him that, although he could learn how control the force, he's too old to properly learn how to control himself.  As powerful an ally he would be as a Jedi, he'd be at least as powerful an adversary as a Sith Lord.

After the vote, and with the knowledge that Palpatine is a candidate for the position of Supreme Chancellor, the Queen decides she can best serve her people from Naboo and decides to return there.  Obi-Wan and Anakin agreed to escort her back.  The cargo ship captain is reluctant, but decides the best thing to do would be to join them.  When they get there, the capital ships that formed the blockade are gone, but the droid control ship which governs the invading droid armies remains.  It is observed that they'll need an army to liberate the planet and Naboo doesn't really have one.  The captain has the idea of traveling to the Gungan city and asking for help, so they sneak past the droid control ship, enter the lake and enter the hidden underwater city.  Forcefields create pocket of air surrounding the city and oxygen extractors make the air breathable.

At first the Gungans do not appear friendly or interested in helping, even though they share the same planet, and they only gave them an audience in the first place because of the good trading relationship they have with the captain.  They believe the Naboo to be arrogant and they act as though they are superior to the Gungans.  To prove this assumption false, the Queen, who was again disguised as one of the handmaidens, comes forward to reveal the ruse and kneels before the Gungan leader.  The rest of her party follow suit.  The leader is convinced that they are genuine and agree to help.

While the Queen's party attempts to release her pilots, so they can go after the droid ship, and also attack the castle, the Gungans will engage the droid armies, using sensible weapons.  They decide to leave their energy balls lobbed by slings and catapults at home.  They fight the droids largely to a standstill.  The pilots are freed and escape in their ships to attack the droid control ship.  Anakin joins them.

On their way to the throne room, the rest are confronted by Darth Maul.  Obi-Wan engages him in a light-saber duel.  As they fight their way around the palace, the Queen and her group enter the palace and engage in a running battle with Federation guards.  The Gungans begin to lose ground to the droids.  Anakin and the pilots are having no success against the shields of the droid control ship until Anakin realizes that he can follow one of the refueling Federation fighters into their landing bay.  From there he blasts their power supply and flies out before the whole ship explodes.  The droids on the planet all come to a halt.

The Queen lets herself get captured and brought to the throne room.  One of her handmaidens, disguised as the Queen then makes an appearance, confusing the Federation guards into thinking they captured the wrong one.  This distraction allows the Queen to get to a weapon hidden in the throne and get the drop, so to speak, on the Federation leaders.  With a gun to their heads, they order a surrender.

Obi-Wan and Darth Maul begin battling into the area of the throne room.  Although they are pretty much at a standstill, Darth Maul realizes the day is lost.  At the first opportunity, he uses the force to push one of the handmaidens out the window.  Obi-Wan is forced to jump out the window after her.  Using the force he is able to slow her descent and increase his own so that he is able to grab her by the wrist with one hand and some convenient out-cropping with the other so as to stop them from falling to their deaths.  Darth Maul, in the meantime, has escaped.

Palpatine shows up to announce his success at becoming Supreme Chancellor, along with Yoda who discusses with Obi-Wan the return of the Sith and, considering how heroic he is, the idea of Anakin becoming a Jedi.  Yoda makes sure to reiterate the danger, especially if Obi-Wan takes it upon himself to train him, instead of Yoda doing it himself.

The end of the movie finds the Naboo, Gungans and other assorted guests celebrating their victory over the Federation.

Episode II: The Attack of the Clones

Ten years has passed since the war on Naboo and many things have changed in the Republic.  Padme, having completed her term as Queen, has become the Naboo representative in the senate.  Anakin Skywalker left the cargo/smuggler life behind to become a pilot for the Republic.  Ostensibly his job is to fly Obi-Wan about, but in reality he has become somewhat of an apprentice Jedi, despite the council's wishes, and without their knowledge.

Although burned once by Darth Sideous and Darth Maul in the war over Naboo, the Trade Federation has agreed to go along with plans to sabotage the Republic by inciting a separatist movement.  The cost for going along with this is the death of the former Queen of Naboo, Padme Amidala Naberrie.  For his part, Darth Sideous, as his alter ego Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, has secretly constructed an army of clones based on bounty hunter Jango Fett and is looking to construct a situation where the Republic will grant him power to use this army against the paper tiger threat posed by the separatists who are also under his control.

Sideous uses Jango Fett to hire an assassin to get rid of Amidala.  Her first try results in one of Amidala's decoys getting blown up on the landing platform upon her arrival at Coruscant.  It is assumed that she is a target because she is the leader of the opposition to the idea of creating an army to fight the separatists.  The Jedi agree to have Obi-Wan protect her, and he brings Anakin along.  There's immediately a sexual tension between Amidala and Anakin.

