Tag: Reimagine

What if…I directed the original Star Wars trilogy?

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vader87

 

 

 I’m pretty sure Vader had better days.

 But while being x-rayed by the Emperor probably hurts, it also makes for a perfect skull…

 …and a perfect lead-in to Part II of my new What if…? series.

 Last week I What if’d The Lord of the Rings, and what it would’ve been like had I written it as a dark fantasy. This week I’m jumping over to film. To Star Wars. To the original three movies. A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and so forth. Yes, I know it’s heresy. Deal with it.

So…what if? What if, instead of George Lucas’s sometimes fantastical, ocassionally sci-fi (ish), and oftentimes made-for-kids space drama, F’n J Edward Neill stepped in with total creative control? What if I’d fashioned all three movies into a deep, dark, end-of-the-universe, not-at-all-for-kids series?

Well…what if? How would I remake one of the most beloved series of all time into a thick, soupy, shadowy epic?

First up: the bad guys. I demand more competence, more lethality. From the ground up, I’d reinvent the Stormtroopers. Gone would be the slow, bumbling, easily-confused cannon fodder. Dark Stormtroopers would come complete with 500% more terror, skill, and slavish devotion to their purpose (murdering rebels). Instead of nice, clean, shiny…and entirely useless white armor, I’d pack them in matte black. Their armor would amplify speed, aiming, and strength. They’d hurl wookies aside like rag dolls, pick rebels apart with terrifying precision, and sweep through ships like locusts. I was never afraid of the Stormtroopers, not even as a child. But I wanted to be.

Moving along…

An effective way to cast a deeper shadow across any story, especially a sci-fi space drama: give the villains superior weapons. And I don’t just mean bigger guns, scarier costumes, and huger numbers. I mean truly terrifying technology. Red lasers, big ships, and tractor beams are all well and good, but I want to feel a true sense of dread when the bad guys slow down to approach a planet. Give me Star Destroyers launching millions of explosive nano-projectiles. Give me Stormtroopers firing silent, invisible death rays. Give me good guy x-wings not bursting into flames when shot (wouldn’t happen in space anyway) but falling quietly to pieces when Tie Fighters roll up behind them and launch volleys of death particles. Any villain worth his salt (aka Darth Vader) should have a plethora of ways to annihilate his foes. In Dark Star Wars, even one tiny little Imperial ship would scare the shit out of a planet packed with helpless good guys.

 A few small quick hit ways I’d darken up Star Wars:

Ewoks: Scarier

C3P0: Talks less

Star Destroyers: Can actually destroy stars

Darth Vader: Chokes out dozens at a time using the Force. Who needs Dark Stormtroopers when you’ve got a Sith lord capable of slaying ships’ entire crews from afar?

Death Star: Doesn’t blow up planets or blast ships to smithereens, but kills all living things with a big invisible death ray (silent death for everyone!)

DeathStar

Now with a new, darker, scarier paint job…

Perhaps blurred in the fantastical-ish nature of Star Wars are the horrors of extreme technological advancement. Imagine if you will the sheer amount of labor (likely slave labor) and economic sacrifice needed to build a Star Destroyer, a herd of Imperial Walkers, or two Death Stars. To darken up the series, I want everyone to pay the price of building the Empire’s army. Entire planets stripped of resources: Check. Vast automated space stations manned by droids and guarded by ship-killing probes: Check. Star systems enslaved: Check. Alien species wiped out due to inefficiency: Check and mate. The Empire’s truest evil is not in wanting to kill rebels, but in creating the conditions that make the rebels want to rebel in the first place. Compelling my dark reimagining of the series is a vision of galactic-scale misery. I want us to hate the Empire like never before.

And lastly, it has always been one of my contentions that  good guys get off too easy. In modern movies and books, it seems (aside from Game of Thrones) that most if not all protagonists survive their ordeals despite hurling themselves into danger again and again. In my darker, graver vision for Star Wars, the good guys suffer more. In Cloud City, C3P0 meets his doom. He doesn’t get to come back after being blasted by imperial agents, but gets reprocessed with the rest of the junk droids, perhaps even being hacked to provide the Empire with information. And then there’s Lando. In Return of the Jedi, Han foretells the destruction of the Millenium Falcon (piloted by Lando against the second Death Star) but once again fate intervenes and the MF survives. Let’s darken it up. Lando and the Falcon get caught in the big explosion, and Han sees his ship plummet to Endor’s surface in ruin. And Luke. Poor Luke. In J Edward’s What if…? version, he dies with his father in the Death Star. Much like I needed Frodo to perish in tragic fashion with the One Ring, Luke needs to make the ultimate sacrifice. Leia gets to be the last Jedi hopeful…ever.

 Blasphemous enough for you? 

Join me next week when I reimagine Harry Potter’s Voldemort as an agent of Cthulu. No, I’m not serious. Or am I…?

