Remaking the Star Wars prequels with Tim Curry

I'm serious. But this will take some explanation.

First, I wasn't one of the people whose primary gripe with the Star Wars prequels was Jar Jar. Rather, I was peeved by the bad acting in the middle of what was supposed to be a dramatic transformation--from Anakin to Vader on the personal level and from Republic to Empire on the political level. Much of the bad acting came from Hayden Christensen, but the worst of it was from Ian McDiarmid (Palpatine). The basic problem was that he used the same acting style for the prequels that he did in Jedi. Unfortunately, they were different roles: In Jedi he was recognized by everyone who saw him as evil incarnate, but in the prequels he was supposed to be the great deceiver. Yet he used the same "write evil across my forehead" approach to both roles. When, in Revenge of the Sith, Anakin finally exclaims "You're the Sith lord!" all I could think was "You mean you didn't notice the sinister tone in his voice ten years ago?"

Anyone interested in an amazing contrast to the portrayal of Palpatine should check out Tim Curry's performance as Dr. Frank N. Furter in Rocky Horror Picture Show. It's a character oozing in kitsch, a bizarre gender-bending crossbreed of Dracula and Dr. Frankenstein, but underneath is a villain far deeper than most movie villains. The nature of the performance didn't sink in the first time I saw the movie. I'm not sure that it had sunken in by the sixth. That may have had something to do with the fact that every time I've seen it, the theater has been full of screaming fans. It took a friend, Oliver, pointing it out: "Curry's performance was brilliant. Dr. Frank N. Furter is a monster, but Tim Curry makes you love him."

Oliver was right--to the point that up until that moment, I hadn't even seen Frank as a monster. Yet in the course of the movie, he kills a former delivery boy/lover (Eddie, played by Meatloaf) largely because he's tired of him and he's stealing Frank N. Furter's spotlight. Then he seduces both halves of a young couple that had come to his castle looking for a phone. Then he tricks them, along with Eddie's uncle, into eating meat from Eddie's corpse. Yet at the end, you feel worse when Frank N. Furter is killed than when Eddie is killed. That, I think, is the epitome of a charismatic villain.

I know that the Star Wars prequels aren't really going to be remade--least of all with Curry as Palpatine. Yet it's what would happen in an ideal world.