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  1. In Memory of LAJ_FETT: Please share your remembrances and condolences HERE

BTS The Sequel Trilogy That Never Was: Episodes VII-IX: The Historical Record

Discussion in 'Star Wars Saga In-Depth' started by Darth_Nub, Nov 16, 2009.

  1. Lt.Cmdr.Thrawn

    Lt.Cmdr.Thrawn Manager Emeritus star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Sep 23, 1999
    1. If I may request without seeming too rude, please read at least part of whatever thread is being responded to and try to fit into discussions already taking place? Or at least, give some details or unique personal views?

    2. How in the world did you score that username, and only a few days ago? This board has existed for 13 years and no one took it (probably no one took it while we were still allowed special characters in names, and then they took that away and no one COULD take it til now. Still cool.).
     
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  2. Deputy Rick Grimes

    Deputy Rick Grimes Jedi Grand Master star 6

    Registered:
    Sep 3, 2012
    I am sorry for the first part and for the second part, i do not know how I was able to score the name, i just typed Darth Vader and it let me use it which is cool
     
  3. Darth_Nub

    Darth_Nub Manager Emeritus star 5 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Apr 26, 2009
    Thanks, Lt.Cmdr.Thrawn, very diplomatic, and good to see you again, surprised you weren't on the temp boards (or WERE YOU? ;)).

    Back on topic (sort of), this guy from the Kenner proposal had an interesting history:

    [​IMG]

    As mentioned in the above links, Abel G Pena attempted several times to work Atha Prime into canon, but far more fascinating is how this design made it into the very early EU of the Second Era of SW, as an Imperial Sentinel in Dark Empire:

    [​IMG]

    The development of Dark Empire actually precedes that of the Zahn trilogy, initially being a Marvel initiative, before Dark Horse picked it up. Back in those days, GL was far more hands on with the new EU, and supposedly had more input into Dark Empire than anything else.

    Kevin J Anderson claims that GL gave him background on the Sith when he was developing the Tales of the Jedi series (most likely just old 1970s notes & drafts for Star Wars).
    Luke serving Palpatine, but sending entire fleets to their doom, echoes an idea brought up in story discussions for ROTJ (Luke pretends to turn, but uses the Death Star to destroy the Imperial fleet), along with Luke's vision in DE of wearing Vader's mask, another idea from ROTJ discussions. Then you've got this obscure, abandoned design from 1985/86 duplicated in the comic series.

    GL nixed the idea that the villain of DE was an imposter wearing Vader's armour - not sure if he actually suggested a clone of Palps, but he certainly approved it (LFL also stomped on Zahn's idea of an insane clone of Obi-Wan Kenobi for HTTE).

    Does make you wonder how much GL let slip to the authors of the then-new EU back then - he was probably keeping PT stuff pretty close to his chest, but what about the ST?
     
  4. Krueger

    Krueger Chosen One star 5

    Registered:
    Aug 9, 2004
    I like to think (and always have thought) that the Dark Empire trilogy is pretty close to what we would have gotten to see in a sequel trilogy.
     
  5. ShaneP

    ShaneP Ex-Mod Officio star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Mar 26, 2001
    Just a reminder to newcomers here: this is a Historical Archive if you will of what Lucas and others had in mind for the sequel trilogy and our thoughts on those ideas.

    It's not really a place for "What I would like to see" or "Will they ever make a ST?".

    Those are topics for others threads.

    Keep up the great work Nub.

    And nice find Lt. Cmdr Thrawn.

    I actually think those finds fit into this thread because it's as official as one can get without it being Lucasfilm itself. Kenner played a big role.
     
  6. Darth_Nub

    Darth_Nub Manager Emeritus star 5 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Apr 26, 2009
    Correction, actually from Dark Empire II:

    [​IMG]
     
  7. DarthBoba

    DarthBoba Manager Emeritus star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Jun 29, 2000
    Guh. Thanks for the reminder of how mind-numbingly bad DE2 was. :p

    Dark Empire, on the other hand, is great, and I think George saw an opportunity to get an unofficial sequel "trilogy" out there with it. Certainly his "suggestion" that the villain be changed from somebody wearing Vader's armor to Palpatine himself hints that way. DE would be utterly forgettable if option A had been taken, but instead we get a metaphysical bet between the last living Jedi and the greatest Dark Lord of them all.
     
