The Star Wars Prequels Will Be Fixed, Lucasfilm Has A Plan
The Star Wars prequels are going to get some fixing in later shows and movies with an effort to make those stories more part of the canon
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For as many twists and turns the franchise has taken over its many decades, the Star Wars prequels do present something of a stain on the old resume for George Lucas and friends. Some of it was the heavy weight of expectation that came with the films. It was decades after the originals and detailed the story that would shape almost all of that original set of movies. But some of the problems stemmed from the director/ writer himself making a mess of varying plotlines. He added in elements of the world that weren’t present at all when Luke and company first came on the scene. Now we have word that the franchise will try to make sense of some looser plot holes from the prequels by reworking some stories in their upcoming Star Wars shows and movies. This will be an effort to make sure these films have a place in the overall canon.
These latest rumors don’t point to a rewriting of the Star Wars prequels by any means, that would be a bridge too far. No one appears interested in wiping them off the map for good. Instead it looks like future Star Wars projects will instead either try to lend clarity to those stories and characters or deal with some things that were left hanging. They haven’t specified exactly what those loose story ends will be mind you, but rather the process has begun to maybe make a little more sense out of the *first* three movies.
The Star Wars prequels had a variety of problems from the time they hit play on the set of movies. There were midi-chlorians, Jar-Jar Binx’s, trade regulation disputes, diplomacy and other nonsense that appeared out of nowhere without doing any service to the actual story. In the end, they were at least able to move the set pieces into place to have A New Hope begin to make sense. And they did perform a full transformation for Anakin into Darth Vader and established the Emperor as the big bad. It was clunky, but they got there to make enough sense for when we caught up with those characters *years* later.
Obviously, the best place to begin dealing with some of these Star Wars prequels storylines would be through the upcoming Obi-Wan Kenobi series which will put Ewan McGregor back in the titular role. This show is apparently set to take place in the time period following Revenge of the Sith and prior to A New Hope. Some animated versions of Star Wars have dealt with this time period in the past, but nothing in the live-action realm has touched it yet. If there was a place to begin making sense of the prequel movies through some action, this would be it.
Whether this plan to “fix” the Star Wars prequels works by telling alternate stories or highlighting different characters along the way remains to be seen. Nothing is likely to truly fix them considering what’s done is done and they aren’t rewriting the Darth Vader storyline now. We will see Hayden Christensen back in that role, though I doubt they retcon his origins to any major degree. But I do like how the studio appears committed to keeping those stories in the canon while also maybe tidying them up as well.