ST George Lucas and the Mystery of the Treatment

I think that it will give us hopefully the chronology of Lucas' treatments (as he calls them) though what that means in terms of story or outline or notes compared to what Arndt did in several drafts and revisions.

Then Lucas was all a part of the process talking to everyone involved. Lucas also talked about lots of blank spaces that would have to be filled in.

I think a lot of changes are going to be Arndt's filling in since Lucas left them open.

Lucas was always about being fluid in all aspects. His method was not to lock himself down to anything. He wanted a droid general but let the concept artists do their thing without locking them into a narrow focus. What he really wanted he probably knew but wasn't tied down to that so allowed himself to be open to new ideas if they appealed then choose the path he liked best which got whittled down to Grievous.

The point is side characters can be totally reworked. You need a bounty hunter? OK then make one.

I would say that when Arndt left the project and his script was "scrapped" people not well versed with how these things work (many entertainment reporters it seems) thought that everything went with it. Just looking around people actually credit far too much to Kasdan which he didn't do and think that he worked with Brackett on ESB. Not that I really expect them to know any of this.

All indications are that in Lucas' base story that the original trio had distinct support parts which was reflected in Ardnt's script. JJ is using the blanks to increase those roles.

We don't know that isn't exactly what is happening. The only move that seems to have merit is that it moved from being more about the kids in this first one to the originals. There is no reason at all to think that much of anything has changed but that focus.

 

Recent George interview on Charlie Rose:

 

How detailed is a screenplay treatment?

Does it have a script or is it a basic outline?

How basic?

 

It's a prose version of the story, like a short story. By most accounts, Lucas' ST "treatments" were more like sketches, hence Arndt's work producing full treatments.

 

How detailed is a screenplay treatment?

Does it have a script or is it a basic outline?

How basic?
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if you mean in general movie terms a screenplay treatment is often called a "scriptment" and is usually more detailed than a treatment, which is usually between 4-58 pages

if you're interested in this kind of thing or on filmmaking in general

seek out:

FILMMAKING by Jason J. Tomaric

 

How faithful is this going to be to Lucas's outlines?I wish I could see his outline and compare it to the movie.

 

Depends on whether the powers that be thought it would work... I think Lucas has great ideas so who knows.

 

I really hope someone out there is documenting the whole creation process for Episode VII. I would love to watch a making of doc when it's all said and done.

What did Lucas come up with?
What did the first script look like?
What things did JJ add in?

I'd love to see the story-groups role in things. I wonder if Lucas has been "checking in" on them from time to time, or if they have been in contact with him to fact check things they are unsure about. We know Lucas did see a screening of the Rebels premier and gave it his approval, so I can only imagine he could have been shown some of the progress so far.

What will be really interesting, is to see if he gives any sort of opinion about the finished product.

 

And the winner for most threads created in one day goes to...

 

Just remembered how naive I was when I first joined the Star Wars.com message boards I distinctly remember creating a thread titled "Why is everyone ignoring me" after every single one of my redundant threads were left to wallow....if only I'd looked past the first page of titles!

 

Dude, I totally remember that thread. Honestly. Wow.

 

They probably would have based some of it on the original outlines, but a majority of it is probably brand new.

 

They've said the script is heavily based on George's outlines. I'm sure it's somewhat faithful but at the same time they added new stuff in. I'd love to see George's original treatments released eventually.

 

I trust kasdan. You ever read those Raiders of the Lost Ark brainstorm transcripts with Lucas, Spielberg and Kasdan? Those other two knuckleheads needed Kasdan.

http://maddogmovies.com/almost/scripts/raidersstoryconference1978.pdf

 

I'm almost certain there'll be a 'making of' doc similar to the big one made for TPM.

 

I hope they are faithful. Lucas is great at coming up with ideas and storylines, he's just not the best at executing those stories on the big screen as we saw with the prequels. The prequels basic outline is just friggin' great, it just got deviated and out of focus due to poor dialogue, wooden performaneces, lazy cinematography (when actual cameras were used), and stretched, irrelevant (boring) plot points.

Lucas's storyline + Abrams's masterful cinematography = safe bet.

 

EmperorAjay

No one here knows because no one here has seen Lucas' treatment, the various drafts or the final version.

We won't know until the BluRay or making of books come out - maybe.

 

Ha, don't know wether that's awesome or scary!

 

Don't be cruel, he is a youngling:

 

The only person to read the outlines, other than Lucas and Co, is Dale Pollock when he was writing "Skywalking". Mind you, the outlines probably changed quite a bit since then, but here's what he said:

"The final three movies feature an adult Luke and the final confrontation between the rebels and the Empire. The entire saga spans more than fifty-five years; C-3P0 and R2-D2 are the only common elements to all the films."

