If you wrote ROTS...
 

...what would you have changed?

For me, I would try to tighten up some of the plotholes from the OT.

Regarding the timing of Anakin going to the dark side, based on Ben's tale to Luke in ANH, I thought Anakin's turn to the dark side would have happened after OB1 turned him into the human briquette, and Sidious swooped in to save Anakin (after laying down the foundation already being a favorite of Palpatine), thus, making it easier for Anakin to embrace the dark side willingly as the Jedi turned their collective backs on him.

Now, how do you get to the point that OB1 and Anakin duel to the death? Well, you can toss in a cheesy 3-way love triangle between Anakin, OB1, and Padme, and even have Anakin suspect that Padme might be carrying OB1's baby(s). Though that would have soapy as hell. Or it could just have OB1 find out about Anakin and Padme's marriage, and let OB1 on his way to expose Anakin's marriage to Padme, which is something Anakin can't allow, and it causes the rift between them, and leads to their duel to the death.

Once that is set up, you could have OB1 reporting back to the Jedi council that Anakin died in a lava pit. All the while, Anakin is outfitted with the whole Darth Vader outfit, trains with Sidious, out of sight, under the radar, and then when the time is right, Sidious issues Order 66, with Darth Vader leading the charge to hunt down and kill off the Jedis for years to come. (For Sidious to pretty knock off the entire Jedi sect in 4 minutes of screen time makes the Jedi seem far too weak and easy to pick off.) Having this new sith lord on the scene, the Jedi are uneasy, and have no answer to his knowledge of the Force, and succumb to his leadership because he knows how Jedi's think and where they would be hiding.

Also, with Anakin presumed dead, have Padme survive childbirth, goes with Bail Organa to live on his planet, be among the royal family, start up the rebel alliance with Mon Mothma, but pass away when Leia is 5 years old or so. Padme spends her last years sad and feeling alone because of Anakin's death at the hands of OB1, whom she has no more contact with since she blames OB1 for how her life turned out.

Although the sudden deaths of the Jedi may seem as a letdown I felt it was good since it presented how desperate their situation was. Besides, if you were setting out to wipe out the Jedi order, would you really take even more time wiping them out or would you simply wait 'til the time was right and kill them all in one full onslaught?

I'd have removed the half a space battle we got, removed the Kashyyk "battle" and then given the time to fill out Dooku and perhaps Grevious, so they don't seem like such wastes. Or filled out those scenes so they were better, and just made the movie longer.

I would have changed the way Palpatine acted during the scene with Mace... it came off waaaay too silly for me.

You would all hate me instead of George Lucas.

Also why R2 flies in the prequels but not in the OT?

I'd assume because Anakin is not there to tinker/maintain ....

I would have done something about the dialogue.

I'm starting to think that most flaws and untied loose ends are actually written already. Other than dialogue, the problem isn't the writing, it's the directing, or more accurately, the editing. So to me a better question would be "If you directed RoTS, what would you change?", and my answer would be I'd have made the movie 3 and half hours long(or made 2 movies) and not cut out all the stuff we're all asking questions about now, fleshed out Grievous and Dooku, and tried to figure out where the hell Dooku was going with his speech to Obi-Wan in AotC.

Eliminate the fanboy nod on Kashyyyk and flesh out Grevious.

Grievous should have been the Darth Vader of the prequels. I'm disappointed he wasn't introduced sooner. His character has a fantastic story line -- and none of it was in the PT. Explain the wheezing and coughing, the organic heart and lungs within the mechanical body. Explore this a little bit more and Vader's final form has a precedent. As it is we're supposed to make this leap on our own. Grievous plays a much greater role in this story and deserves more than just getting Darth Mauled.

Besides this, I would be more interested in rewriting The Phantom Menace or Attack of the Clones entirely than Revenge of the Sith.

Yeah, I'd probably go back to Episode I + II and fix things that would make III work better. The dialog needs work (obviously). The love story needs to be done better -- showing them falling in love rather than having them tell each other that they're in love.

Ultimately, the story is in pretty darn good shape. It just needs a nip here/a tuck there. A bit more foreshadowing and explanation of important events/themes. Remove stuff that is left unexplained or just confuses the issue (such as the Sifo-Dyas references in Episode II that are never continued).

i'd probably be rich off my ass at this point

But why would they be fighting if Anakin hadn't already turned to the dark side?

Good thread idea. Was about to start it myself.

I would lengthen the movie to allow for a more measured pacing. The pace of this movie felt too rushed. Like they knew what their endpoint would be - Jedis wiped out, Anakin goes evil - and they created situations to reach that endpoint. As a result, things like Anakin getting mad, felt forced.