J Edward Neill

Author of the Tyrants of the Dead dark fantasy trilogy

Author of The Sleepers and Old Man of Tessera

Down the Dark Path

What if…I rewrote The Lord of the Rings

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This week marks the first entry in my new ‘What if…?’ series. If only to agitate, exhume, and pontificate, I plan to explore popular books and movies with purpose to pretend remake each of them as if I’d been the author, director, producer, etc. I’d like to think most creative types have asked themselves, “What if I’d written that? What if creative control had been mine?” Well…what if…? Let’s do this.

My only disclaimer: this is for fun. I intend no heresy. Well…maybe a little.   

And so…

Lord of the Rings. J.R.R. Tolkien. The first and most powerful of all fantasy series. Take a glance at how many books, movies, tv shows, and friggin’ cosplay conventions are LOTR-derivitave. This is where modern-day fantasy literature began.

What if I had written it?  What if…instead of a sometimes high/sometimes dark/sometimes strictly narrative fiction novel, f’n J Edward Neill had sat down and written it entirely as a dark fiction trilogy? What if, what if, what if…?

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Let’s start with what feels obvious to me. In LOTR, you’ve got some seriously terrifying bad guys. You’ve got nazgul, orks (rumor is J.R.R. wanted to spell it with a ‘k’) a balrog, evil wizards, fell beasts, etc. But more than any of them, you’ve got Sauron, aka a flaming eyeball in the sky. In J Edward’s version of LOTR, Sauron gets a full third of the narrative. He gets dialogue (perhaps from the Witch King’s perspective). He gets backstory (front and center instead of in the appendices). I don’t have a giant list of scenes I’d cut out to make room for more Sauron, but no matter. I’d add a fourth book if needed. The easiest way to darken up Tolkien’s masterpiece would’ve been to add 700% more Dark Lord, and that’s where I’d start.

Still here?

 The second way I’d cast a shadow over LOTR: more good guys need to die. Let’s start with Gimli and Legolas. Their unexpected friendship is a metaphor for all the strange alliances required for the good guys to have any hope of defeating Sauron. And so…one of them must die. My money is on Legolas. And my choice of death is via nazgul, at the Black Gate, right in front of Gimli. Let Legolas’s diminutive friend watch him go down in a blaze of glory, and let Gimli forever cherish their friendship after a nice, long spell of mourning. It’s possible (maybe even likely) that my desire to see Legolas go down has something to do with Orlando Bloom. No matter. It’s a war (the last and greatest of all Middle-Earth wars). The good guys get off too easy.

Who else needs to die? Frodo Baggins. I know. I’m sorry. Slap me silly. Kick me in the shins. I get that Frodo essentially dies when he sails away from Middle-Earth, but I’d have done it in a much more literal sense. Whether by falling into the crack of doom with Gollum, death by sheer sadness after losing the One Ring, or being speared with Sauron’s departing shadow, I’d have snuffed Frodo at the very moment of the Ring’s destruction. With every hobbit making it back to the Shire, the good guys get off too easy again. “You didn’t seriously expect him to survive Mordor?” someone could’ve asked Gandalf. “No. It was only a fool’s hope,” he would’ve answered again. And it was. We should all be punished for our foolishness, not just the poor, misunderstood antagonists.

A few quick-hit ways to continue darkening the series up:

Tom Bombadil: gone

Nazgul: win a fight or two (instead of constantly losing)

Minas Morgul: we get a glimpse inside

Gondor: utterly annihilated

Witch King and Gandalf: fight (with the Witch King fleeing back to the battle)

Moving right along. To really F with the reader, and to maximize the good guys’ suffering, I’d have ramped up the battle at the Black Gate. Tolkien made it well and truly dire. I’d had written it direr. I’d have butchered the good guys almost to the last man standing before the One Ring is destroyed. Legolas: dead. Gimli: wounded. Aragorn: wounded. Gandalf: holding the horde at bay for just…one…moment…longer. Leave the good guys with maybe a few dozen brave souls, and no more. I’d have wanted the reader to wonder, “He won’t really kill them all here? Will he?” Maybe I wouldn’t. Maybe I would.

In ending the series, and with an eye toward leaving the reader with a subtle feeling of dread, I’d let Saruman live. Sure, Grima can try to kill him, but I’d give the original White Wizard a pass. He can creep off to the north, broken staff on the mend. His heart will be filled with vengeance, anger, and always the memory of Sauron’s voice in his head. Tolkien’s version works perfectly for a happily ever after ending, but any dark fantasy worth its salt needs a shadow of a threat to remain, therefore reminding the reader that conflict always was and always shall be.

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I’ve got a certain Rolling Stones’ song in mind…

There you have it. Don’t get me wrong: LOTR is perfect as-is. I wouldn’t really change a thing. It’s all just speculation. And by speculation I mean; painting rooms black and making hearts jump.

Tune in for next week’s What if…? segment, during which I rewrite 50 Shades of Grey as a horror novel. Just kidding. Maybe.

J Edward Neill