BTS Why did George Lucas begin the saga with Ep IV?

The difference is one side is focusing on the actual CONTENT of Lucas' words and interviews. The other side is taking potshots because "SOMEONE'S BEIN' A MEANIE TO POOR LUCAS!" Instead of presenting a logical argument.

 

No we are going off of actual things that were said as well. You are just doing the same thing you were accusing us of doing.

 

It's paranoid to think someone is lying? People lie all the time. And you're using quotes from the 1990s to prove he had this stuff planned out before the 1970s?

He has a sprial notebook and we see it! That's proof Lucas had the prequels planned out from 1977... somehow...?

 

There are quotes from the '70's as well but you are just choosing to ignore those. Also there are videos provided here in this thread where the actors are very clearly talking about other trilogies but you are just choosing to ignore those also.

 

Mod edit: Films, not fans

 

Vader being Luke's father was not planned as was Leia being Luke's sister. So the whole backstory hadn't been planned at all. It was initially the Adventures of Luke Skywalker. Then when the twist in ESB was so successful the whole Vader backstory became one that could be told. It wasn't planned before hand. Suddenly it was all about Anakin Skywalker. Nothing was concrete except the story of Luke Skywalker in ANH.

 

Maybe I'm blind but I don't see a quote from the 70s saying the ANH was always intended to Episode 4.

 

Mod edit: Films, not fans

 

George pulled an Indiana Jones. He made it up as he went along.

 

Mod edit: Films, not fans

 

Obviously some of you need to take a deep breath and calm down.

Anyone who wishes to continue this discussion, please do so in a respectful fashion.

 

Mod edit: Lay off the personal attacks

 

darkchrono , could you provide some examples of quotes or interviews or drafts/background material that support your position? Like the kind you mean here: "There are quotes from the '70's as well [...] ."

 

Well for starters go back and look at that link that darthnub posted on page 1. On page 2 of that link he is talking to Alan Dean Foster about what his thoughts are about the series and it is dated December 1975. You can tell by then he had a pretty good idea of what he wanted to tell and it is pretty accurate (not a 100%) with what we ended up getting.

Many people in this thread are choosing to overlook stuff like that while instead focusing in on things like he didn't have it titled 'A New Hope' yet. And you can also clearly see the spin that that guy who wrote 'Secret History of Star Wars' was trying to put on it.

 

That quote says

So there's a very general idea of the arc of what became the OT (though with Luke getting the girl, apparently). There's also an idea of a backstory, which was relatively consistent over the years. But there's also Luke's father being killed (and as the earliest versions of ESB make clear, this is not killed 'from a certain point of view').

If you read beyond that one quote (in the document Nub posted, I mean) and/or check out the drafts/development of the films, you can see that while the general arc is pretty old (though the very earliest drafts/concepts don't start with that arc in place), the details of who was who and how events took place have changed quite a bit over time.

If that's not a concept you dispute, then cool. If that's the case, though, which is the thing you are disputing?

 

Thrawn you deleted part of that quote. He also said in the second part that we would find out who Darth Vader was and that Han would leave at the end of the second part (you did delete those parts for some reason).

I've just been saying that Lucas did indeed have the vision set for Star Wars for along time. That he had things pretty well in mind already by the time the movies started coming out and that it all wasn't just created after the first movie was a success. People are really pulling things out of left field when they are saying things like he hasn't been honest about stuff. Infact he has been honest about the Vader situation. He said that he had it in mind for a long time that Vader was to be Luke's father but he was debating rather or not he should put that in there.

 

Ah I couldn't copy it easily from Nub's thing so I copied it from somewhere else on the net - I guess it was partial. You're right. However, the missing parts don't take away from the fact that the consistencies between that quote and the eventual films are in the generalities.

The part about learning "who Darth Vader is" can be interpreted in a suggestive manner, but it doesn't necessarily mean that he was considered Luke's father in 1975. It could mean all sorts of things - maybe it just meant that we'd learn more about Darth as a character, or we might see a flashback or story that gave more detail to the situation that would have taken place between Ben, Annikin, and Darth.

It's possible that Lucas was considering Vader-as-Annikin in a vague way, but the films, drafts, etc, of that time provide zero evidence for this. In any case, at the time he was first planning ESB (1977), he apparently thought that Annikin Skywalker and Darth Vader would have been different characters.

All of that depends on how one defines "a vision," "for a long time," "well in mind," etc. Of course Lucas had ideas outside of the narrative confines of the one film he had made at the time. But that doesn't mean that the specificities were the same as we know them now. One example is a prequel one - when ROTJ was made, apparently Obi-Wan was the one to find Anakin, chose to train him on his own, etc. Obviously in TPM Qui-Gon fills a lot of those roles. This is something inserted between drafts of that film; initially Obi-Wan was the one to do those things, even in the early versions of TPM.

I guess you could say that a synopsis version of the films would be consistent over time (the intro to the Star Wars novelization does this, actually). But the details really did change over time. I don't know if Lucas "lies" about such things, but he does say things that seem contradictory. It's understandable; I know how the creative process evolves, and how time can affect memory. But that doesn't mean that everything was 'finished' in 1974 and was just waiting to be made since then.

 

Thrawn no writer has every single little detail planned out from the get go. Even if they do have the overall vision in mind (which it seems Lucas did) they still do not have the scenes written out or any of the nitty gritty details put in. People who choose to nitpick about that stuff and accusing him of things based on that are just being overly picky and probably looking for something to complain about.

As far as what Lucas's mindset for Vader's backstory were at the time that that interview was done nobody could say for sure. There is probably a good chance though that he had it in mind that he was going to be Luke's father. In anycase you can't really say (like some people in this thread have been trying to do) that Lucas just created everything after Star Wars was released and he had very little vision for things before that.

Just like in ROTJ when Luke and Leia were talking about their mother Lucas probably at that time didn't have it planned out that she was going to be the queen of Naboo or anything like that. All she was at that point was just Luke and Leia's mother and Anakin Skywalkers wife. Are we going to gripe and moan over the fact that he probably didn't have that stuff planned out.

 

So... I guess I don't understand where the disconnect is, here?

 

Probably the people in this thread who were creating a big fuss over real silly stuff like he didn't have it titled 'A New Hope' and that it was called Star Wars II not Ep. IV or V.
Mod edit: Drop it.

 

The myth of George Lucas as a creator, like that of Gene Roddenberry, is more impressive than either is in reality.

 

He certainly claims to have it all planned out by the late 70s-early 80s

http://www.secrethistoryofstarwars.com/completehistoryofthesequeltrilogy.html

(please note in the post extensive original source citations)

 

Isn't the discussion about whether or not ANH was always episode 4?

 

^The original issue is that, yes, but in order to establish that we must establish the relative credibility of various sources, including GL. GL has made differing claims at differing times as to what he had planned and when. If you read the linked post, you'll note that it appears that ANH was for some time actually Episode SIX (of Twelve). Lucas hasn't done a very good job of keeping his stories straight, and his current statements about ANH "always" being Ep IV are extremely suspect (at a minimum).

 

Ah, sorry I thought you were disagreeing with me.