The MAIN problem I had with the movie was that I never empathized with Anakin's conversion to the dark side. I never felt his growing rage or desire for power was reasonable. His not being allowed to be promoted to Master just didn't strike me as a good enough reason to set him off. His wanting to save Padme led him to kill children? I don't think so. So here's how I would've changed the script to fix that:

I would've made Padme's death come much earlier in the movie. In the beginning, Anakin should be still relatively sane and normal (and not so goddamn brooding without any real reason). Anakin starts getting nightmares of Padme passing away. He reveals these concerns to Palpatine when Palpatine reaches out to him because the other Jedis do not believe in interfering with fate. Palpatine suggests to Anakin that he could help him save Padme, by teaching him secret Jedi (not Sith) powers that have been kept from him. As he learns the powers, hints of corruption are revealed when he takes joy in some of his new abilities. As he foresees Padme's death, he becomes worried but still not obviously leaning towards evil. Padme dies in spite of Herculean efforts (because of natural childbirth complications; NOT a stupid broken heart), and Anakin runs off in anguish before noticing she was pregnant with twins. Palpatine blames her death on the Jedis not helping him reach his potential powers earlier on. The anguish of her death clouds his ability to see clearly and so he does blame the Jedis and swears to take his revenge on them.

Now THAT would make me empathize with his conversion to the Dark Side much much more.

I think they did a great job of showing a Sith Lord trying to gain an apprentice in KOTOR II with Darth Traya... making Sith philosophy (without admitting that it is Sith philosophy) seem like a more reasonable reaction to the galaxy than the beliefs of the Jedi. For example, compassion doing more harm than good because people come to depend on the compassion (e.g., would homeless people panhandle if people didn't give them money or offer them any assistance, or would they try to get a job instead?).

If I wrote it, it would have sucked. Same for everyone here. :) About the only thing I would have fleshed out more is the ghost issue, by including the Qui-Gon scene. Not only would this explain how Jedi can become ghosts, but it would enhance Qui-Gon's existence in the prequels, and would develop and enhance the Yoda character we see in ESB and ROTJ.

More ramblings on the topic from me:

While I realize Lucas wanted to put the pressure of the dreams to heightened the desperation level of Anakin, and to cling to Palpy's claim of being able to help with the situation, but if you were Anakin, wouldn't you want proof of such a claim before changing your allegiances on basically a hope and prayer? Lucas hinges the turning of Anakin on a time-element decision, in order to dupe him into making the only decision that makes sense to Anakin (the outcome paramount to Anakin is saving Padme from dying during childbirth).

Also, regarding how far along Padme is, I have a problem with the timeline of this film. Things happen from planet to planet, with little regard to the time it takes to get from planet to planet, and are we to just assume that getting to all the locations in the film takes a few hours at most? Seems to be, if there are long stretches of time involved, cooler heads should prevail in weighing the options. But Lucas structured his screenplay so that it seems like characters can get from one planet to another in the blink of an eye, which gives off that sense of urgency, but it doesn't quite hold up under scrutiny.

Was Padme 6 months along at the start of the film, and then 2 months pass by the time she decides to hop in her starcruiser to find Anakin on Mustafar? I have a hard time believing that planet was just around the corner from Coruscant. Wasn't it out in the outer rim?

Also, consider Anakin spurning the Jedi order for attachment to Padme, it makes some sort of sense given his background. It creates animosity between Anakin and OB1 if OB1 ratted him out too, which sets up the lava duel. You could incorporate his fears of Padme dying in childbirth, but if you bring in the rebuke by the Jedi Council earlier, and he chose to turn away from them, then you can lay the foundation for him to go train to be a dark lord of the sith as he seeks out Palpy to become his full-time apprentice, while keeping Palpy around as Chancellor, and then Anakin comes back to wipe out the Jedi order with a plan of own accord, also incorporating Order 66, as payment to Palpy to save Padme for him. In this scenario, Anakin is fully aware of the price he pays to keep the woman he loves alive. It's not a choice driven by circumstance, but a choice drive by the seduction of power of the dark side. Plus, it would lend more credence to what Ben tells Luke in ANH without making Ben out to be a big fat liar in order to manipulate Luke to a larger extent.

And one more thing, in this scenario, Padme does survive childbirth, but is sickened by Anakin's turn to the dark side, and she takes the twins, hands Luke over to OB1 to be raised by the Lars, and along the way, OB1 drops off Yoda on Dagobah, cut to a quick shot of baby Luke looking all around at the swampiness before OB1 and Luke go towards Tatooine. And then Padme escapes to the Alderaan system, enlists the aid of Bail Organa to live surreptiously, lives for a few years, raising Leia, but overall sad, helps with the start of the Rebel Alliance with Mon Mothma, but eventually dies of a broken heart within 5 years as news of Darth Vader's quest to eradicate the Jedi becomes more and more of a reality.

Bottom line is we could have all chipped in and wrote it together but it wouldn't matter because it cannot possibly make another dollar more than it will already.
Always about the dollars!$!$!$!$

I also think they should have included a storyline where wookies mate and produce deformed midget wookies. These are then send off to Endor to live in banishment FOREVER.

I second the idea for fleshing out the Qui-Gon Ghost scenes.

I would've thrown in a full frontal nude Padme scene and then paid off the MPAA to still give me a PG-13 rating.

I agree that Luke should have had a scene on Dagobah after Leia is dropped off on Alderaan. Padme should have died due to some effects of being force choked rather than "losing her will to live."

As for where the twins went, it felt pretty random in the movie. I would have revealed that Luke went to Tatooine with Obi-Wan because he had a significantly higher midichlorian count than Leia. That way a Jedi Master would be in close proximity to train the more powerful child. Leia would have gone with Bail since it wouldn't be prudent to have a powerful Jedi be part of a prominent political family.