ST George Lucas and the Mystery of the Treatment

I often use 'Disney' as a blanket term to refer to the new creative direction. KK/Lucasfilm and JJ are going to have creative control, but Disney (the corporation) bought Star Wars to do with it what Disney does best nowadays: make top-of-the-line blockbuster entertainment. We will see Disney's stamp all over the execution.

In a way this is a natural progression: George's creation, which is often credited as developing the modern blockbuster formula, has now found its way into the hands of the best possible company (and budget) to handle blockbuster filmmaking. I have no doubt I will go in on December 18 and love the movie, whether it's better than ESB or worse than TPM.

But that being said, I know that it will feel different, because the mechanics behind it without George will be. That's not a bad thing, it's great to have Star Wars reborn. But my obsession with Star Wars has always been driven by feeling to the point where I (and everyone here too, most likely) will be able to feel if there is something slightly off.

 

To those who think Disney is so hands off, might as well give this a gander:

The Iron Man 3 Story Disney Didn't Want Told
http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2013/04/the-iron-man-3-story-disney-didnt-want-told/

Considering how dark Tony Stark's character is in the Marvel Universe is there anything that you wanted to put in the film but were told by the studio 'this won't play for kids'?

Shane: The drinking. Even if you look at the websites of the mommy bloggers they say, you know, 'Watch out, mom's! Tony drinks in this movie!' It's amazing. There's one or two scenes in this movie where he picks up a drink and it'll be in those blogs.

Drew: It's funny because it's only a glass of wine in this one, isn't it?

Shane: Yeah, so they'll say 'watch out because he drinks'. It's pretty amazing because it used to be you drank all the time in movies.

Drew: In our first draft Tony was a bit more rock'n'roll.

Shane: I think we were just told by the studio that we should probably paint Tony Stark as being kind of an industrialist and a crazy guy, or even a bad guy at some points, but the Demon in a Bottle stuff of him being an alcoholic wouldn't really fly. I don't blame that.

Drew: It's also kind of a 'pick your battles' thing; alcoholism is a massive problem but it's also not the best villain for a movie.

Shane: If you're gonna do alcoholism and the Mandarin, then you would really have to make the whole movie about it-

Drew: Otherwise you'll be giving it the short drift.

Shane: But I wouldn't be surprised if at some point someone wanted to make a movie and they'd run out of directions for the character, then they've still got Demon in a Bottle.​

 

That's stretching it somewhat AD... Let's not kid ourselves, these people aren't philanthropists, they are professionals getting very well paid for what they do. I'm sure Michael Bay loves everything he makes too... as does/did Lucas... it means naught really. Disney is a huge corporate business that's probably more concerned about the bottom line than anything else, but that doesn't mean they can't produce some great films along the way.

 

[/quote]


It's exagerated to make a point. If Disney see something they don't like they will do something about it.

Another aspect is KK or whoever ends up being in charge in the future. She is not thinking about what story to tell, she is only thinking about how do we make this profitable. Because that is her job. That can be interpreted as trying to keep Star Wars similar to what it was, or it could mean squeezing out every buck they can. We really don't know, probably it is a mix of the two.

Of course we knew this going in, I'm just articulating why some people are so bummed Lucas' story appears to have been thrown out, because he was really the only thing separating this from just another corporate blockbuster. If Star Wars is to become that, and eventually it will, some segments of the fan base are simply not going to be interested anymore.

Monsanto was not my comparison.

 

From that point of view then it was never going to be Lucas' story. Only ever partly based on it.

Which is the point I've been making from the start and expected no less in the first place.

Storytelling is not simply an outline or even a script. Far too much importance is put on scripts like they are locked in some stasis and cannot be veered from. This is simply not the way it happens. Very rarely does that ever happen. At best it gives you a general path that you already have taken in terms of the story, settings and characters but once you have that you still have a lot of wiggle room.

Between the entire production process from before live action shooting through to well past it from concepts, storyboards, animatics, designs, constant rewrites of the script before, during and after shooting as well in pick-ups and reshoots (which for the PT Lucas had pre-planned sessions) the story is in a constant flux of combinations.

I can't agree. I don't see how they can be anywhere near that. I doubt they are detailed breakdowns that are 60 pages each to that level of detail you describe. No one would possibly agree to direct any movie they were doing under conditions like that and Lucas knows that better than anyone.

