WI:TPM was more like Lucas's first draft

[TheBalkanizer]

The Secret History of Star Wars

Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace Revised Rough Draft Notes

All the notes on the draft from the Star Wars Episode I Insider’s Guide

medium.com

Original Phantom Menace Script

"Writing the script was much more enjoyable this time around because I wasn't constrained by anything. You can't write one of t...

roadto7.blogspot.com

The first draft of TPM called Star Wars episode 1 :The Beginning is way better than the film we got. Still not good but way better and a much more solid foundation for future drafts. Lucas in the end changed many things and made it worse for some reason I can't understand. I wonder what POD would be needed for this to not happen and what would have happened to Ep2 and 3 if The Beginning got a better reception than TPM.

 

[Sam R.]

I thought you meant for Episode IV's filming and screening.

For IV's filming and screening, the script for Phantom Menace gets him disciplined by the studio system and restricted to a very junior directorial role under a solid producer who ensures success. The producer realises he's filming space westerns and employs on that basis. The script is reworked to be stagecoach or another classic, and Lucas is forced to play out his psychosexual drama through a standardised tradition of sexual conflict. This *improves* the movie as his expertise in mis-en-scen results in a VERY SEXY space cowboy film about basic betrayal. Phantom Menace ends with a three player shoot out, IN SPAAAAAACE.

Its a cinema success, and rivals the "vietnam repraisal" b films through the 80s.

 

[Johnrankins]

Certainly Jar Jar and Maul are much improved.

 

[PNWKing]

Perhaps have TTL's Jar Jar played by someone like "Weird Al" Yankovic, and Darth Maul played by someone like Laurence Fishburne, who in turn gives the Matrix to Samuel L. Jackson, meaning that they swap roles.

 

[Magniac]

I skimmed it, but I have to confess I don't see it being much different to what we got. And I don't even really hate TPM, I'm mostly just perplexed by it.

FWIW, I once had the idea that Lucas should have sort out the script for Gladiator and bought it before Ridley Scott could get his hands on it.

Qui-Gon Jinn as a reskinned Maximus Decimus Meridius, fallen Jedi, stripped of his force powers, fighting in the brutal combat arena run by Padme's family for bread and circuses on a dystopian Naboo. Ok, it does take things way off course from any possible tightly plotted prequel narrative. But we now live in a world where the Mandalorian is a prequel to eps 7, 8, 9...