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BTS Notes & Quotes on the changing Star Wars Saga 1975-2012

Discussion in 'Star Wars Saga In-Depth' started by Darth_Nub, Jan 25, 2013.

  1. darklordoftech

    darklordoftech Force Ghost star 6

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    Sep 30, 2012
    The Alan Arnold interview seems to suggest that GL began having ST ideas after ANH was released while he already had PT and OT ideas before ANH was released.
     
  2. darklordoftech

    darklordoftech Force Ghost star 6

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    Sep 30, 2012
    Which makes me wonder if "Star Wars Episode VII" should really be called "Star Wars 2: Episode I"
     
  3. Darth_Nub

    Darth_Nub Manager Emeritus star 5 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Apr 26, 2009
    It occurred to me when the ST was announced last year that they might do something like that - several drafts of SW/ANH, plus the novelisation refer to the story ('The Star Wars') as being from 'The First Saga'. Why not have a second one?
     
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  4. darklordoftech

    darklordoftech Force Ghost star 6

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    Sep 30, 2012
    I would have loved girl Luke!
     
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  5. DarthBoba

    DarthBoba Manager Emeritus star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Jun 29, 2000
    I wish they'd bring the original authors back and let them write novels of the original trilogy again-the originals are great for working under the confines of 1980s novelization rules, and getting to read actual novels would be great.
     
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  6. darklordoftech

    darklordoftech Force Ghost star 6

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    Sep 30, 2012
    I'm trying to figure out what the relation (if there is any) is between Journal of the Whills (part 1 and 2) and "The Star Wars Story Synopsis"
     
  7. Lt.Cmdr.Thrawn

    Lt.Cmdr.Thrawn Manager Emeritus star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Sep 23, 1999
    As far as I can tell, it seems like Lucas had a "world" in mind (informed by Flash Gordon, Dune, Lensman, etc), plus some mythic concepts (the coming of age story, etc), plus some philosophical points to make (relating to religion, Castaneda, politics, etc), but not as much of a plot that could take a trip through all of those other ideas. The JotW is the first attempt at something set in that world... the synopsis is his adaptation of a pre-existing plot (The Hidden Fortress, by Akira Kurosawa) into that world. Right?
     
  8. Darth_Nub

    Darth_Nub Manager Emeritus star 5 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Apr 26, 2009
    Right. Although they're set in the "same universe" (sort of) they're effectively unrelated. Virtually all sources that discuss the JotW outline state that it was basically tossed on the scrapheap & GL started over with the 13-page Hidden Fortress-insipred treatment, which the rough/first draft was based on.
    All subsequent drafts were related to the previous one, while the JotW didn't really develop into anything storywise, until GL began work on TPM. It did introduce a few familar names, however - Jedi, Chuiee, Han - which don't appear in the 13-page synopsis.

    There's an old thread about the Journal of the Whills outline here, includes a transcript of the first page:

    http://boards.theforce.net/threads/...tline-by-george-lucas.32108921/#post-32120744
     
  9. Lt.Cmdr.Thrawn

    Lt.Cmdr.Thrawn Manager Emeritus star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Sep 23, 1999
    Darth_Nub at that link you said the JotW might very well date to earlier than 1973, perhaps 1969 (you suggest). What gives you that impression?
     
  10. Darth_Nub

    Darth_Nub Manager Emeritus star 5 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Apr 26, 2009
    I think I was wrong in that case - might have been an inaccuracy from Dale Pollock's Skywalking. Don't actually recall where I got that information, but it was from somewhere. I think the JotW outline has been established to have dated from late 1972 to early 1973.

    On the topic of Pollock - the information he provides in Skywalking about the early scripts is ridiculously muddled, he jumbles up names & storylines from the JotW outline, the 1973 synopsis, the rough, first & second drafts & suggests they're all from the one draft. It's particularly confusing when you consider that the rough & first drafts are exactly the same, just with different names.
    It's somewhat understandable, but it's also telling that a typo/misreading on his part made it into an actual SW film - the name of Mace Windu, which was actually Mace Windy. Even GL himself couldn't remember what the original name was!
     