The journey from treatments that George created as a generalized outline to final movies that will take each director 3-4 years to make is a long one.

I don't know why Lucas said what he has. As I have said many times this is a guy who has given far more credit to others than I think he should have for his work. Kurtz, Kershner and Kasdan are prime guys who didn't do quite as much as he wants us to believe that they did.

So obviously the end credit for him doesn't mean the same thing as he gives it away.

I think it's pretty much irrelevant in the final product anyway. If TFA's basic story is what MSW has and Darth Lightly Bruise's synopsis reads correct then TFA is a reworking of ANH and ROTJ with elements of TESB.

It's going to be like the entire OT in one night. Which in itself plays right into the same visual jazz storytelling that Lucas did for the movies in the first place.

So if they didn't use his new ideas then they are using his old ideas and his new ideas might have been to use his old ideas in a far more direct way than the prequels.

 

For sure. But there's a false dichotomy operating whereby it's either authentic and auteur-driven or soulless and marketing driven.

I daresay Disney are operating from a position of "No, you can't do that" as opposed to "Here's everything this needs to include". They want something toyetic and that will get people into cinemas and excited about the SW brand. Beyond that, I don't think they care.

 

No, but you ran with it. When it was brought up, it was brought up as a means to point out how ridiculous comparing the two at face value is. And then you compared them at face value. It's a terrible comparison on purpose. That you ended up agreeing with that premise with a straight face prompted me to say "That's a terrible comparison."

Kennedy's job isn't "how do we make this profitable" because it's guaranteed profitable. Her job is "how do I keep this brand vibrant." Same with Feige over at Marvel. And Feige is involved in the storytelling over there, and Disney doesn't mess with him. Kennedy knows what's up with the storytelling, and has her own input. Suggesting her only concern is "making money" doesn't even make sense when it's fairly well known and reported on that she is also part of the creative decisionmaking.

Again - I think a lot of fans are so used to equating Lucasfilm to Lucas that when he decided to sell, they just swapped out one monolithic cultural entity for another, because old habits are hard to break, and having to look at Lucasfilm as a company filled with creatives, making their own decisions and collaborating towards a future is really hard after decades of being trained to think anything with the words Star and Wars in it had to be touched by George Lucas on some level (even the most inconsequential levels) to be considered legitimate.

 

Well said Qui-Riv-Brid!

 

This idea that the treatments were like the final drafts for the prequels, minus the dialogue and a few other things...

I think that's why you're struggling Ken. Suggesting a treatment is the close or comparable equivalent of a final draft is well wide of the mark and shows very little understanding of the development or screenwriting process.

And yes, great post Qui.

 

I don't think the comparison is ridiculous. What exactly makes Monsanto "evil"? They are just a public company looking for profit like all the others. Any other concerns doesn't enter into it, which of course is why they end up doing things that people can conceive as "evil". If it's profitable they don't care.

LF might not be there yet, but in time they will. Profit has no ulterior motives.

That's the exact same thing. Vibrant = long term profits, nothing more.

KenW already posted an example of how the execs can get involved in the writing.

She is part of the creative process because that is part of the money making. To keep the franchise vibrant you need someone who understands it a bit better than an outsider. Makes sense, but it's not a positive in itself. We have no idea if she has any artistic merit. Likely not since those are rare to come by. At least JJ is somewhat accomplished. There's no reason to trust KK when it comes to story. We just assume and hope since she's been around Lucas.

We are not "trained" to think Lucas is Star Wars. He is. What we got from him we will never get again. But using his stories would at least ensure some quality and uniqueness to the product. Now it's up in the air. Having competent and experienced people in the technical departments certainly helps, but it does not make a good movie on its own.

 

Arguably having George on his own in terms of writing and directing didn't make for three good movies recently either. So there's room for subjectivity across the spectrum on this. It's not impossible that JJ's ideas are bad or good, just as it's not impossible that George's ideas were actually not that great, or were good but felt the right direction forwards.

 

I dunno, because I mean, it's been about 30 years of--

--oh. Well, then.

Wait, then why was your initial response to me "It's not my comparison." If you agreed with it at face value, it doesn't matter if it was "yours" or not, since you agree with it anyway.

