Speculation What Changed to Prompt Lucas to Outline an ST?

I think Lucas was tired of dealing with the whole thing and wanted to quit. His comments concerning retirement and making SW movies ("doing something that everyone hates you for...) seems to pretty clearly show he wanted to break free from SW. My guess is that Disney wanted story treatments as part of the deal and Lucas had to flesh something out. It seems to me that all of those comments back in the 70's regarding the sequels were just vague talk. Nothing really specific was laid out.

 

So, 60%ish for a classic film franchise with loads of preexisting goodwill is hardly a commercial success. In addition, most of the "positive" reviews cited on rotten tomatoes spend more time on the flaws of the film than the strengths. Most approached the films like I did; they are fun and worth seeing for the spectacle, yet were. universally panned for the storytelling.

Hold Star Wars to a high standard guy. I always will.

 

Most approached the films like I did; they are fun and worth seeing for the spectacle, yet were. universally panned for the storytelling.


I thought the story was amazing, especially the third act. The PT is severly flawed, in my opinion, due to three terrible miscasts. It always seemed so taboo to say that in here because several people would jump down ones throat at the notion that Christensen isn't that great of an actor or that Portman really kinda sucked in these movies, and yet - again in my humble opinion - it seems so obvious.

 

Didn't he have some ideas for 7-9 and 10-12 when he was still making 4-6 since his ideas for 7-9 was put into 6 maybe those ideas for 10-12 at that time are gonna be put into this new 7-9.

 

I think he always wanted to do it, but thought it would be too tiring. He's now able to pass Star Wars on to someone he trusts.

 

What I mean is that there was never a plan for there to be four trilogies: the other three films were intended to be stand-alone adventures, a lot like the current plan for "spinoffs".

Out of curiosity, who was the third miscast?

 

I disagree with the "GL had been rejected" theory because the Blu-Rays sold well.


What they had in mind in the 12 Episode days is a good question.

 

Oh great. Robot legs Darth Maul.

 

that second Hamill clip is cool. I asked round about these parts about the "12 episodes" awhile back, and if you piece it together from article snippets, Lucas is talking about in the 80s about a 9 episode series, then he has an idea for "weird one off" stories. He even mentions something about just about Wookies. So if you extrapolate a bit, it's quite possible whatever "10-12" were, they weren't proper episode continuations but became things like Holiday Special, Droids cartoon, Ewok movies and so on.

 

I fail to see the correlation.

 

She/he's probably saying that robot legs Maul will appear in the ST. If I'm right, there's another thread for that topic.

 

I know, but I don't get how jumped to that conclusion.

 

It was GL's idea to put robot legs Maul in TCW.

 

It was GL's idea to create Star Wars too. I still don't see the correlation.

 

I guess she/he's assuming that GL put his ST concepts into TCW. Ask her/him to explain it.

 

No, s/he's implying that s/he disagrees with the idea of having Darth Maul return in the first place, and with having him return with spider legs at that; s/he is therefore implying that if TCW is the thing that kick-started Lucas' creativity to begin work on the ST, then s/he has little confidence that the ST will be any good.

First, after the episode that just aired, I refuse to see how s/he could possibly have a problem with TCW getting Lucas to find his voice again; second, everyone's right: there is another thread for TCW-bashing. And it ain't here.

 

I agree that this is close to the answer. I think the money is another factor. I also agree with anyone who has stated that Disney will help perpetuate the legacy for generations to come. I just hope they don't mess it up.

 

I think it was Disney's idea to push for the ST. It was probably the first stipulation on buying the Star Wars franchise from GL that they insisted on, which was the guarantee on allowing them to make future films. GL had to concede on that alone, regardless of his wishes.

 

Here is how I think it all evolved through the years:

Lucas' original concept consisted of a 12 episode saga. It was broken down as follows:

1-3: Story of a young Darth Vader and Obi-Wan focusing on Vader's turn to the darkside, the fall of the Republic and the rise of the Empire. (pretty much exactly what we ended up getting in the PT)

4-6: Introduction of Luke and his story, the revelation that Vader is his father, and the ongoing war between the rebellion and the empire.

