CT What if George Lucas stuck with his original idea for Luke's sister?

To me she was. She had her own hero's journey trying to get the droids and the DS plans to Obi Wan. That is not to say that I did not identify with the journey Luke was on or later the journey Anakin went through. As a young girl, Leia was like no other female character I had seen before. Before her, I watched Linda Carter in the Wonder Woman tv show and the only other female character I remember seeing most was Daisy Duke. Leia went straight to the head of the line. She was the reason I fell in love with Star Wars.

 

Carrie Fisher was my first crush. Well maybe 2nd after the Bionic Woman.

 

I started out as a huge fan of Carrie's because of Leia, but with everything she went through and her courage to speak about it she just inspired me.

 

She did her Wishful Drinking tour in Seattle about 10 years ago. I thought about driving down to see her; but I didn't. (It's like 2 hours) I wish now I would have.

 

I actually have it cued up in my Amazon Prime account but the sentimental sap in me has put off watching it because I know I will cry.

 

I hear you sister.

 

It would really depend on how the change was made. Is it being made along with other changes towards the original concept or idea? Or is it the only change being made? If it's the only change, it alters a lot. Luke is no longer stepping out of the love triangle because of family. He now becomes the loser in the love triangle. This changes the perception of Luke, as this is the hero's journey. Making Leia not his sister is a blow to the perception of Luke as the hero. And it has to the ability to change Luke's relationship with both Han and Leia. Is there now resentment because he didn't get the girl? Also, on the Death Star II, during the duel, Luke's thoughts don't dwell on his sister. He may be aware of her existence, but if he's never met her, and doesn't have the connection to her like he does to Leia as his sister, his thoughts likely don't fall to her and Vader doesn't have it as fuel to antagonize Luke.

All in all, I'm happy with the way it turned out. I prefer having Luke and Leia as siblings.

 

That's where you're totally wrong. Lucas himself has said that Star Wars is supposed to be a soap opera. Last time I looked soap operas are on TV. Or are you calling Lucas out as being a retconning BS merchant just to cover up for his tacky substandard writing and directing skills on the PT?

Lucas never planned for or drafted twelve episodes from the start. After ANH was a success he had all these big ideas about doing twelve movies, which then became nine, then six, then three as he slowly lost interest. And he never ever had anything planned out from the start, least of all written down. Everything was made up and changed as he went along.

That's just bad writing, because there has to be a planned conclusion to the story, with just details worked out and changed here and there along the way. I say if you don't have an ultimate conclusion planned and you make too many major recons along the way, that's just asking for a huge mess with loads of continuity errors along the way, just as we eventually got. Vader worked, because firstly he's a big commander of the villains, and we knew little about him. Leia being Luke's sister is where it gets messy, partly because it's waaay too much of a coincidence that Luke should run into his sister at the same time as his father in a galaxy how massive? It also totally contradicts what was said when Luke was preparing his X-Wing to go off to rescue Han and Leia. Yoda calls them his "friends" and says that they're expendable for the greater good of Luke finishing his training. Then, as he takes off to rescue Han and Leia he says that "There is another" hope. Yep, Leia, who moments before he was calling expendable!

Yes, he's even said so in an interview, that he had nothing planned out. He said he had plot points written down, but even those were proven to be changed over the decades.

To make such a statement in the movie, that there is another hope if Luke fails, was not just a "cheap trick" as Lucas said. He really just doesn't understand that by saying this he was opening up a gigantic plot thread that would eventually have to be explained, and not something he can just use as audience bait and then just discard in the next movie. It's even more awkward for him if he decided to make the next movie the last. Making Leia "The Other" is a clumsy copout that totally contradicts the previous movies.

More like he lost interest once he had the money to build that ranch of his.

Kurtz said that Ep. VII was supposed to continue almost straight after the events of ROTJ.

You like brothers and sisters kissing?

Telepaths can contact anyone, not just relatives, that is unless you think Obi-Wan is related to a Stormtrooper on Tatooine? This is yet another desperate attempt by a Lucas apologist to desperately make it seem that Lucas had it all planned out from the start. If you remember, Luke actually calls her name when he uses his power, so he wasn't just desperately calling out to anyone who might be able to pick up his thoughts.

