CT How planned ahead were the prequels

He knew, and he corrected him.

 

Calling ANH Episode IV in 1977 was the single most brilliant thing Lucas could have done to kick off a franchise. I remember it blowing my mind as a child. Also, the fact that all of this took place a long time ago, yet so technologically superior to our own world.

 

In 1977 it was just Star Wars, no episode title or number. That followed later.

 

Guess it went over your head too.

 

I don't know that it would be a better story. I mean, I think it's one of those things that works good as a backstory, but I'm not sure how it would look on the screen? It makes Padme's character look weak, and it makes Anakin look more like a sociopath than he already does. I know there's this need by some in the fandom to have wanted a "badass" Vader from the beginning. For me, I don't think I would have been charmed by that at all.

Every November, I try to do the national novel writing month challenge, and each time I start out with an outline and character cards. And then each time, my characters start to do things I didn't expect, and sometimes plot points I thought would be cool turn out to be dry and boring. So things have to be changed. So maybe I'm more sympathetic to that creative process?

I also agree that calling ANH episode IV was pretty awesome.

 

When later?

 

For the theatrical re-release in 1981 - http://lucasfilm.com/star-wars-episode-4-a-new-hope

 

Got it thanks. I was born in 1977 so my memory is a little foggy.

 

I do know what he meant. But the fact is that every bit of story changes, no matter who is making the films and no matter how much time passes. That's why the story changed from this...



To this...



Lucas did tell that story, just not the same way that he had it thought out initially. He only had the most broad strokes figured out, but he realized that it would need more work when he decided to flesh it out. What we got still fits the films, but what he wanted is what he thought it should be. That's the problem with building up something in your mind. You're going to be disappointed no matter what.

 

Is that first poster just a kitbash of Lucas's original ideas? I see a lot of the early McQuarrie artwork and General Skywalker etc.

This subject how the OT and the PT originated is so interesting. I guess since it was so much time in between it allowed us fans to formulate many different opinions and great ideas. I feel Lucas just didn't spend all his time like we did dreaming of what to expect of the PT each night laying on our Star Wars bed sheets. I feel there is more story treatments out there that need to be discovered to see what was supposed to happen. I'm okay with PT its just interesting.

 

The poster is a cover for The Star Wars comic mini series Dark Horse did a few years ago. It was based on Lucas's earlier drafts. Pretty good.

 

From Lucas' point of view yes, but a lot of other people working on the old Star Wars movies wanted Vader to be the result of falling into the waste of a nuclear reactor, probably because strange to say, exposure to nuclear waste is a lot easier to survive than falling into magma.

 

Far less than Lucas wants you to believe. Really all he had in mind before making them was that Darth Vader and Obi-Wan fought on a volcanic world and Vader fell in a molten pit. Basically that and any backstory in the Original Trilogy (or in their early drafts) was all Lucas had in mind.

 

Except for maybe a few terms and details (such as the name Mace Windu dating to 1972 and the Sith first mentioned in the 1976 novel) Lucas didn't know exactly what he was going to do with the prequels until he started making them. A few hints are in the original trilogy, but as we all know, they often don't fit what we later saw, no matter how many in-universe explanations people try to come up with. Even minor things like "I haven't gone by that name since before you were born" make it clear that Lucas had no clear backstory in mind in 1977.

 

I don't think it was really planned out, though Lucas did have a lot of plot and background lore created. It's actually pretty interesting to read about some of his original ideas. For example, I heard that the character that eventually evolved into the part of Han Solo was an alien, and not the human Harrison Ford we know today.

 

Yeah like how he worked backwards with the Clone Wars. George Lucas name dropped The Clone Wars in A New Hope without much of an idea of what they actually were. They just sounded cool.

 

not too much.

the groundwork lies in the original 3 or 4 scripts of "the star wars" i encourage everyone to read them online. you can see in the tpm documentary. he only wrote sparse lines about each episode and most of his original thoughts were what ended up being ep 3.

he keeps the story elements in his head and doesn't like writing scripts. that's not a knock on him, that's his process. songwriters aand painters don't have everything planned out beforehand. he compared his filmmaking to painting or cooking where you have the basis of an idea and you keep refining it. that's how he worked. he knew what the story was but not the specifics until he fleshed them out.

 

Right, it's the first draft of ANH. Known simply as "The Star Wars". Dark Horse and Lucas Books adapted it a few years ago and is one of the last stories published by Dark Horse.