I'd also suggest not using KenW's examples on anything as intelligent critique or analysis of anything, about anything.

 

This is getting a bit too confrontational for my taste.

 

Thanks very much.

I would be disappointed in merely good Star Wars movies from George. So that I count them as great is simply the normal Star Wars output for him as far as I am concerned.

I would be relatively happy with the new movies being simply good. I think JJ's Trek films were this and so that is what I expect.

The big difference between corporate Star Wars and Lucas' Star Wars of course will be that if TFA or the other movies disappoints in some way (like Paramount was of STID) then changes will be made, scripts thrown out, directors thrown out etc etc.

There will not be one alpha and omega person who is a film-maker in charge. The far, far more interesting story that could happen with the ST is not this first movie but what is the corporate vision right now of what the last movie is going to be about and how close will it actually come to being that?

Will the director of IX (at the behest of Disney) throw whatever JJ and RJ have in mind out and do something that will be completely different?

Are they commited to actually having a distinct end point in IX or is it going to spend a lot of time setting up the trilogy after?

 

I think that's it, Qui. Expectations are going to vary depending on ones feelings on the various outputs to date. I just hope we all get a good to great SW movie, regardless of whose ideas were used.

 

Don't listen to that crazy KenW character! People never make movies of written stories, nor should they, especially when they're written by George Lucas and the movie is part of the Star Wars saga. Also, Disney would never set content requirements for the movies they produce.

 

But you don't understand the development process Ken. At all.

 

Every development process is different.

 

Have you ever been through the development process?

 

fallacy of sunk costs is starting to apply here, man.

 

I never learn.

 

I think the link you have says a lot:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/writer-michael-arndt-exits-star-650671

"I am very excited about the story we have in place and thrilled to have Larry and J.J. working on the script," Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy said in a post on StarWars.com. "There are very few people who fundamentally understand the way a Star Wars story works like Larry, and it is nothing short of incredible to have him even more deeply involved in its return to the big screen. J.J. of course is an incredible storyteller in his own right. Michael Arndt has done a terrific job bringing us to this point and we have an amazing filmmaking and design team in place already prepping for production."

I don't see any real reason as of yet to think that anything much else happened than the normal process of one writer taking the story into script then being replaced with the same story in place and then taken from their into script.

IIRC originally they talked about shooting the movie early in 2014 but moved it back several months due to JJ and Kasdan having to rewrite from "scratch" based on the basic story and outline they had been using for months already with Arndt.

Saying JJ and Kasdan are doing something so totally different from what they were working on for months is akin to this:

While George Lucas is considered the author of the stories for the Star Wars movies, the screenplays for both The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi were written with collaborators. Kasdan and Leigh Brackett collaborated on the script for Empire -- considered by many fans and most critics to be the best story of all the Star Wars movies -- and also worked with Lucas on Return.

The above of course is nonsense. Kasdan and Brackett didn't collaborate on the script at all. They never even met. Lucas wrote the script and Kasdan was brought on in a story editor role over which Lucas had complete control to shape the script as he wanted to rewriting anything that Kasdan expanded upon Lucas' script in the first place.

It's like saying Gary Kurtz did a great job as producer on ANH and TESB. George had to take over Kurtz's duties on ANH and then had to bring Kazanjian in to take over on TESB.

 

This is really the key point, and I personally find it exciting. Lucas was faced with two choices: 1) retire the brand once he himself retired or 2) put things in place so that it could continue without him. He chose 2) and made sure the franchise's integrity was maintained in a way it might not have been, should the rights have been sold after his death. It really was the smartest move he could have made.

Lucas was SW in a sense. But in a way he's achieved immortality just as the franchise has. Cognitive scientist Doug Hofstadter proposes that our "souls" (what he calls "strange loops") exist within our brains but also in the brains of others who "knew" us in some sense. And so Lucas' influence lives on in KK and LK and JJ and so many others working at LFL, just as Campbell lives on in Lucas. And one day that same influence will be passed down again.

This is not mystical blather, however. Anyone interested should read I am a Strange Loop to get the details.

 

The Vanity Fair article specifically makes it sound like JJ and Lk were doing a page one rewrite (which wouldn't have to mean every single idea being tossed, and wouldn't preclude previous ideas making a comeback).

 

In other words, don't turn on a black light around Star Wars.