It's interesting how he was right about the rebels and Empire being in the ST, when so many fans were thinking it was going to go in a more EU direction. He also added this:

"The three most exciting stories were 7, 8, and 9. They had propulsive action, really interesting new worlds, new characters. I remember thinking, 'I want to see these three movies.' "

 

True about the rebels vs the empire in as it is currently rumored to be as opposed a new Republic vs a new faction. But also keep in mind that the original outline of 7-9 was about Luke as a young man still and his search for the "other" which was his sister who was somone else (not Leia). It has been said that IX ended with Luke's final confrontation with The Emperor and Vader. Essentially, what ROTJ became was the original sequel trilogy outline all distilled into one movie to wrap it up and Leia became the sister rather than having it be some long lost girl who hadn't been introduced yet.

What this guy very likely saw, was that version of the treatment.

Yes, many of the elements we will see come next December may very well still be there. But a story treatment about a 60 year old Luke and 70 year old Han and a stormtrooper who deserts his unit and finds his own hero's call and becomes a jedi, was not likely what he saw IMHO.

 

But that doesn't explain why George talked to Mark Hamil back in the late 70s or early 80s about potentially coming back as a 60 something Luke in the 2000s if 7-9 were always about a young Luke.

 

That's true forgot about that. It's very confusing. I know for a fact that at one point the ST was basically what ROTJ is now with 3 more movies of a young Luke.

I know the stories that Hamill has told the press years ago about what George told him. I have also heard George say he never had a story for what happened after ROTJ, which I suspect at some point in time was truthful because he had tied up everything in VI, which was originally supposed to consist of 7-9 originally. Lucas said that he had pondered that it might be fun to write a story about Luke and company as old people, but that didn't exist at some point when he was making the prequels.

It would be really interesting to see a documentary or a behind the scenes feature on the history of the sequel trilogy treatments from the 1970s when Star Wars was first being developed by him up until the final script being completed for VII by JJ and Kasdan.

 

I think that when writers change their stories, they often keep certain elements and hand them to other characters. So if Lucas had originally envisioned Luke searching for "the other," it would make sense that elements of that quest have been handed to the young characters with Luke now being the object of that search.

As a matter of fact, we only need to look at the evolving drafts of the original script to see this concept in action.

So while the particular characters have clearly changed, the general arc and themes may very well be intact.

 

The question is how faithful was Lucas to his own outlines and what does "faithful" mean anyway?

This thread is really asking the same basic question as this one:

http://boards.theforce.net/threads/...by-george-lucas.50024234/page-6#post-51969350

The point I made there and will make again is that a story/outline is just that. A story. Doing the script is a whole other thing.

The outline which Lucas' was far more than simply hand over some ideas on paper. He actually talked it out and met with everyone and explained his vision. By the time JJ and Kasdan came in Arndt seems to have written or revised several drafts and these along with GL's original outlines are the basis for the movie.

What a treatment actually does is give you the core story and characters ie the most very important things. In the case of TESB for example you don't need to be on a snow planet just a rebel base on a barren remote planet somewhere. You don't need to go to a swamp planet just someplace a Jedi Master is that Luke goes to train with. You don't need to go to Cloud City just a place where Luke is drawn to so he can save his friends. The basic ideas that you go from a barren place with almost no life to a primordial place teeming with life (Luke) then to a civilized technological place (Leia and Han) is the basic premise. Yoda doesn't have to be a 2 foot tall frog creature. He could be a she or an 8 foot tall giraffe creature. Lando's role could be any old smuggler friend of Han's who will betray them. He is another iteration of what Han could have become. If Lando doesn't lose the Falcon is he with Leia and Han the administrator of Cloud City?

The real core story of TESB is of course around Luke training with an ancient Jedi Master, finds out more about the Force then goes to face Vader, who turns out to be his father and the devastating effect that has on Luke. Around that core you can wrap all sorts of elements. It's more complex than that of course but that is the basic outline.

For example if VII's basic core story involves the return of some previous Sith Lord from before Sidious George could have put in Plagueis but JJ decides to use Bane or create his own version of a Sith Lord. It's still a Sith Lord anyway you use it. Now Plagueis does the musical rhyming of connecting it all together through Plagueis to Sidious to Anakin to Luke which is another Star Wars through line that comes into the films over and over like Leia to the droids to Luke to Ben to Han and back to Leia or Qui-Gon to Jar Jar to the Queen to Anakin to Yoda back to Qui-Gon and further from Qui-Gon to Obi-Wan etc.

You can take the same outline for TESB and give it to 5 directors and get 5 entirely different movies depending how they move and change things around. What if Luke leaves for Dabobah early in the film and you have the Yoda material in the first quarter and have the Hoth battle in the second quarter? The you have the tonality like ANH and not TESB?

Hardly. It was the other way round. He needed them. You probably believe Kasdan wrote TESB as well.