Recently, I acquired a story treatise of "Episode III: The Fall of the Republic" by John L. Flynn, written in 1983. I shared this treasure with a few friends, and ewanandhaydenfan5 found John L. Flynn's website and pointed it out to me.

Here I discovered this article: Looking Back to the Future of Star Wars" , an outline of Episodes I, II and III. The Clone Wars, The Seduction of Anakin Skywalker, and The Fall of the Republic.

UPDATE: The link to Flynn's article no longer works, but you can see it HERE

NOTE: I'm not sure it's clear that these are George Lucas's ideas from his original development of his story. Flynn is merely putting them down on paper, in an article written in 1994.

It's an awesome story line, and I think I would have preferred the sequels that way... I might have been more of an Anakin fan if I could have looked up on him as man that tried to be good, but made too many mistakes in his life.

In the prequels the way they were made, I think George wanted us to feel compassion towards Anakin, but it didn't work for me... I wanted to slap him silly and tell him to grow up and act like a Jedi, or at least like a man. The ploy for sympathy was overdone.

I like the fate of Anakin's wife in this version much better than that of Padme, whom we knew to be a tough, strong woman, simply losing the will to live because Anakin didn't love her anymore... With two babies to take care of? I don't think so... Where was that sense of duty she had in AOTC?

I'm sure I was not the only person to be disappointed by TPM, at the time I thought it was a movie that George made just because he could... and that it some of the action seemed "forced" (no pun intended).

And I've already confessed to Hansgirl3, who sat next to me during the C-IV movie marathon, that I didn't see AOTC on the big screen... not because I didn't want to, but other things were more important at the time, and I didn't get around to it.

It wasn't until I read the novel of ROTS in March 2005, that I went back and watched both TPM and AOTC several times and appreciated them for what they were... exposition to the big finale. By the time ROTS was released, there was nothing that would have kept me from seeing it in the best theatre in town right away!

My wildest dream would have been for George to give me his storyline and let me write the script, and I would have loved to lean over his shoulder during the editing of ROTS...

All this is not to say that I don't love the movies, ALL of the movies... I do... the prequels just didn't turn out to be what I envisioned back in the 1970s and 1980s...

Of course, I never envisioned Greedo shooting first, either...