THIS. He wrote himself into a corner and needed to resolve it quick and dirty in ROTJ, or else he was committed to resolving it in future movies

That's why ROTJ seems and was rushed, because after ESB, Lucas had all of these huge plot threads to tie up. Realistically, it would've taken several more movies to resolve them, but by doing it in one movie is like saying you can resolve WWII in just a few months. It's not going to happen. The Jabba plot should've taken up much more than it did, with Han being rescued and then sacrificing himself at the very end of ROTJ in a mission to destroy an Imperial super weapon similar to the movie Guns of Navarone, where most of the heroes are killed whilst taking out the guns. That would've made for a very solid and mature movie, not the great sprint to the end that we got. Nope, no Emperor, no massive fleet battle, no second Death Star. By all means, kill Vader off by taking on one of the Emperor's Sith henchmen, but having all those things going on all at once it just seems like Lucas was racing to get things over ASAP, just so he could retire to that big mansion we all bought him,

 

Lucas calling SW a soap opera just meant he is describing a certain type of story being told. He meant it was episodic. He wasn't saying it literally was going to be a daily TV soap opera.

 

The poster said that Star Wars wasn't written as a TV series, but Lucas said that he wrote it like a daily soap opera, only in movie form. Remember, that's exactly the words Lucas said, "soap opera", not romantic drama which could mean anything. Are you now saying that Lucas doesn't know what "soap opera" means? Soap operas are and always have been short dramas made for radio and then TV, which were originally funded by soap powder companies, hence the term "soap opera". The term has never been used for stage plays or their movie equivalents.

 

Did he ever say this before his camerawork was compared to terrible daytime TV? Lucas was basically trying to back himself out of a corner by saying his movies are bad on purpose.

Lucas has also claimed that he wrote some massive screenplay called THE TRAGEDY OF DARTH VADER back in the early seventies and he called Disney "white slavers." Lucas says tons of stuff, take it with a grain of salt.

 

You can tag me @Captain_cosmos if you were talking about my post.



I’m the one who said Star Wars wasn’t written as a TV show and I stand by that.

I just went back to read the quote where he calls it a soap opera.
Yes, he meant it to tell the Skywalker story, in the fashion of a television soap opera.
I’m not “calling him out”, I’m saying the fact that he didn’t have the entirety of the existing OT written in 1977. Doesn’t make him a bad writer, just that the story he had written wasn’t fully concluded when he started making the first movie.
Splinter of the Mind’s Eye was actually going to be adapted into a low budget film had ANH not been so successful to tie up loose ends. He still had a backstory in mind and a conclusion, though when the conclusion would occur likewise wasn’t decided in 1977.

I don’t see how that relates to his directing skills in the PT at all, for better or worse.

 

I know. He continually changes history to suit his present argument. Remember when Star Wars was supposed to be a modern take on Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers serials? Now it's supposed to be like Neighbours because people have criticised his writing and directing skills. Problem is, Lucas has pretty masterfully created his own mythology around himself, that he's been this all seeing and all knowing genius who's written this great Bible of Star Wars in the 70s, and is now simply adapting it into movie form, and his ISIS like fanbase actually believe he's this great sage akin to Tolkien or Shakespeare! Me? I compare it to "The Emperor's New Clothes". Everyone's convinced that he's dressed in this wonderful outfit of intellect, but I'm not willing to play along. From everything I've seen and read of him he's mediocre at best, and needs A LOT of skilled and talented artists around him to make something wonderful. For example, did you know that in ANH he wanted the Death Star to be just sat there waiting to be blown up? It was his then wife who suggested that it should be orbiting Yavin in order to attack the moon on the other side, and as a result create suspense and drama. By the time the PT came along most of those independently minded creative artists were gone, with just a load of cringing plebs in their place. Remember when, in the Making of Phantom Menace, he chose Jake Lloyd as Anakin, and you could tell that no one agreed with him but only said so when he'd wandered off out of the room? If that was the early days of the OT, you could've bet that people would've told him it was a really bad idea to cast him. Now though, they all grovel and agree with all his decisions.