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  11. Lt.Cmdr.Thrawn

    Lt.Cmdr.Thrawn Manager Emeritus star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Sep 23, 1999
    Or maybe Windu just sounded cooler to him at that point. But your point is a good one - that memory as a process is a jumbled mess.
     
  12. Darth_Nub

    Darth_Nub Manager Emeritus star 5 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Apr 26, 2009
    Admittedly, we've got access to the early drafts literally at our fingertips - Dale Pollock would have been having to make notes during whatever time he was allowed to handle this material, and couldn't take it away with him.

    Still misleading as hell, and until The Annotated Screenplays was released in 1998, Skywalking was, for all intents & purposes, the only publicly available source which touched upon the earlier drafts. Clumsy stuff, I can see why GL wasn't too enamoured with it (although I think he was more bothered by other issues in the book).
    It's still better than that novel-sized stack of toilet paper, Garry Jenkins' Empire Building, which just takes chunks from Pollock's book & a bunch of well-known interviews, then tries to assemble some sort of behind-the-scenes history of Star Wars. So glad I never actually bought it - I read a library copy years ago, then I found a ratty copy at work in a bag of old magazines & books to be tossed out. After a re-read, I couldn't believe what a shoddy attempt at writing it was.
     
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  13. darklordoftech

    darklordoftech Force Ghost star 6

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    Sep 30, 2012
    1. North Vietnam wasn't peaceful, but that doesn't make them the bad guys
    2. I wonder what role (besides terminology) JotW had in writing the prequels
     
  14. Darth_Nub

    Darth_Nub Manager Emeritus star 5 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Apr 26, 2009
    Quick & easy starting plot line already thought up, although some of the terminology (Independent Systems) may have given some sort of inspiration to the notion of the Separatists. Bizarrely enough, I think GL may have had some vague ideas back then which he didn't put in the outline which he could have resurrected, but it's impossible to say if that was the case. The JotW outline really looks like a poor attempt at extrapolating a much larger vision - 20 years later, GL could have returned to the idea with a lot more experience under his belt and been able to convey far more in TPM.

    I still don't think all that much can be read into it, though. More likely that any other ideas he had found their way into the early drafts of SW/ANH.
     
  15. darklordoftech

    darklordoftech Force Ghost star 6

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    Sep 30, 2012
    I noticed that JotW mentions a conspiracy against Windy. Could that have inspired Palpatine's schemes?
     
  16. Keeper_of_Swords

    Keeper_of_Swords Jedi Master star 5

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    Sep 20, 2003
  17. Lt.Cmdr.Thrawn

    Lt.Cmdr.Thrawn Manager Emeritus star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Sep 23, 1999
    Two reactions: One, I can now be even more confident when asserting that people who got, say, that "anyone could use the Force" or other 'naive' ideas from the OT were completely justified. I thought so before, but now there is not only story-stuff but also contemporary talk from the writers. Two, I still want to see when Leia was merged with The Other. I hope there is some very early stuff in the book (like June 1980 stuff) that helps clear that up.
     
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  18. darklordoftech

    darklordoftech Force Ghost star 6

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    Sep 30, 2012
    The ST being a part 2 written later on makes me feel like the Saga without the ST remains as canon as the Saga with the ST.
     
  19. kubricklynch

    kubricklynch Jedi Knight star 3

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    Dec 10, 2012
  20. DarthBoba

    DarthBoba Manager Emeritus star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Jun 29, 2000
    I don't think that's very interesting at all actually. :p The characters shifted a lot just during the production of the OT-Palpatine was still very much a figurehead Emperor when ANH was being made, with no Force abilities at all, by comparison. Personally, I like the change-it gives us a 'perfect' Yoda in the OT who understands that the key to beating the Sith isn't how good Luke is with a sabre, but how good Luke is with his soul.