Another attempt is made on Amidala's life, this time by a remote unit slipping something deadly into her bedchamber.  Hoping it will lead him back to the assassin, Obi-Wan leaps through the window and grabs the remote.  Anakin gets a speeder and follows him.  When Obi-Wan gets to the assassin, she shoots at him, forcing him to drop, but Anakin scoops him up in the speeder and they continue following her.  They eventually force her down, realize she's a shape-shifter, and just as she's about to reveal who hired her, Jango Fett kills her and gets away.

The Obi-Wan decides to track down Jango (obviously they don't know who it is yet) and leave Amidala in Anakin's care.  They decide to use some old contacts from his cargo running days to hitch a ride to Naboo and hide out there.  The more time they spend together, the more they fall in love.  Obi-Wan, meanwhile, has tracked down the source of the weapon Jango used to kill the assassin, and determines it is a planet that has been conveniently removed from archive records.  He decides to travel there to find out why, and hopefully to find Jango.

Obi-Wan, as a Jedi, is assumed by the local inhabitants, who are cloners by trade, to have come to collect the clone army that has been produced at the behest of one of their number.  Apparently, though, that Jedi is now deceased.  Obi-Wan is shown around and even gets to meet the bounty hunter, Jango Fett, who was cloned to produce the army.  He also meets Jango's clone son, Boba.  Obi-Wan begins to suspect that Jango may have been the one on Coruscant who hired and then killed the assassin.  Jango reveals that he was hired, as clone source, by someone named Maul, and not by the dead Jedi that supposedly requested the clones in the first place.

As he is leaving, Obi-Wan is attacked by Jango.  With the help of Boba, Jango is able to get away, but not before Obi-Wan plants a tracking device to follow them.  He does so and ends up at Genosia.  After a battle through the planet's rings, Obi-Wan follows Jango down to the planet and finds Darth Maul meeting with members of the Trade Federation and other guilds.  The leader of the Trade Federation insists that Amidala be killed before he puts forth his full support.

Obi-Wan returns to his ship to send a message to the Jedi Council, but his equipment was slightly damaged in the fight and can't get through to Coruscant.  He can however get a message to Anakin on Naboo and tells him to simply relay the message and continue guarding Amidala.  However, as he is completing the message, Obi-Wan is captured.

After Anakin has relayed the message, Amidala insists on going to rescue Obi-Wan, which Anakin resists but since she's going, he has to follow.  They get to Genosia, find Obi-Wan's ship, and try to track him down, but they get noticed by the planet's denizens and try to fight their way through the droid factory but are eventually captured.  Obi-Wan, Amidala and Anakin are to be put to death in an arena before the Genosian people with the separatist delegates and Darth Maul as spectators.  They are chained to pillars and monstrous creatures are set upon them.

The creatures don't have an easy job of it, though, as Amidala is able to pick the lock on her chains and climb atop her pillar. The other two, using their fighting skills and the force, are able to fend off their creatures, too.  When the fight starts going really badly for the creature, droids are sent in to even up the odds.

As Darth Maul is waiting on the deaths of the trio in the ring, Mace Windu shows up behind him.  As they begin to fight, a large number of Jedi reveal themselves in the crowd and jump into the arena to join the fray.  As soon as Mace appears to be getting the advantage on Maul, Maul uses the force to trip up Amidala, making her easy prey for the creature that is stalking her.  Mace is forced to leap to her defense, thus letting Maul get away.

During the course of the ensuing fight, Jango Fett is be-headed by Mace Windu.  The creatures that were originally to kill the trio are slaughtered.  However, superior numbers on the side of the droids starts to take their toll and the Jedi are surrounded.  Just in the nick of time, the clone army (storm-troopers) arrive, lead by Yoda, and turn the tide in the battle.  The delegates and Darth Maul begin to scramble to get off planet as things start going against them.

In their troop carrier, Obi-Wan and Anakin see Maul escaping and decide to pursue.  When they are fired on, Amidala and some storm-troopers are knocked out of the carrier.  Anakin initially wants to go back for her, but is convinced that catching Maul is more important.  He decides to take over as pilot so as to coax just that extra bit of speed out of the carrier.

