ST George Lucas and the Mystery of the Treatment

What I will say, and I’ve only come to this after viewing TFA four times now, is that TFA feels more like a sequel to ROTJ than I think a George Lucas-directed Episode 7 would have. That’s not necessarily a slight on Lucas, but, at least to me, it feels more “right” that way.

 

TFA follows the original hexalogy and both PT and OT flow together perfectly well, both have plenty sleek, polish enviroments as well as greasy, industrial, earthly ones and forests and jungles and deserts. They both are full of grand shots including ANH- all the scenes that take place in space, arrival at Mos Eisley, the final battle, the destruction of Alderan and the Death Star, Falcon´s escape from Tatooine, arrival at Yavin sequence and so on.

In terms of number of earthly enviromets and grand shots TFA is pretty consistent with what all first six films did before.

 

When I watched TFA for the first time, I felt quite a disconnect with the rest of the saga, it felt less like an episode VII than another start of a new saga which is why the story was so close to ANH, imo. I also thought the characters very aware they were in a starwars movie, especially in the humor that I found quite out of place sometimes. I don't really feel like Lucas was invested in a sequel trilogy like he was with the PT and even if I think he sounds a little bitter at times about TFA, which is understandable because they didn't want him as a creative consultant which is too bad. Though, I don't think he regrets selling it because now he can fully spend time with his family and working on his pet projects.

 

I know it follows the entire saga, but it directly follows the events of the last episode (VI), which was quite different in style than anything in PT. We're gonna have to agree to disagree when it comes to the flow. I could never feel or believe that OT is a continuation of PT, I just couldnt. The pacing, look, style is too different. And PT was made more colorful, shinier by design - it was suppose to be a contrast to the OT where the world is dark and ruled by the Empire. Design styles were also very different most of the time, admittedly they were going for a classic 50s scifi look with a lot of them. Thing is, even to someone who never saw SW it would be easy to tell which shot is from which trilogy, and its fine, it was suppose to be that way, Lucas even recently said he wanted to be very different with PT, and he didnt want ST to follow the same style as OT. As much as I love the entire saga more or less evenly, I cannot watch PT and then OT, it has to be the other way around because it just doesnt flow for me. Agaian, we're gonna have to agree to disagree

And no, TFA doesnt have anything PT has in terms of visuals. We only see desert, forest with old ruins ala Yavin IV, and forest in the winter. We dont have beautyiful palace-filled Naboo, saucer-like watery Kamino, giant Coruscant etc. Also,we dont see senate, chancellor, politics etc, its all condensed to our heroes, its all very intimate - as in OT

 

It was both something pinned at Disney and himself directly. Look up white slavers...

 

I always saw the "white slavers" comment as a bit of (misjudged) black humour acknowledging that he "sold out", if you're someone who thinks in those terms.

 

The "retro" aspect that Lucas was upset about, I believe, concerned the heavy use of the OT ships. I think he really objected to the reusing of X Wings and TIE Fighters. He mentioned it a few times. Once he argued that SW wasn't about spaceships. Another time he complained that in each of his films, he always had different space ships, which he was clearly proud of. I suspect that the original idea was they would have Jakku filled with OT wreckage in a way to shout out to the old ships. But then Disney wanted more, as they probably felt the classic, iconic images would satisfy the general audience who overwhelmingly just wanted the movie to be like the OT. I'm sensing George did not like that one bit. It offended his artistic side. Something he had resisted doing with the prequels, and something he probably over time has built up as being a moral stance that resulted in his own unfair downfall.

Now it also appears he is unhappy with the fact that Rey apparently is not the grandchild of Anakin, but that's obviously yet to be settled so who knows?

 

I'd be sort of annoyed if Rey turned out to be Luke's long lost daughter. Too predictable. Maybe Shmi had a kid she gave up after Anakin left, but before Lars married her and Rey is a descendant of hers? Or maybe .... shock! ... Rey isn't a Skywalker at all.

 

"We're gonna have to agree to disagree when it comes to the flow. I could never feel or believe that OT is a continuation of PT, I just couldnt. The pacing, look, style is too different. And PT was made more colorful, shinier by design - it was suppose to be a contrast to the OT where the world is dark and ruled by the Empire."

Agree to disagree indeed. To me the both "trilogies" flow together perfectly. The pacing, look, style are different enough to differentiate the different time periods, but close enough to make both trilogies a consistent whole. Partly because Lucas made sure that each next "prequel" will have a bit more "OT" aesthetics to achieve a smooth flow between ROTS and ANH.

