Saga Did Disney commit an "orginal sin"?

Okay, so I've had this debate in many threads, I thought I'd focus it with this here...

Did Disney commit an "original sin" by tossing George Lucas synopsis/treatment for the Sequel Trilogy?

First of all, I want to say that I thought TFA was awesome. Seeing Han Solo and Chewie after all these years was a dream come true, and Rey, Finn, and Kylo are fantastic new characters. I thought JJ did a very good job, and he absolutely brought a lot of the original SW audience back to the franchise (while I never left, I do appreciate that). So I have no major complaints about TFA. Some minor.

Actually, to me, the biggest disappointment about TFA was that they didn't use George's story. Clearly, they didn't like it. But I just can't get past the idea that something about this doesn't feel right.

"I have a bad feeling about this."

After dealing with all the Lucas hatred throughout the prequels, I was always grateful that despite all the "he ruined my childhood crap", in the end, we got the movies George wanted to make. And I loved them all. I would have no interest in seeing someone else's TPM. I can hear eveyone screaming, he didn't have to sell to Disney! Obviously, he wanted it all, and in my view, I wish that's the way it went. They couldn't figure out a way to tell Episode VII with Luke in it? Give me a break. That's quite a failure of imagination. You're writing a sequel to Return of the Jedi, and you can't figure out how to include Luke until minute 120? I'm sorry, but "I have a bad feeling about this." Don't get me wrong. It was a cool final moment. But was it worth him not being in it?

What is my overall point? That Bob Iger and Disney may have committed an original sin that will ultimately doom the future of SW. Again, I fully concede that Episode 8 and 9 may be the best two SW movies ever made. I am only stating how I am feeling right now. The recent news that Rian Johnson said he was given almost total freedom with Episode 8, implying that practically nothing was planned out in advance past TFA. So essentially Disney threw out the Lucas treatment in order to move forward without any long term plan at all? "I have a very bad feeling about this."

And just to be clear. I have been a loyal, faithful fan since 1977. I hated when people complained about Ewoks. I liked many of the Special Edition changes and easily accepted ones I didn't. I loved TPM and despised how fans turned on George. I loved the Clone Wars movie and thought the hatred on it was ridiculous. And I love both cartoon series. So I am someone who has always been positive and supportive of anything Star Wars. But admittedly, most of that positivity came from the fact that I trusted George Lucas. He wasn't always perfect, but it was always his vision, and in the end, that's part of what gives it its integrity. The guy knew what he was doing. They essentially made a SW movie that George Lucas himself was completely against, philosophically. And he voiced his opinions and they ignored them. Totally their right, I know. But WTF?

Tossing George's ideas may be the height of "arrogance" on Disney's part. And I am just praying it doesn't come back to haunt the franchise. Karma is a bitch, and Disney is pressing their luck.

 

Doom the future? No...They have made the future far more powerful than Lucas's company when he had it...

Take that either from a perspective or optimism or skepticism. I prefer the latter.

 

I meant from a "quality" perspective.

 

Look, I don't really like the way George Lucas did Star Wars. The EU took it to a different direction that I find far superior. However if you're going to make a film in the Skywalker Saga, George Lucas has to do it. The Saga is his story. You can't hijack that. If it isn't his story it shouldn't be called 'Episode VII'.

 

^
Just out of curiosity, when did you first begin to watch the movies? I wonder if older fans like me cling to George Lucas more than younger fans. When you refer to the EU, I assume you mean the old EU, which I also loved. Believe it or not, I've read every single SW EU novel, and with the exception of the Old Republic books, which I couldn't get into, I really enjoyed nearly all of them. In fact, the fact that we never got to see the Big Three back together again like we did in the books was a big disappointment to me. They had one opportunity to do that, Episode VII, and they chose not to do it. That opportunity will never present itself again. Lucas' treatment did that, I assume. But to speak to your point that you never really liked the way George Lucas did Star Wars, would you care to explain that further? It's hard for me to understand how you could like any of it, and not credit George Lucas for the vast majority of whatever it was you liked. He did create the concept.

 

Well I do not like George Lucas but I do not like Disney either
I would have preferred that Star Wars to be sold to Warner Bros.

