Star Wars: Revenge Of The Sith Wasn't Always As Focused On Anakin
Before the "Star Wars" prequels came out, people were really excited to get the backstory of Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen). I certainly was. While I'm not a huge prequel fan, there were some really fascinating story points in there, and between those three films and the animated series "The Clone Wars," many of us know more about Anakin's story than any other character in the history of the galaxy far, far away.
Though we also learned a lot about Padmé (Natalie Portman), Obi-Wan (Ewan McGregor), Jar-Jar (Ahmed Best), Mace Windu (Samuel L. Jackson), and Yoda (Frank Oz), the real focus of the prequels — particularly "Revenge of the Sith" — was Anakin Skywalker and his transformation into Darth Vader. However, when it comes to the final chapter of the prequels, that wasn't always the case, according to the 2005 book "The Making of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith" by J.W. Rinzler.
The behind-the-scenes book for "Revenge of the Sith explains that creator George Lucas initially had more stories for the other characters, but he opted to trim it down and put the focus mostly on Anakin. But even an editing cut of "Revenge of the Sith" that was shown on March 9, 2004 at Industrial Light and Magic included a scene that still ended up on the cutting room floor, and Lucas explained that this was the part of the assembly process.
'The first script I wrote had stories for everybody'
Lucas said he had more for the other characters. He explained:
"The first script I wrote had stories for everybody, and I cut it down, and we had a script. But when we cut it together, there were still problems. Finally, I said, 'Okay, let's be even more hard-nosed here and take out every scene that doesn't have anything to do with Anakin.' But that causes you to juxtapose certain scenes that you were never contemplating juxtaposing before. And these scenes take on different qualities than before, because the scenes were never meant to be next to each other."
The editing process is where the movie really takes shape, especially when filmmakers find juxtapositions, just as Lucas said. Sometimes holes in a story are revealed, pointing to where you may need to do reshoots. Lucas mentioned one of those helpful moments. He said:
"In one case, there was supposed to be a scene with Padmé and Bail Organa [Jimmy Smits] between two Anakin scenes, because we were following her story along with his. And when most of those scenes were cut out, suddenly all sorts of weird things started to happen that weren't intended in the script, but in some cases it actually worked much better."
'Suddenly one theme is infinitely stronger than it was before'
Though you don't always know what was axed from a script when you see the first cut of the film, there is definitely an — I guess "omnipresence" is the right word — with Anakin in the films. Anakin's constant intensity and focus, even as a podracing kid (Jake Lloyd), looms over everyone as the third film progresses. As an audience member, you don't really have much of an escape from his building anger and resentment. Lucas spoke further about how the process of keeping thing focused on Anakin worked. He said:
"What happens then is that some of the themes grab hold of each other and really strengthen themselves in ways that are fascinating. You pull things together and suddenly a theme is drawn out because it's in three consecutive scenes instead of just one. Suddenly one theme is infinitely stronger than it was before, so we'll strengthen that theme because it seems poetic."
The tension he built is the thing I think worked best in the prequel series. Anakin is exhausting in the way many angry young people have been. (No disrespect because we've all been that.) Breaking up the scenes with more story for the other characters wouldn't have let that part of him break through as effectively.
All the "Star Wars" films are currently streaming on Disney+.