"We dont have beautyiful palace-filled Naboo, saucer-like watery Kamino, giant Coruscant etc. Also,we dont see senate, chancellor, politics etc, its all condensed to our heroes, its all very intimate - as in OT"

The senate is dissolved and Palpatine is an Emperor. However there is still a bit of politics in ANH

We still have the Cloud City, The Mos Eisley Spaceport, the giant empire fleet, grandiose space battle in Jedi (much bigger in it´s scope than that in TPM), Naboo, Coruscant, the ROTJ victory celebration. Unless you discount Special Editions.

 

Just in case anyone isn't aware that (white slavers) interview was done prior to GL seeing TFA

 

And then later he said "the fans will love it" which is an interesting choice of words coming from him since he said they wanted to make a movie for the fans. I didn't say HE liked it. I definitively think some parts of his treatment survived and ended up on screen like the girl's journey to become a Jedi but overall Ii think it will be quite different to how he imagined it.

 

This is the JJ's version about what happened.
Peter: When you first came on and decided “I’m going to do it,” there was this George Lucas treatment for three new films but you guys decided to go your own way—

J.J. Abrams: No. I came on board and Disney had already decided they didn’t want to go that direction, so the mandate was to start from scratch and tell a story that was the continuum… And Kathleen Kennedy brought on Larry Kasdan and Michael Arndt, and it was those people I began working with.

Peter: Okay. How different is what you guys ended up making from what George had originally planned?

J.J. Abrams: I can’t quantify that, but I can say that the spirit of it, the feeling of it, the continuum and telling a brand new story set in a world that just like VI from V and V from IV would feel like a continuum, is always the thing Larry and I wanted to do. But it was very much about answering the questions: What do we want to feel? Why are we telling this story? Who are the characters that have any meaning or relevance or make us feel something? Because Larry had created some of the greatest lines in Star Wars, with Yoda and some of the great sequences, he had been living with Star Wars for decades. He was the dream collaborator to say “Where would we be now? What would have happened from the remnant of the Empire? Where is the republic now? What happened to Han, Leia, Luke and all these characters that we’ve come to know and love?” So he was the dream person to have in the trenches with you.
http://www.slashfilm.com/jj-abrams-interview-star-wars-the-force-awakens/

So who's telling the truth, then ?

 

There are so many conflicting reports of what went down. TBH, I think that everyone involved, and I mean everyone (so Lucas, too) is bending the truth a little. I really don't think we will ever find out what exactly went down. As a fan of film in general and not just as a SW fan, it would be nice to know for sure. However, I also don't think we need to know.

 

I think some parts of what happened is pretty clear. They didn't want to use Lucas as a consultant. Lucas, who likes to have 100% control over what he does and knows they won't accept everything he says, decides to let them do their own thing. Lucas said there were supposed to have "Vader's grandchildren", with TFA this became Ben Solo/Kylo Ren, the sole legacy child(as far as we know) and the Jedi killer who from the Art of TFA was supposed to be "originless" at first. Pablo said it was about a girl's journey to become a Jedi. Me thinks they pick and choose what they liked in them, discarding those the ideas they didn't like and then it evolved into what we saw on screen.

 

Let's not forget that many of the first treatments of the previous films differed substantially from the final product, so even if GL had remained in charge, the story would probably have evolved during the development.

 

Exactly, but for some obscure reasons they didn't want him to be involved in the process so he let them do what they want. I don't believe for a second Lucas wouldn't have changed things he wrote himself, but I think he believes it's better not to get too involved because he choose to sell it to them and he compared it to a divorce, so I could see why we got what they gave us. He's happily retired now and he won't come back, that's reality.

 

I don't know. He won't be coming back for a while, but who knows, in a few years maybe GL will write another Star Wars story...

 

I don't think so, I think he's done with Star Wars if his latest public speeches mean anything.

 

I'm so glad Disney didn't say, "Screw GL's prophecy, all evil Force-users are Sith." I recall posts expecting Disney to do that. They'd use justifications like "the average audience thinks all evil Force-users are Sith" when most "average audience" people don't remeber the word "Sith" beyond it being in the title of one of the movies, and many thought that "Revenge of the Sith" meant "Revenge of Palpatine" and that "the Sith" is a race that Palpatine is part of.

 

i just wish people understood that and that it is honoring gl's saga. for some reason a lot of pt fans don't see it.

 

Yeah, I don't think they'll touch the prophecy at all in this trilogy. But they didn't explicitly said that Snoke and Kylo are NOT a Sith lord and apprentice, again we had to read books to understand that because their relationship is the same as Palpatine and his apprentices in the movies. I think they should have been clearer on this in the movie.

 

But they are near enough Sith.

The difference is they don't take a Darth or give each other names.
(That came out wrong).

I hope there's a reason for them not to be Sith because it's kinda weird.

It might have helped to have shown the Knights of Ren because we don't really know what they are and if they are Dark siders.