7-9: The trilogy which acted as the conclusion of story which focuses on Luke, the discovery of Luke's long lost sister (not Leia) in another part of the galaxy, and the final confrontation between Luke and the Emperor, the redemption of Vader, and the rebellion finally destroying the empire once and for all.

10-12: The story Luke and his sister's offspring. Luke and maybe his sister act as the elder jedi masters who "Pass the torch" to the new generation of young jedi and a new jedi order. Also possibly focusing on the resurrection of the New Republic.

Eventually Lucas decided against 12 episodes and cut it to 9. IMHO, this decision happened after ESB was released in theaters and either before or during the writing of the ROTJ script. He decided to cut down Luke's story from taking place of the course of 6 episodes (4-9), to simply ending it at part 6, explain away the sister thing by revealing it being Leia instead, and having Luke's final confrontation with Palpatine and Vader's redemption take place in part 6. Meanwhile, I do believe Lucas' original conception of episodes 10-12 has always been there in the form of notes. Now that 7-9 can no longer be the continuation and conclusion of Luke's story and Vader's redemption, he is simply making what was originally Episodes 10-12 to now simply occupy the chapter numbers of 7-9 (which is what we are now officially getting)

This all would seem to explain away all of the various interviews we have read through the years including Hamill's comments, Kurtz's comments, etc...... other than Lucas' denials, which is now clearly a smokescreen.

 

If it weren't for Hamill's comments through the years I might agree. But Hamill was talking about a story treatment Lucas had been promising Mark he'd be a part of since 1983 in which he passes excaliber to the next generation in a sequel trilogy. This tells me that such a story has been part of GL's notes since the beginning as part of the 12 episode arc, or however many it indeed did include from the beginning.

 

You are missing the fact that many elements of what would have been the ST spoken about in these clips were consolidated into Return of the Jedi, most importantly, the final showdown with The Emperor. Moving this to Ep. VI, regardless of whether the series would ultimately be 9 or 12 episodes, is a game changer.

 

Is it possible that at one point Palpatine was supposed to survive the fall of the Empire?

 

It's pretty clear Lucas' decision to pare down the films came during the production of Empire. The film took an enormous toll on him physically, and I'm sure emotionally too as the budget continued to balloon and film fell further and further behind budget. Lucas eventually had to come back to Fox to secure a loan to finish the film, signing over distribution rights and profit points in the process. While the film is a masterpiece, the production was a nightmare and I'm sure Lucas was just done. So he simply took the main points of 6-9 and condensed the key themes into one film, leaving any thoughts of prequels and sequels to a later date... maybe never. However, I doubt there were any clear details about the stories for the sequel trilogy (Episodes X-XII), other than a general outline.


Yancy

 

This is at the heart of my original topic here, and with such, getting rid of Palpatine in Ep VI needed to be compensated for in order to have an ST, which is the change that I am getting at with my question.

When you take a 12 episode idea, and cut it down to 6 by pushing together story elements that tie up the ends of the idea, with no intention at the time you do this to continue it, you need to make changes to compensate for the things you moved around in order to move forward.

So Lucas moved things that WOULD have been in 7-12 down into Ep VI in order to sew things up. This was done when 1-3 had not happened yet. My contention is that during the production of the PT, Lucas decided to "plant" those changes in order to make an ST at least possible. Thats not to say that he decided at that time to actually do an ST. Maybe during TCW, as some have suggested, he actually made that decision, but I firmly believe that the ST was set up by the PT in ways that were not part of any earlier or original plans, but rather in ways that compensate for the changes made in the OT that gave us the resolution at the end of ROTJ.

 

I always interpreted the whole Chosen One Prophecy to mean "ROTJ is the end".