The fact that almost everyone has suggested a total redo of the prequels under a new director tells me that the execution was the problem with Darth Vader's origin, not the idea.
Well, certainly. In the right hands it could have been fantastic. (Around the time Episode I came out, Margaret Weis put out a Dragonlance prequel about Raistlin. Chapter 1 has him as a child, about Episode I Anakin's age. A wandering wizard asks him why he wants to learn magic; Raistlin looks over at Otik and says "I want to make fat innkeepers bow to me." It's about as far from "Yippee! Let's try spinning! That's a neat trick!" as it gets.) "Right hands" is, I think, the problem. I'd rather leave something like Yoda's origin unknown.
That said, it COULD be great. My ideal version: a twist on Sandman #13.
Sandman #13 is the Hob Gadling issue (and my single favorite issue of the series). For those who haven't read it, it goes something like this: it starts out in 1389. Death and Dream are in a tavern, where they see a man boasting that he's going to live forever. They're amused by this and Death decides to call his bluff and make him immortal; he and Dream agree to meet once every hundred years to talk about what he's been doing with his life. That's the rest of the issue: Hob and Dream catching up at a bar every hundred years and talking about what Hob's been up to this century.
For a Yoda movie I'm picturing something like that except not taking place entirely in bars. 90 minutes (short for a Star Wars movie), with roughly every 10 minutes corresponding to a century of his life. Each a vignette with a beginning, a middle, and an end, each telling us about some important moment in Yoda's life, and also, by necessity, giving us a view of what's changed in the galaxy around him in that time.
I don't really see anybody making a movie with more than a passing resemblance to that idea. But that's how I'd like to see it done.
There ARE plenty of interesting questions to ask about Yoda. What did he look like when he was younger? Presumably he wasn't so shriveled and wrinkled in his prime. Where was he born? Was he born on his people's native planet, or somewhere else? Were there a lot of his species around him growing up?
What was he like as a teenager? This is what, as I've said, Episode 1 fucked up with Obi-Wan: there's never a glimmer there of him being impulsive or rash. Qui-Gon's the rebel, while Obi-Wan's more "Oooh, Yogi, the Jedi Council's not gonna like it if you take that picnic basket." (That, in and of itself, could have made for an interesting twist on formula, but it never really panned out to one.) If we're going to see a Yoda origin, we should see a damn character arc; we should see that wisdom and patience are things he struggled to learn over centuries (largely by watching everyone he knew die around him), not traits he was born with.
More of Yoda as a prankster would be good too. The prequels forgot how damn funny he was in Empire.
(As I've said before, the biggest problem with the prequels, above and beyond every single narrative issue, was the lack of a Han Solo character. Everybody was either serious as fuck or an obnoxious slapstick character. There was levity, but it was consistently stupid.)
I just think, if you really had to make a Boba movie, it would be more interesting to see him in the past, when he's really struggling, than having some sort of epilogue movie where he continues to do nothing much but look cool in his armor.
I can see that, though a caper flick would suit him.
I'd just like to jettison the whole clone/Jango/etc. backstory, because it was stupid. All it tells me is that Jango couldn't create a son the traditional way.
Ooh...was Jango gay?
In all seriousness, what I'd like to see is something that's been expressed a few times before - something set in the same universe, but completely separate from the entire Republic/Empire business. Maybe another galaxy where they're aware of the Force and such but have another name for it, or maybe they've got limited trade with the SWG so they have Jedi but have integrated it into their culture in a completely different way. Just something that's not a -quel in any sense.
I can see that. Or a side story about a rebel Jedi who isn't involved in the resistance and is off doing his own thing. (I think the KotOR comic featured a Jedi rogue; the writer pitched it as "What if Luke had taken Han up on his offer to take off with him and leave the rebellion behind?" KotOR the game had a wise-ass Jedi exile, Jolee Bindo; I'd like to see more Jedi Masters with a sense of humor. See above on Yoda-as-prankster.) The ancillary media have also tackled things like the very beginning of the Jedi Order; that'd be interesting to see.
But of course this is a moneymaking enterprise and I don't think, at least upfront, that Disney's going to be willing to deviate from the formula of Big Numbered Sequels or Spinoffs with Already-Bankable Characters. Then again, maybe long-term; I've already made the Marvel comparison, and we're looking at not only a SHIELD TV show, but movies planned for the Guardians of the Galaxy, Ant-Man, and Dr. Strange. Maybe once the ball gets rolling on New Star Wars, they'll be more comfortable experimenting with new characters and settings in-between the big movies. There's really no limit to the stories you can tell in that universe.
(And since I mentioned TV shows: I'm guessing there's probably some forward momentum on the one Lucas has been pushing since Episode 3. Purportedly that one takes place between the two trilogies, and that's a period I wouldn't mind seeing -- a new cast of characters unrelated to anyone we know from the films, dealing with the Empire and Rebellion in their own way; presumably some Jedi scattered here and there but off in hiding rather than taking the fight to the Empire.)
A few throwaway lines in the novels say that the clones all have rather large 'flaws' - they're highly susceptible to orders and authority to varying degrees (IE, the grunts do whatever anyone ever tells them, the commanders have some leniency) and they're apparently programmed to never be bothered by the fact that they were grown to be cannon fodder.
I don't think like most of them even have names. Just numbers.
Bears adding that they're free to jettison absolutely anything that's been established in the EU (and frankly Lucas has always played pretty fast-and-loose with the continuity from the films themselves), but all that makes pretty good sense. What's the point of using clones if they're NOT going to be interchangeable cogs who follow orders?
The best episode of Clone Wars I've seen involves a clone who's deserted and started a family. I like the idea that some of them find a way to become individuals, but by and large they're fodder.