They catch up to Maul as he is preparing his starship to leave.  Anakin charges straight in, blaster firing, but Maul deflects it and then uses the force to sweep Anakin aside, knocking the wind out of him and temporarily stunning him.  Obi-Wan takes up the fight.  He is successful for a while, but Maul is able to knock the light-saber from his opponent's hand, although it fortuitously slides right to a recovering Anakin.  Before Maul can dispatch his weaponless foe, Anakin leaps into the fray and takes on Maul for awhile.  Anakin's natural skill with the force only takes him so far before Maul's superior experience turns the tide, to limb severing results.

Enter Yoda.  Using the force to sustain his body instead of his staff, Yoda and Maul first engage in a tug of war using the force and heavy objects.  Next, it is down to a light-saber duel.  When Yoda is getting the better of Maul, Maul again uses the force to push heavy objects around, this time not targeted at Yoda, but at Obi-Wan and Anakin.  While Yoda is busy deflecting them, Maul takes the opportunity to escape.

Although the battle is won on Genosia, it is obviously the beginning of a war with the separatists, AKA the Clone War.  From seeing him in battle against Darth Maul, Yoda can see that Obi-Wan has been training Anakin, despite being told not to.  Yoda is disappointed, if not surprised.  The council has no choice but to try to make Anakin into a Jedi and hope that sufficient discipline can be instilled in him that he will be able to control the power he wields.  Although, if things go badly, Obi-Wan will be the one who has to live with the knowledge that it was his own arrogance that lead there.

His lost hand replaced with a robotic one, Anakin returns to Naboo with Amidala and marries her, despite that fact emotional attachments such as this would be forbidden by the Jedi order.

Episode III: The Fall of the Jedi -- Or Whatever George Comes Up With

In the waning days of the Clone War, the separatist droid armies are being overrun by the clone armies of the Republic.  Darth Maul and the separatist leaders have gone into hiding.  However there are growing reports of the clone armies freeing systems from the separatists only to occupy the systems themselves, instead of returning rule to the the civil governments.

Obi-Wan and Anakin receive intelligence that indicates where the separatist leaders have holed up and go in the capture them in an effort the bring the war to a conclusion.  Anakin has grown strong, confident and arrogant since his completed training.   Anakin's marriage to Amidala is a happy one and unbeknownst to him, he is about to become a father to twins.  When he sees Darth Maul, he goes after him alone, leaving Obi-Wan to complete their original mission.

Anakin and Darth Maul fight a pitched battle all over the complex.  Anakin looks like he is on the losing end, but it is a ploy to use Maul's overconfidence against him.  He gets Maul talking and discovers the true plan was to help his master, Darth Sideous, seize power in the Republic.  When Maul comes in for the death blow, Anakin quickly dispatches him, since he was not in the desperate straits that he'd lead Maul to believe.

Obi-Wan easily captures the rest of the separatist leaders and without their leadership, the droid armies fall to the clone armies.  With the Clone War over, Palpatine is expected to lay down the emergency powers he was granted, but he does nothing of the sort.  Indeed he turns his clone armies on the peaceful systems of the Republic and proclaims himself Emperor.

Anakin pieces together that Palpatine and Sideous are one in the same and, believing himself nearly invincible after his defeat of the great Darth Maul, decides to confront the Emperor alone.  They fight and Anakin appears to be winning, but he has no idea how powerful his adversary truly is. 

Having struck the light-saber from the hand of his opponent, Anakin gloats over his easy victory over so powerful a Sith Lord.  Palpatine then shows him how wrong he is about the situation by absolutely ravaging the foolish Jedi's body with the power of the dark side of the force.  Palpatine is pretty much searing Anakin to death with energy from the force spewing from his fingertips.  On the verge of death, Anakin begs for mercy, which is granted, provided Anakin agrees to replace Darth Maul as his apprentice.  Anakin is all too happy to fulfill any promise to avoid ever experiencing such pain again.

Anakin's body having been shattered and burned by Palpatine's onslaught, much of it must be replaced with cybernetics, and he must be sealed within his new black armour to protect what remains of his original body.  Twisted to the dark side, the good, yet arrogant man that was Anakin, is destroyed in favour of the cruel and heartless Sith Lord that is Darth Vader.

Amidala contacts Obi-Wan when she can't get a hold of Anakin to tell him the good news.  Obi-Wan is the only Jedi that they trusted with the secret of their marriage.  He doesn't want to leave Amidala on her own while he searches for Anakin, so he leaves her with his trusted friend, Bael Organa.

