George Lucas and Dark Empire

I know that GL liked Dark Empire and gave it to his employees for christmas some years ago.

Now I heard, that GL said, that the story comes close to his visions of a sequel. Is this true, is there maybe an interview online, where he says it? Or is this made up by fans?

PS: Please no discussion about whether you like DE or not.


Kam

 

I heard that too. I can't provide any proof that it was true though.

It kinda makes since though.

 

well now that we have the clone technology on screen with AOTC... it seems much more likely that DE could have been a sequel intended by lucas.

however i dont have any proof of this other than DE seems to have the same saturday morning cliffhangar/B-movie feel that lucas loves in star wars and in the indiana jones films.

 

I think Lucas said this in an interview ages ago...

The first part of DE was originally done 'on spec' in the mid-80s, shortly after the cancellation of the Marvel line... but GL (having nothing better to do at the time) personally vetoed several plot-points... I'm not sure if he made any positive contributions (as he did with JA3, for instance)... but the idea of Palpatine returning as a clone was something he approved after rejecting several prior ideas as to who his heir should be...

- The Imperial Ewok

 

2ndQuest, where did you find that info? Cold you post a link I would really like to read about it.

 

I demand an answer to the question posed in the first post.

 

Sorry... I should have said that what GL said was that he liked DE... but I don't think he meant that the plot was very like any planned sequel... the sequel plot seems to have been fluid... things that have been mentioned include:

• after defeating Vader in RotJ (perhaps without Anakin returning from the Dark Side), the sequels see Luke confronting Palpatine (who wasn't originally supposed to appear in person in Ep.VI)... on one level, this does have some similarities to DE...



• Luke's sister (who in this version is not Leia) has been training in a remote corner of the GFFA, and appears to help Luke fight Palpatine (DE, anyone?!). In the end, Luke and Leia marry, Han marries Luke's sister



• Leia becomes more distant due to her political responsibilities...



• Alien invaders from outwith the GFFA attack and rout the Rebels. SW becomes Battlestar Galactica...

The last two sound a bit like the NJO; the last one was also used (with a happy ending) in the Marvel SW series in the '80s...

As to links... I'm not sure, but most should be somewhere on TF.N - try interviews...

- The Imperial Ewok

 

Nice to hear the man say he liked the EU.

 

The wampa base attack scenes were refrenced in the EU though in multiple places.

 

The supposed Epp.I-III here look rather like three of the various ideas GL bandied around informally in an interview immediately after ANH as ideas for a 'prequel' to follow the first film...

- The Imperial Ewok

 

Here's a sick thing, folks. The novelizations to ANH and ESB (don't know about if it's in the novelization to RoTJ or not as they didn't have a new edition copy of it at Wal-mart last Friday) have an intro by Lucas in them, and in the intro he says he only intended to do two trilogies. Now a good many of us have evidence to the contrary, and most of the rest of us can get the evidence off the net. So as I said, the sick thing.

 

Misguided maybe, but not sick? I for one believe the man. He may have toyed with the idea of three trilogies, but he probably only really thought he could get away with two of em.

However it is nice to see that there is confirmation that the third trilogy takes the form of DE and the NJO.

Chris

 

but he actually said he was going to do nine films...and before that 12.l..

 

Knight1192

You should read the new Maxim.

Maxim: Will there be a third and final trilogy?
Lucas: No chance. It was never really conceived that way, wxcept in the media---they're the ones that have built that up.

MaximL Your mind powers will not work on me, George---after finishing Empire, you told Rolling Stone you had seven movies left.
Lucas: They asked, :when you finish the three films, will you do any more?" And I said "I've got a back story I could tell, I guess." "So they asked, "Will you do anything after that?" so I said "It might be fun to bring Harrison and Carrie and Mark back when they're 65 and make another movie with them. "To be very honest, I don't have those stories written; nothing is planned. I'm going to be 60 years old when I finish this and it takes 10 years to do a trilogy. I'm not gonna spend my last 10 years doing Star Wars.


tought you might find that sick.

 

If memory serves, Lucas did an interview for the USA Weekend or some newspaper magazine like it around the time TPM came out and in it he said he had originally planned to do three trilogies, but because of how long it took him to get around to doing the prequel trilogy, he had to scrap the sequel trilogy because he figured it would be like ten more years before he got started on it. And he figured he'd propably be dead before that happened.

 

Could be misquotes. It happens all the time. People hear what they want to hear, especially reporters.

 

There's more than just one interview...

There are a few that date back to the 80s and 70s.

 

Well, whatever he may or may not have said, I think it's pretty safe to assume that there will not be a third trilogy.

 

"According to Kurtz, Star Wars was meant to be a standalone film. It was only after the film's incredible success that he and Lucas got together to consider sequels."

That's ludicrous. The storyline for A New Hope clearly implies that there'll be a sequel. Everything is left unresolved at the end of the film. The Rebels only managed to save their base on Yavin IV. That doesn't meant that Empire will just forget about it. And what about Luke training to become a Jedi?

I don't think A New Hope was intended to be a stand-alone film. I mean, maybe at one time, yes, but not when the final drafts were done. The story would be absolutely ridiculous if there weren't any sequels afterwards, in my opinion.

Oh, but can you imagine how ridiculous it would have been if no sequel had been intended to follow The Empire Strikes Back?!
Man, everyone'd be wondering "So, what the heck happened to Han?! And what about Luke and Vader, his FATHER?! What about Yoda and the Jedi?!"
They could've driven fans insane!

 

Was Star Wars originally intended to be a standalone film? Yes and no.

Before Star Wars was released in May 1977, there were (in Lucas's mind) only two possibilities:

1. SW would tank, and that would be the end of that. Truly a standalone film.

2. SW would be modestly successful. In case this happened, Lucas had Alan Dean Foster write a sequel (Splinter of the Mind's Eye) that could be filmed on a low budget. There is no space battle and the whole thing takes place on a misty swamp planet--both of which keep the budget down. Han and Chewie aren't in it because, at the time, Ford hadn't signed on for more films. Splinter was completely written before SW was released.

Lucas never even dreamed SW would be wildly successful. He feared it would be a disaster, and he hoped it would be moderately successful. Originally, the SW saga was planned to be either one or two films.

 

Ah.

 

I was thinking today that it was clever with what George Lucas/ whoever it was, who came up with the idea of at the end of ANH, with Darth Vader's tie fighter just flying off in to the oblivion, thus, if ANH didn't bring in a lot of money, and he didn't make a sequel, then it could have been supposed that Vader's Tie Fighter was destroyed, and Darth Vader died; but if he did decide to make a sequel he could make it so that Vader's tie was just knocked away, but is still alive.


Just thought that was interesting...

 

If it was intended to be a standalone fime, why was it titled Episode IV?