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  8. Darth_Nub

    Darth_Nub Manager Emeritus star 5 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Apr 26, 2009
    Pretty much. It's basically what he says here:

    - Wired, May 1999

    It's been pointed out that GL & LFL initially restricted the EU to only setting stories a few years after ROTJ, supposedly so they wouldn't infringe on the timeframe of the actual Sequel Trilogy - anywhere between 20 & 40 years after ROTJ. This has obviously changed in recent years, now that the ST has not only been abandoned, its very existence has been officially denied, and I suspect its storyline has been written out of existence by developments in the PT (its relevance and purpose certainly has).

    Of course, apart from the prequels, stories about Luke, Leia & Han are all that anyone really wanted from new SW stories anyway. It probably occurred to GL very early on that a SW storyline set 20 years after his current one & following different characters altogether wasn't necessarily going to appeal to audiences. This may have been one of the factors which led him to change his initial vision of the ST from a separate trilogy of its own to the 'reunion' concept - following the cast of the OT in later years.

    This brings me to another issue - the timeframe of the Sequel Trilogy. One of the very few specifics we've ever received from GL about the ST is this:

    - George Lucas to Alan Arnold, 1979

    So Episode VII would take place approximately 20 years after ROTJ, although it's unknown how long he envisioned the PT & ST to be actually be, so it might have been as little as 15 years later, or as many as 30. I'd go with a lower figure, as I imagine he was planning the PT to be somewhat more epic in scale, & therefore longer, than the ST. Let's just say 20 years.

    However, Luke Skywalker was about 21-23 years old at the end of ROTJ - twenty years later he'd be no older than 43. No spring chicken, but barely middle-aged, and hardly old enough to be a wise old Obi-Wan Kenobi type of figure. Even if you stretch the gap to 30 years, 53 years old still isn't quite there (yes, I know Alec Guinness was 57 when he appeared in SW/ANH, but he was playing an older character).
    So GL either got his dates muddled up (very possible), or an older Luke wasn't going to be the connection between OT & ST, passing on his knowledge of the Force to the new hero.

    With the reunion-ST vision, however, all comments indicate that the gap had widened to about 35-40 years anyway.
     
  9. DarthBoba

    DarthBoba Manager Emeritus star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Jun 29, 2000
    Ehh.. idk about Luke's age really playing into wisdom, necessarily. I mean, let's look at Obi-Wan's life decisions at 23-25 in The Phantom Menace:

    "Whee twirl lightsabre!"

    "Insert sarcastic remark here"

    Luke at that age was literally shaping the future of the galaxy by the skin of his teeth with very little outside assistance.
     
  10. Darth_Nub

    Darth_Nub Manager Emeritus star 5 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Apr 26, 2009
    True, but it's not so much about Luke necessarily being wise in his early 40's, it's about him immediately appearing to be wise. In movies, it's all about appearance and archetypes, and one of the best ways to immediately convey wisdom in a character to an audience is with the character's apparent age (at least initially). This applies even more so in a fantasy series, with 'wise old men' such as Merlin & Gandalf having set the benchmark (and Obi-Wan, for that matter).

    To tell you the truth, though, I simply think it's probably a case of GL not thinking such details through on that level, certainly not for a series of films he wouldn't be embarking on for another decade. The gap between PT & OT was determined by Luke's age at the time of SW/ANH, so as far as a broad description was concerned, he probably figured he'd keep things somewhat symmetrical at the other end.
     
  11. DarthBoba

    DarthBoba Manager Emeritus star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Jun 29, 2000
    Yeah, that makes sense.
     
  12. Darth_Nub

    Darth_Nub Manager Emeritus star 5 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Apr 26, 2009
    Well, this seems as good a time as any to bump this thread...

    Still trying to get my head around the news, but remaining skeptical as to how closely 'Episode 7' (the working title for the Disney production due in 2015) will relate to the ST discussed back around 1979-81.

    Very little to go on, obviously:


    http://entertainment.nbcnews.com/_n...wars-7-will-need-the-force-to-be-with-it?lite
    Putting aside GL's very smartarsed way of backtracking (apart from saying he wasn't going to make any more, he also said he never wrote any more stories, that's where the story ended, it was more of a media thing than me, etc), it looks like we're getting an actual 'trilogy', set after ROTJ.
    With so little actual information, I'm inclined to think it'll be a new story started from scratch. I might be wrong, though.
     
  13. Lt.Cmdr.Thrawn

    Lt.Cmdr.Thrawn Manager Emeritus star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Sep 23, 1999
    Darth_Nub See my presponse in the other thread.
     
  14. oierem

    oierem Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Mar 18, 2009
    There are no treatments written by Lucas at all... they contradict themselves when they say that they're working with the writers to figure out what the story is going to be.
     