Emperor Palpatine orders the destruction of the Jedi order.  Vader uses his knowledge of his former allies to track them down, and he, young bounty hunter Boba Fett and legions of storm-troopers begin the annihilation of their members.  Due to overwhelming numbers, most of the younger Jedi are easily dispatched.  Last surviving group include Mace Windu, Yoda and Obi-Wan.  Darth Vader confronts Mace Windu in a light-saber duel.  Mace fights him to a standstill, but in retribution for his father's death, Boba Fett is able to kill Mace while he is distracted with Vader.

By this time, Obi-Wan has learned of the destruction of the Jedi and that it was at the hands of his former friend.  He is able to track Vader down and they battle one on one.  Vader decides not to bring the storm-troopers or Boba Fett with him because he believes he can defeat his former mentor easily on his own, and wants to prove that he is the superior fighter.  Despite Vader's strength with the force, Obi-Wan is able to outwit the less experienced Vader.  Although he cannot destroy him in battle, Obi-Wan is able to force him into an active volcano.  Vader is trapped, but Obi-Wan can't get to him to finish him off.  The storm-troopers, who were monitoring the situation without interfering, intercede, forcing Obi-Wan to escape.

Being the last two of their order to survive, Obi-Wan and Yoda decide to go into hiding, Yoda on Dagoba and Obi-Wan with Amidala at Bael Organa's.  Once the twins are born, Obi-Wan decides it is best to split them up as a precaution, even though Vader is unaware that they exist.  He leaves Amidala and her daughter, Leia, with Bael Organa, who helps raise Leia as though she were his own daughter.  He takes the boy, Luke, to be raised by Anakin's step-brother Owen Lars, on Tatooine.  Obi-Wan decides to stay on Tatooine as well and live as a hermit.

The Republic falls fully under the tyranny of the Empire as lead by Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader.

The Whys and Wherefores of My Star Wars

The purpose of this is to take the existing opening trilogy Star Wars stories and rewrite them for two reasons.  Firstly, to make the storyline dovetail better with the second trilogy, and secondly to remove unnecessary and irritating characters.  I have written out Qui-Gon Ginn, Jar Jar Binks, C3P0, R2D2 and Darth Tyrannus. 

Also, I started Anakin Skywalker out at the same age as Queen Amidala so that they can have a more realistic relationship and so that there will be no need for fast forward aging on his behalf between the first and second movie.  I started him out as a more Han Soloesque character because that's a dynamic that the opening trilogy lacked, and could easily have used.  I also got rid of his whiny bitch routine and replaced it with him being noble, but arrogant.  His turn to the dark side should be due to fear of the Emperor and inability to handle it because of his lack of training.  It should not be due to a character flaw beyond the arrogance of going after the Emperor by himself.  Remember the familiar refrain of "You do not know the power of the dark side."  There's a reason he told Luke that.  It was a warning.  Ultimately, this change makes Anakin's apotheosis a lot more palatable.

In the second trilogy, Obi-Wan talks about foolishly thinking he could train Anakin on his own.  There's nothing about inheriting the responsibility from some other guy.  Also, he claims Yoda as his teacher, again not someone else.  Qui-Gon doesn't need to be there and all he did in the first movie is steal screen time away from Obi-Wan.

Jar Jar Binks just has no place in this story.  His character is ill-conceived and silly.  His presence is a plot contrivance for two points in the story (one in each movie), but not a necessary one.  There are other ways to move the story along.

In Episode IV: A New Hope, Obi-Wan doesn't remember owning any droids.  More importantly he doesn't recognize either of the two droids that he's in the room with, despite encountering them before.  I can understand wiping the droids' memories before resale or such, but there's no explanation of his lack of memory.  It's the same with Owen Lars.  C3P0 worked for his father, but he didn't recognize them when they met again.  They don't advance the plot in any way and stand in the way of continuity, so they have to go.

There are two reasons for the absence of Darth Tyrannus.  First, lightning bolts from the fingers.  I wanted Anakin's first experience with this to be getting fried alive by Palpatine.  Anakin wouldn't have charged in there alone if he thought anything like that could have happened to him. That way, when he goes through it, he goes through it alone and his cowardice allows him to give in to the dark side rather than let himself die.  When Luke goes through the same thing, his father is there to help.  This helps Luke have the strength to resist long enough to ask his father for that help.  Luke stands up to the torment and risks death rather than turn and Anakin finally realizes it is time for him to stand up to the Emperor who has kept him enslaved with fear all these years.  To keep this parallel, Tyrannus has to go.

The other reason for getting rid of Tyrannus is to keep Darth Maul around.  This guy is supposed to be the most fearsome fighter on the dark side, but he's defeated by Obi-Wan before he's even a full fledged Jedi.