Page 1 of What if! Casting Star Wars if it was shot chronologically...

So in 1977, a young no-necked filmmaker named George Lucas decides to make Episode 1, The Phantom Menace...

How would Star Wars have been cast?

There`s a website for that.

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Jitendar Canth

Quote:
"I thought what I`d do was, I`d pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes."

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Jar Jar Binks and Count Dookou are so bang on!


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I don`t think if Phantom Menace had been the first picture they`d have got as far as making a second.  That`s not just p*ss-on-the-prequels talk; I`d qualify it by saying that as a story TPM doesn`t have the same epic, standalone quality that Star Wars had before GL started thinking of it as part of a bigger story.  If TPM were the first chronological chapter, I would suspect that the story would have developed radically differently to the version we`re familiar with.

We`re familiar with a two-arc story - the Darth Vader Story and The Adventures of Luke Skywalker.  My feeling is that had we started with TPM, we`d be looking at something more like the Harry Potter franchise - Anakin Skywalker`s journey to adulthood, then his fall from grace and finally his redemption at the hands of his long-lost son.  A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back and The Return of the Jedi would be radically different as they would be told from Vader`s perspective rather than Luke`s, and of course the revelation of the identities of Luke and Leia would be completely different.

The casting of the characters in the linked article are fascinating - I agree the Robin Williams/ Jar Jar Binks idea is spot on - but on the other hand there are some interesting what-ifs to inject:  In the TPM first scenario, is GL shooting in Hollywood or Elstree?  I`d suspect that if he was filming in Elstree a deal of that casting suggested would be completely different.  Star Wars was primarily cast with British talent for a combination of political and logistical reasons.  If GL had shot in Hollywood, I`d doubt if any British talent would have been cast in anything other than villain roles.

Nicol Williamson as Qui-Gon?  Bollocks to that.  I can`t take that idea seriously after Excalibur.  I think Alec Guinness would have done Qui-Gon, fulfilling the same role he does in the OT.

J Mark Oates

Haha quite interesting, I love the idea of these "what if" scenarios. Of course Mark is right, The Phantom Menace wouldn`t have caught on like the original 1977 Star Wars did. Who is the hero in TPM? The two main characters are Qui-Gonn Jinn and Anakin, and the latter doesn`t appear until 40 odd minutes into the film. What are the themes? Regardless of it being a prequel, it is the 4th film in a franchise and as written the story is insular to Star Wars and doesn`t really have universal appeal or relatable themes or characters. Don`t get me wrong, I don`t hold this against it as most frachise become more purely about story as they progress than grand themes and artistic/political commentary (the bad dialogue and silly humour on the other hand...). But the film isn`t written as an introduction to the Star Wars universe. Even the politics of TPM are taken from scattered history, unlike A New Hope where the influence was a little more contemporary. And Luke`s journey is one of the most universal of all, leaving home and going on an adventure of discovery and becoming a hero in the process. Luke Skywalker is the protagonist, no mistake. Star Wars 1977 is simply masterful filmmaking, presenting a simple story in a complex world. The Phantom Menace just doesn`t have this and even ignoring all the fluff and nonsense the story just isn`t there.

Had TPM been written first, maybe Obi Wan Kenobi would have been the protagonist and Qui Gonn wouldn`t have existed as if I remember right he was a late addition. Although lets be honest, Liam Neeson is the only actor able to pull off his dialogue in that film and Qui Gonn is actually a pretty good character.

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Welcome back, Chewie.  We`ve missed you, fuzzball.

Another thought is that if GL had made TPM first, he`d have had to make a much better movie.  If you`ve read Rinzel`s account of the making of Star Wars, you realise the story evolved over about a four year period, and there`s a distinct progression of themes and ideas.  TPM had all the ready-made baggage of the original trilogy to prop up what is a fairly dry political saga with an atrociously bad romance-cum-greek-tragedy mixed in.

I think Chewie`s right about Obi-Wan being the protagonist of the first trilogy, unless Anakin had been introduced as an older Luke-style hotshot.  I think that would have made more sense than having him as a kid.  I always felt a little uneasy about Padme being older than Anakin - if they met when Anakin was older, post-puberty, a little more mature, it might make sense but the fact he was so much younger than her in TPM makes me wonder if (in reality) she might have always thought of him as the annoying kid rather than a potential mate.  I wonder what possessed GL to make Anakin an annoying kid in TPM?  It`s not as if kids in the audience would identify with him.  Kids reckon hero-kids in movies are more annoying than adults do.

If Anakin had been introduced as an older character, closer to Luke`s age, he would have made a more interesting protagonist.  Show him targetting womp-rats in his T-16, and instead of meeting the Princess via hologram she turns up on his hot dust-bowl of a planet in person.  A proper writer would have nailed a romance between the two which would have made more of an impact as Anakin fell from grace.

The problem with the saga of course is the fact GL was - like Indiana Jones - making it up as he went along.  If you read Alan Dean Foster`s sequel novel Splinter of the Mind`s Eye (bloody awful, but obviously approved by GL to have been published), you realise that in 1978 when that was published GL didn`t seem to have his franchise planned out.  There`s no indication of any of the themes and relationships established in the following movies.  He may claim now that he always had a plan, but I suspect GL is as revisionist about how he created the Star Wars universe as he is the Original Trilogy.

I think a more interesting line of thought would be "what if somebody decided to remake the Star Wars hexalogy" - without GL`s input.

J Mark Oates