 

I don't know about original sin, but they sure made a gutsy move by knowingly going against GL's wishes for the trilogy. I still believe that TFA carries some strands of DNA from his treatment that will hopefully be expanded upon in TLJ and EpIX, but to go to such extreme lengths to satisfy nostalgia hungry fans is a bit much. Especially since they also had RO in the pipeline! That movie alone should've been incentive enough to let the Saga installments go in a radically different direction.

I'm still hopeful, though. TLJ and EpIX might turn out so mind-bendingly awesome that they put the entire Skywalker Saga in a different light and make us all appreciate the entirety of it so much more.

As they should.

 

I totally agree. It was arrogance and they delivered what they set out to do: a safe and cheap repetition of what had already been done. A regression of the established story, characters and visuals. And even if they try to fix things in future movies, the damage has already been done. They are not going to remake the movie and the sequels will have to follow its premiss. They won't get any pity from me when the time comes, though.

 

The NJO series is my ST. The Yuuzhan Vong are a nice engaging, and new enemy.
I have issues with DNT, LOTF and FOTJ, but am beginning to appreciate them more after watching TFA.
The Killiks, Abeloth, Lost Tribe of the Sith, etc. are all more engaging than the First Order imo.

 

You've seen how much changes from draft to draft in Lucas's scripts, right?

Even ROTS had major rewrites, with him changing why and how Anakin Skywalker fell during reshoots!



If Lucas had stayed on, it's likely that his original summary would have been rewritten to what we got, anyways.

He just wasn't part of that process this time except for the first couple pre-script months, so doesn't know how it evolved to what it is.

(I really do hope Lucas's summaries are released after IX, the ones he sold to Disney as his synopsis of the Sequel Trilogy... but I'll only look at it like how I look at the original drafts for ANH or ROTJ or TPM or ROTS... interesting trivia, seeing if any trashed ideas can be recycled to inspire future SW books/comics/movies).

 

No, is the answer.

 

I would argue Lucas himself committed an "original sin" when writing Star Wars in 1975.

He'd wanted to demonstrate the Empire's cruelty by showing the graphic aftermath of Leia's torture in Vader's prison. But by the end of 1975, with budget cuts pressing on him and the management at Fox doubtful about the prospects of his little space-opera film, Lucas began to panic: he'd already started thinking of SW as a story spread over multiple films, and he didn't want it derailed at the very first outing. The failure of THX 1138 at the cineplexes still haunted his mind.

So he decided he needed to maximize the revenue from SW to improve the prospects of a sequel. The best way to do this was by avoiding an R rating, keeping Star Wars open to all ages. The stark realities of Imperial torture, meant as a commentary on Vietnam and the US military-industrial complex, were tidied off-screen in the name of family-friendly moviegoing. It paid off: Star Wars was a massive hit at the box office.

But there were consequences. In-universe, Lucas struggled to come up with alternative ways to depict the Empire as a credible threat to the heroes. His solution, worked out during filming, was to kill off Obi-Wan on the Death Star. This in turn led to the problem of who Luke's Jedi mentor would be in future films. And if Obi-Wan could show up as a ghost, why couldn't Luke's father do the same? This problem of story-crafting, the result of hasty alterations to the first film, ultimately led to the merging of Darth Vader and Luke's father, who had previously been two separate characters.

And in the real world, the politics of Star Wars became so anodyne, so essentially unthreatening, that anyone could identify with the Rebels fighting against the evil Empire. Most famously, Ronald Reagan adopted this rhetoric in spades, so much so that his SDI missile defense system quickly was dubbed "Star Wars" by the press. The sort of Goldwaterite conservatism that Lucas had railed against in the early 1970s had now co-opted his film franchise in the public mind.

And no one, outside of a very small coterie, ever expected that George Lucas would make another R-rated film.

 

If you were disappointed with the PT, then you are probably fine with the idea of giving someone else a try.

 

Exactly: him changing his own story. Not discarding his story and do something 'for the fans'.

 

I think Disney was wrong by not using GL's story treatments. You know George is very creative when it comes to write stories, but he is terrible at writing the script. Episode V is great but was wrote by Kasdan, not Lucas.

