With the new Star Wars Trilogy beginning at the end of the year, and other Star Wars anthology films coming up, (centered on the raid to steal the Death Star plans and on Boba Fett's origins respectively) I find myself once again interested in and hopeful for the Star Wars franchise. A New Hope was great and The Empire Strikes Back was even better. And say what you will about Return of the Jedi, but it was better than any of the prequels.
A while back, I wrote at length about what in my mind was wrong with the prequel trilogy. Looking back at that list of gripes, most could be alleviated by just not doing that thing because it's stupid. But I was thinking - what might be a better discussion than what stunk is what could have been done better, similar to my suggestion for an alternate script for Terminator 3.
Battle droids were a thing in the prequels that obviously never existed in the original trilogy, which means something likely happened at some point to make them obsolete. I've never seen it well explained. Likely it's just as murky as the rest of the plot in the prequels. But I can think of a couple good explanations for why droid armies might have vanished, and it would not have been difficult to work either into the prequels.
Maybe battle droids are expensive. In the prequels, we're seeing an age in which civilization is at a peak and everything looks new and shiny. The Old Republic's economy is doing very well, and investing in a droid army (What was that Sifo-Dyas crap again?) makes sense. Spending the money to clone stormtroopers from Django Fett makes sense. But by the time we've reached Episode 4, everything looks old, run down, and dirty. The galactic economy is in shambles, and nobody has the money for battle droids. Nobody probably has money for clones anymore either, and I'm willing to bet that stormtroopers are just enlisted men by the time episode 4 rolls around, which is why Luke got by in disguise as a short stormtrooper. If they'd worked this into the story, it would have made a passable reason.
The one I like better though is that since battle droids are reliant on central control, they receive their orders remotely. We saw this in Episode 1, in the ridiculous scene where L'il Ani pulled a Homer and crashed into the control ship, inadvertently disabling the entire droid army. Hoo boy - that general must have been embarrassed, eh? Obviously after that, battle droids would have been given some degree of autonomy, since having their heads fall off when they stop receiving a signal isn't optimal behavior. Actually, a jamming signal could easily have the same effect. That's a hell of a design flaw.
The truth is that as long as the droids can receive any kind of external signal, they're vulnerable to hacking. Either the encoded orders could be spoofed, or else anyone with the ability to salvage a destroyed battle droid could work on the remains and find a vulnerability to exploit. It happens in our world every day - why not a long time ago in a galaxy far away? So the droid are hacked in 2 or three minor battles, and it becomes clear that when you can lose your army to a software vulnerability, battle droids are no longer viable. With two sentences, or a scene in episode 3, this continuity glitch could have been smoothed out.
Another thing I complained about was Yoda wielding a lightsaber. The guy is a goddamned wizard, not a ninja. What I'd have liked to see rather than him dueling with a lightsaber is him doing battle without one. Sure - a lightsaber can absorb force lightning. But what about when he force pushes you up against a wall, holds you there, and throws fifteen different rocks at you from different angles? What about when he collapses the ground beneath your feet? They could easily have created a few more force powers for Yoda that nobody had seen before - he's the best of the best at his prime, or not much past it. Why not have him make all his attackers simultaneously fall unconscious? Why not have him turn invisible when Sidious attacks? They could have gone many routes with this without handing him a lightsaber.
And while I'm on fight choreography, they had another great opportunity with the battles in episode 3. With General Grevious and Darth Tyrannus specifically. General Grevious, from what I've heard, was a serious bad-ass in the Clone Wars cartoon. I understand that because there weren't two actual people involved (Grevious was CG) no traditional fight choreography could be done. But after the excellent Darth Maul battle in Phantom Menace, I know they could have done better. Grevious is swinging six light sabers. He should be able to attack in a pattern more effective than spinning two like helicopters and holding the other four out of the way. They could have shown Obi-Wan defending furiously and barely managing to stay alive throughout most of the fight. Maybe even suffering a wound of some kind before luckily landing a desperation shot on Grevious's weird human lungs. It could have been done so well.
And Darth Tyrannus, played by the late great Christopher Lee, could have been another well handled fight if they'd shown him fencing - using minimal movement to out-duel younger and more athletic opponents. The novelization of Episode 2 described exactly that so very well. Missed opportunities abound.
Damn, but I hope the sequel trilogy is better than the prequels.