  15. Lt.Cmdr.Thrawn

    Lt.Cmdr.Thrawn Manager Emeritus star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Sep 23, 1999
    I'll say here what I said there. I am still very curious about the "original" plans, but given how the saga was deliberately mutated into being both more grandiose and narrower (an "unbalanced" Force, "The Tragedy of Darth Vader"), I don't know how many of the "original" ideas (whatever they are, and however many of them there are) could possibly still be relevant. In any case, it can't be what it would have been in 1979.


    Completely random thought: Once, Lucas said of the Sequel Trilogy that it would feature "the character who survives Star Wars III and his adventures." Adapting this sufficiently... an adult Ahsoka? (Not that this would have been planned all along, just that I could believe that they'd try it.)
     
  16. Darth_Nub

    Darth_Nub Manager Emeritus star 5 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Apr 26, 2009
    That's been my position all along. Unfortunately, as I mentioned in the other thread, spin about these new films is almost definitely going to play heavily on them still being based on the 1970s vision. In a way, this could be the worst thing that could have happened in terms of trying to discover just what the original plans really were.
    It's also provided a convenient excuse for Rinzler's ROTJ book to include absolutely nothing about the films beyond ROTJ - those storylines are now officially 'spoilers'.

    Oh dear God...
     
  17. ShaneP

    ShaneP Ex-Mod Officio star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Mar 26, 2001
    Wow. Absolutely incredible news. I'm all for more SW and have said I'd love a sequel trilogy.

    And they can really go anywhere they want with it. They don't even have to have the same set of characters if they don't want too(although I'm sure there will be some carryover).
     
  18. Lt.Cmdr.Thrawn

    Lt.Cmdr.Thrawn Manager Emeritus star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Sep 23, 1999
    Exactly what I was thinking. Though in MoSW there were those bits (like in the appendix) that seem to represent what was "originally" there. Maybe if/when there are Making Of books for this new trilogy there will be similar documentation (one hopes).
     
  19. Lt.Cmdr.Thrawn

    Lt.Cmdr.Thrawn Manager Emeritus star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Sep 23, 1999
    Also I happened to peruse the ST Wikipedia page, and found this, supposedly from Starlog in 1999:

    Q: Does that mean you won't do Episodes VII, VIII and IX?
    Lucas: I will do VII, VIII and IX.
    Q: You will not? Will they be made by somebody else?
    Lucas: yes. They will.
    Q: So this trilogy ends it?
    Lucas: This is not it. This is not all there is.

    Did we know about this (despite his contemporaneous protestations about NOT doing those films, and that ROTJ WAS the end)? Now that I'm typing it it seems oddly familiar...
     
  20. Darth_Nub

    Darth_Nub Manager Emeritus star 5 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Apr 26, 2009
    I'm calling shenanigans (not on you, on whoever has been messing with Wiki). No way we would have missed that.

    It sounds more like an incorrect paraphrasing of a few similar statements he's made - implying that his story's done, if any other films are made they'll be someone else's vision.
     
  21. Darth_Nub

    Darth_Nub Manager Emeritus star 5 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Apr 26, 2009
    Just checked this entry - looks like it's been changed back (due to possible vandalism, according to the history), this is how it now reads:

     
  22. Lt.Cmdr.Thrawn

    Lt.Cmdr.Thrawn Manager Emeritus star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Sep 23, 1999
    That makes more sense.
     
  23. Saurion-Fett

    Saurion-Fett Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Jul 3, 2001
    Cool post...I do think i a vague george lucus way ...he has a ST ready and I think disney will run with that...after a few touch ups and re writes
     
  24. captain_trips

    captain_trips Jedi Knight

    Registered:
    Oct 31, 2012
    Holy thread revival, batman!
     
  25. Lt.Cmdr.Thrawn

    Lt.Cmdr.Thrawn Manager Emeritus star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Sep 23, 1999
    Hey remember that conversation about what might be on the second page of the "baffling" outline in MoESB?

    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]

    I guess you were right. Any additional commentary or thoughts on this? I'm too tired right now to figure out what implications, if any, this has for the dating of various saga structures. (Also I guess we can see why Rinzler didn't include both pages in the book; the second page is pretty boring.)


    EDIT. I take that back. See how the page is slightly transparent? I just looked in higher contrast and while I can't read it all, it appears to be a list of settings. (I can't format it properly but you get the picture.)

    This may be one of the pages cited in The Annotated Screenplays.