Disney just didn't want to use his name. People don't like him anymore.

 

^ Exactly. Lucas' dialog writing is very far from a strong suit, but he's always been crackerjack at plot construction.

 

I do not like George Lucas but I appreciate what he's done for the saga. It seems very bad that Disney ignored the creator of the franchise that they own

It's as if Disney ignored Stan Lee who is an icon in the world of comics

 

Disney just doesn't have the flexibility that George had IMO. You could believe whatever you wanted about Star Wars, no forced Canon system like we have now.

My jam bruh'. Although I'm more of a Bantam guy.

You had issues with Abeloth? I thought she was great! Loved the connection to TCW!

 

Not really a problem with Abeloth, but it was Luke and Ben fighting her, aided or abetted by the Lost Tribe, Vestara, Jaina and the other Jedi and whatever Force group they were with. Just got tiring imo. Though am planning to read the series again soon. And Daala as COS? Seriously? Jag and Jaina going back and forth as well. Recently re-read the Killiks scenes in Apocalypse. Loved it. Abeloth wasn't the problem. Other things were. I loved the way villains have progressed from ROTJ in the old EU.

I'm not too fussed what they do with TFA and sequels. I have my ST so let them do whatever they want. And I'm even planning a rewritten DNT, LOTF, FOTJ to continue the Saga.

 

Disney does not care about its canon, it only cares about the money produced by his movies
They do not care about the Marvel comics or the novels

 

In my opinion, it would have been a failure of the imagination if they had Luke in it too much. It has absolutely nothing to do with "figuring out a way to tell Episode VII with Luke in it". Anybody could do that. If you give me an hour, I could pull up a dozen fan-fiction Episode VIIs with Luke and Co. front and center. They could have easily thought up a plot with Luke being omnipresent if they wished.

No, my friend, keeping Luke's role minimal was a deliberate decision. You see, this film had to establish its own cast of characters who would be the heroes of a new trilogy. After all, the prequels and the original trilogy had their own cast, so of course the sequels would too. And in order to do that correctly, Luke had to be kept out of the spotlight. This was so he wouldn't overshadow the new cast. It was a good move by Abrams.

I sincerely doubt that nothing was planned out in advance. Lucasfilm probably had a rough idea of where the story was going after TFA. But of course, they'd want to keep it open so that that creative "spark" of the individual writers and directors could come out. Keep in mind that, despite what Lucas would ultimately claim, the original trilogy wasn't thoroughly planned out after ANH either.

That's fine- but the opinions of people who were and still are critical of ewoks, or the prequels, or the Special Editions? They're still every bit as valid as yours.

And herein lies the ultimate issue. You can't take it for granted that George's concept for Episode VII would have been solid gold. There's a chance (however remote it may seem to you) that Lucas's ideas weren't thrown out because of the evil corporation only cared about making money; perhaps they were thrown out because maybe, just maybe, they weren't that good.

 

He decided to sell his story, and renounce his ownership of it. He didn't wait until he died. He did it in his lifetime. He put his stamp of approval on handing over LFL to Kathleen Kennedy, and the sale to Disney (Disney isn't as overbearing as some people think on SW).

Your argument is nonsensical to me.

(and Lucas still kept making changes to the movies, even up to Vader's new ROTJ "nooo" a few years ago, he doesn't stay decisive about anything)

 

So what? That's not what you were arguing. Nobody is arguing over their rights or lack thereof. Your argument was that even Lucas made changes to his work, which is a false equivalence since Lucas making changes to his own work is not comparable to someone else discarding his story to do something else 'for the fans'.

Why? You're the one bringing fallacies by comparing the incomparable. Nonsensical are claims such as this: "If Lucas had stayed on, it's likely that his original summary would have been rewritten to what we got, anyways."

Not only is that wrong but it's another false equivalence. The changes he made to the movies later on have nothing to do with the story. It's minutae. The story didn't change.

 

Disney got the property so they should do whatever they want with it. Obviously there's a huge demand and critical appreciation for the Star Wars they're churning out. I don't fault their creative mandate beyond acknowledging that on a personal level they've mostly killed my interest in Star Wars as an active, ongoing series.