When it was announced that Lucas would be going back to the pre-Empire years I wasn't sure what to expect. However, when I had first heard of the "clone wars" period, from Leia's brief speech, I'd thought that the Empire and the old Republic had gone to war using clones to replenish their troops...on both sides. I saw this as an incredibly dark meditation on humanity and the value, or lack thereof, of human life. Could Jedi be cloned and would they have the same powers? How could you ever hope to end a war in which lives are meaningless and another "batch" of troopers was just a cloning vat away?

I'd hoped to learn how Obi Wan had become who he was. I'd hoped that Anakin's turn to Darth Vader would have been compelling and logical. I'd hoped to find out more about the Sith, especially having read the Alan Dean Foster book, "The Splinter of the Mind's Eye," written to fit between Star Wars and Empire, which inferred an ancient, almost religious order of Sith and their arcane structure. In short, I'd hoped for something closer in tone to Empire, where the tone went from dark to pitch black by the time the third movie rolled out.

It's hard to go back over the hopes I'd had for the prequels without turning my post into a laundry list. In short, I'd hoped for much, much more. The old cliché about old Star Wars fans was that we're "butt-hurt" because Lucas "stole our childhood." For me, that was never the case. The OT was, and still is, a wonderful series. But I'm still deeply disappointed at the incredible lost opportunity that Lucas had to craft a truly deep and compelling, ADULT backstory about how the Empire rose to prominence and how Darth Vader came to be, but what we got was three movies designed to sell toy robots to children.

Weirdly enough, long before he'd even cast the film one actor I imagined potentially being in it was Liam Neeson--as Anakin Skywalker.

Part of the reason was his height. He's 6'4", just a couple of inches shorter than David Prowse. (And he's a damn fine actor, of course.) I did not know that (a) Anakin would be in his 20s rather than 40s (b) that Vader's exceptional height would turn out to be purely an augmentation of his costume, rather than his natural height.

What gave me these impressions? Well, for one thing, why did Lucas cast an actor in his 70s to portray Anakin at the end of ROTJ? Doing the math, that means he should have been in his 40s or even 50s when Luke was born. You might counter that the point was that Anakin simply looked old after all he'd been through. And to that, I say: bull! If they wanted the character to look older, they could have simply used makeup. In fact that's exactly what they did do with Ian McDiarmid (who was actually in his 30s at the time) as the emperor.

The real reason, of course, is that at the time ROTJ was written, Lucas did envision Anakin as older. He later pushed his age down because movies with youthful protagonists tend to sell better.

There's also evidence that the height business was a retcon. In the original version of ROTJ--and even in the 1997 Special Edition--Anakin's ghost at the end is still portrayed by the old man, Sebastian Shaw. (Only years later, for the DVD release, did Lucas insert Hayden Christensen into the film to replace Shaw in that scene.) In the final shot, Shaw is seen wearing a long robe and it does appear that he's substantially taller than Obi-Wan. Obviously this was an effect--Shaw as far as I know was not that tall. But the point is that it's clear the original idea was that Anakin was naturally a very tall man--only later did Lucas decide he was a man of relatively normal height who was turned into a giant by the Vader costume. As with his age, it was a retcon.

David Prowse should have been the force ghost and had that death scene, but Sebastian Shaw did fine.

Liam Neeson as Anakin, now that would of been amazing! Maybe a little old but he could passed for a guy in his early 30's, and given his presence and acting credentials we could easily accept him as a great pilot and capable soldier, strong with the Force but untrained.

What and interesting dynamic it would of been pairing him as Anakin with Ewan McGregor’s Obi Wan!

the Second Coming of fucking Christ.

i did not, however, expect that to actually be written into the script!