On the plus side, just to prove that I'm simply a critic and not a crude basher, he does have one major talent, and that's in running a business. He's made so many incredible business moves over the years that I think he definitely is a genius in that field. I mean, the guy's incredible! To me, that's where he should've focused himself when making the movies, and left all the writing, directing, camera work, editing, and casting to experts in those fields.

 

Far from concluded, he himself had absolutely no idea where the movies or characters would go even when ANH opened in the cinemas in 1977. Even in 1980, when we first saw the Emperor, he himself had no idea about the character. Kurtz said that at the time the Emperor was just a politician who'd surrounded himself with crooked advisors and had isolated himself, not that he was a Sith. It was ROTJ that Lucas made him a Sith with Dark Side powers.

"Aided and abetted by restless, power-hungry individuals within the government, and the massive organs of commerce, the ambitious Senator Palpatine caused himself to be elected President of the Republic. He promised to reunite the disaffected among the people and to restore the remembered glory of the Republic. Once secure in office he declared himself Emperor, shutting himself away from the populace. Soon he was controlled by the very assistants and boot-lickers he had appointed to high office, and the cries of the people for justice did not reach his ears."

As you can see, the original concept of the Emperor, was that of someone like Caligula or Nero, a corrupt and politically all powerful politician, who's surrounded himself with flunkies; again, much like all real life tyrants have done in the past. He keeps everyone in check with psychological fear of military retaliation (i.e. giant warships and battle stations) like an intergalactic Hitler or Stalin, not that he's a Sauron type space wizard.

 

I always much preferred this version of the Emperor to the one we'd eventually get. In the original film the Empire and the Sith are two distinct bodies, with the former contracting the latter to help assist with hunting down the rebels. That idea of the emperor secretly being in bed with a dark satanic cult is much more interesting to me... as opposed to just turning him INTO the satanic cult leader.

In fact it never really made sense to me that the imperial officers would obey a satanic cult leader. They struck me as a government and as a militaristic organization, not a cult doing the bidding of their evil master.

 

Indeed, even in ANH, Admiral Motti openly shows contempt towards the Force, whilst at the same time showing reverence towards the Emperor. Again, this is another error in continuity. Why would he show such signs of admiration towards a head Sith, whilst at the same time showing total contempt towards everything his master believes in? If the Emperor was secretly in league with Sith, that would make more sense, maybe that he had Sith secretly advising him behind closed doors.

 

So basically the Emperor as military warlord in partnership with a master Sith like Darth Vader - rather reminiscent of Thrawn and Joruus C'Baoth, no?

 

Yup, even in ESB it looks like most of the imperial officers view Vader as an outsider and resent having to follow his command. Admiral Ozzel barely even respects him despite begrudgingly doing what he's told.

Lucas definitely could have preserved that original canon. It would have made sense for the emperor to grow even more desperate after the empire's defeat in the first movie. It's believable that he would turn to the sith again and this time give them whatever they wanted. That would explain why Vader is in command of the military in ESB.

 

Yes, Vader could've been simply a powerful tool in keeping power over the galaxy. Again, this is how all real tyrants have seen their underlings, as expendable assets to keep power. If you study tyrants like Henry VIII, everyone around him were the power and they manipulated him as a figurehead as much as he used them. All it took was a manipulative whisper in the psychotic tyrant's ear to get what they wanted. By the time of ESB, Vader's gained so much military clout that he shows the classic henchman trait of trying to backstab his leader by plotting to overthrow him. If he can recruit his son as a weapon against him, then he feels assured of total success. I think the way they handled the politics in ANH and ESB was way more realistic and effective than how it was handled in the extremely convoluted PT.

 

You know what I think? It would've been really exciting and dynamic if, in ROTJ Vader had survived and had created a civil war within the Empire itself, with half backing the Emperor (still just a warlord) and the other half following Vader, and with the Rebels in the middle! Now, I think that would've been a sight to see! It would've also been a realistic twist to the story too, rather than the "Meh!" that we got. I understand that multiple Death Stars were originally envisioned being built over Coruscant? Fair enough. But what about if the Imperial Fleet splitting up including the crews of those Death Stars? There's just so many exciting possibilities it's mindboggling!