    Yoda tries and fails to physically best Sidious and loses (albeit by a very slim margin, but it seemed pretty clear to me that there was still plenty of fight left even if the duel hadn't ended on the Senate pod); given that we see virtually no sabre instruction on Dagobah (some was originally planned, but cut from the film) and instead Yoda constantly focusing on Luke's impatience, anger, and to some extent lack of faith in his own abilities, it seems clear to me that Yoda fully understands that the coming confrontation is at heart a spiritual one.
     
  21. only one kenobi

    only one kenobi Jedi Grand Master star 4

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    Nov 18, 2012

    It would have made more sense, given Obi-Wan's lines about thinking he could teach Vader as well as Yoda, to have shown a more... headstrong Obi-Wan in the prequels; a bit more of an adventurer/Han Solo-esque type of character whose teaching of Vader (or Anakin as it became) was not as comprehensive in terms of the spiritual aspect. So that we would see Obi-Wan as a transformed character (in some ways) in ANH, and we would see what transformed him, what regrets he had.
     
  22. markdeez33

    markdeez33 Jedi Knight star 3

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    Jan 25, 2013
    Excellent thread. Thank you all!
     
  23. darth-sinister

    darth-sinister Manager Emeritus star 10 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Jun 28, 2001
    Yoda could only beat Vader if he had made the same mistake that he did against Obi-wan, with Yoda. But as Lucas said during the making of AOTC and ROTS, Yoda couldn't beat Sidious. I think the reason he changed Yoda's fight capabilities was that he realized it could be pulled off and given that Palpatine was a Sith Lord, it made sense to have them battle it out. To have Yoda in the vein of a more traditional Jedi.
     
  24. gezvader28

    gezvader28 Chosen One star 6

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    Mar 22, 2003
    does anyone know if Gary Kurtz was the first person to actually reveal that Leia was not meant to be the Other and that it was meant to be a new character ? I'm referring to that interview he gave not long after TPM where he recounted what he remembers as the various outlines of the episodes .

    had anyone of any note revealed/confirmed this before that ?

    .
     
  25. Lt.Cmdr.Thrawn

    Lt.Cmdr.Thrawn Manager Emeritus star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Sep 23, 1999
    Well, in The Annotated Screenplays (p. 182), there is a description of the Sister from the Brackett draft - basically the same information as from the draft itself and from MoESB. This isn't tied to the Other in that passage directly, but the ideas are very similar. And obviously if Luke's lost sister is being trained as a Jedi concurrent to ESB, she can't be Leia. But that that time the line about 'another' hasn't been written yet.

    The same book (p. 200) notes the evolution of the "we must search for another" -> "there is another" line, but doesn't infer anything about what that might mean. And there is a Lucas quote about how he put that line in to generate a sense of jeopardy so that the audience will root for Luke to stay instead.

    But those only suggest things in certain contexts; I think Kurtz's interview might have been the first time someone called attention to the difference between those older thoughts on the Sister, even though there was the above information in TAS. Though... even phrasing this whole thing as 'the Other as being a different character from Leia, or Luke's sister as not-Leia' is too much of a simplification/assumption. They had: a lost sister already being trained as a Jedi, then nothing mentioned in the script, then Yoda having to look for someone to replace Luke, then Yoda presumably knowing of someone or something that could replace Luke, and then in ROTJ (after the first two outlines, which don't seem to mention this), it turns out that the person Yoda meant is Luke's sister, who is also none other than Leia. There are just some jumps in that development that it would be nice to see discussion of. In the middle of that process, the Other wouldn't necessarily have had to be Luke's sister, but perhaps was thought of just as a plot device until it had to be resolved. And obviously Leia didn't have to be Luke's sister. We can speculate all we want but we really don't know much.
     
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