During the making of Star Wars GL wanted to make 12 Star Wars episodes before reducing it to 9 and later 6. The set up was something like this. 1: Prologue to the saga. 2, 3, and 4: The Clone Wars. 5: An Interquel that connects the Clone Wara to the next trilogy. 6, 7, and 8: The Original Trilogy 9, 10, and 11: The Sequel Trilogy 12: The epilogue to the Saga. I feel this set-up would have been able to tell the entire Star Wars story very well. 1 could have been essentially what we saw in The Phantom Menace. Kenobi meeting Anakin and Anakin becoming a Jedi. 2 could have been what we got in AOTC. 3 we could see the Clone Wars at their most destructive with Anakin dipping steadily into the Dark Side. 4 essentially ROTS. 5 I would have liked to have seen Vader hunting down the Jedi and essentially the Jedi purge with Kenobi on the run. 6, 7, and 8 basically the OT. 9 10 and 11 well Lucas wanted to explore the Whills which could have been interesting. Rather than explore it thru the Micro biotic world I think another dimension that is inhabited by them would be better. Bringing in some EU into this you could bring in the Celestials as originally a super advanced species who were the first to discover the Force in the known universe and once they peaked technology wise ascended and merged with the Force itself. The villain could be an evil Whill with Luke achieving the potential Anakin didn't. 12 I'm unsure, maybe finally a rebuilt Republic and Jedi Order taking on the last remnants of the Sith/followers of the evil Whill (depending how much you want to stick with the Chosen One prophecy) and ending them for good.
Some also say that Darth Talon was supposed to be in the sequel trilogy. In my opinion, they made a mistake of removing her from it.(She would have been a much more interesting character than Snoke.)
Hidalgo once stated years ago that the "events" they shoved into TLJ (as in, the protagonist finding and meeting Luke) would have happened mid-way through Lucas' Episode VII. The implication that they are staying true to the story by killing Luke in the second movie (as if the premises and story are the same to begin with) is dishonest to say the least. Not only that, but Mark Hamill confirmed that in Lucas' treatments Luke would have died in Episode IX, not VIII.
We already knew that Luke's story in the ST has been condensed to fit into one movie because they struggled to not make him overshadow our new main protagonist, we knew that the Jedi temple, Luke as a Kurtz-type figure and Rey's training were story beats initially intended to happen in episode 7, none of that is news. Beyond Luke dying either in 8 or 9 and the Whills/midichlorians stuff, we don't know anything about GL's version of episode 8 and 9, I also highly doubt the whole ST would have span just a single year. The main protagonist being 14-year-old is new information I think because I remember Lucas stating Anakin's grandchildren being in their 20' so it wouldn't be TPM again.
I dont think Lucas was worried about "another TPM." Actually, I think it was confirmed that Kira/Lucas's protagonists would be their teens. It was actually Lucasfilm/Disney worried about "another TPM" as if the marketing in 2015 didnt make that incredibly obvious. However, you can still hire someone in their late teens/early 20s. Mark Hamill and Daisy Ridley were in their mid to late 20s playing 19 year olds, and Hayden Christensen in AOTC acts young enough to be at least 17ish. Here is a quote from a Lucas ST archive WordPress. https://lucassequeltrilogy.wordpress.com/ "Lucas’s story apparently revolved around young teenage characters, and it is speculated that Disney were concerned that this was too similar to Episode I – The Phantom Menace, which was perhaps the most divisive Star Wars film to date." Heres another article from 2015: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.polygon.com/platform/amp/2015/5/9/8577579/lucas-star-wars-teenagers
I was talking about this video which seemed to contradict other sources and I never thought it was him being "worried" about another TPM.
He's referring to Han and Leia's children being in their 20s. We don't know who Thea was in Lucas' story. That said, Lucas says it in a throwaway manner, so the protagonist being 15 or 20 still takes the point across that it wasn't a 10-year old like in TPM.
Well, keep in mind that a lot changes between a treatment and a final screenplay. So whatever Lucas had in his treatment was always going to evolve. Anyway, from what little we know about Lucas' treatment, I don't find it any more interesting than the ST we got.
Wether it would evolve, by how much, and into what, only he could tell. What it definitely wouldn't turn into is what ended up being done.
From what I heard, Luke was supposed to die in 9 after he trained Leia in George's treatments. But Luke ending up dying wasn't really the issue, for me personally anyways. I kind of expected him to die at some point during the trilogy. It was the way the character was turned into a scapegoat to prop the new characters. Particularly Rey. And imo, this whole book to me sounds like damage control. Like saying "Well..see, we were just doing what Lucas was going to do all along."
The Rey/Kira/Taryn character's age does remind me a lot of what I've read about the original setup for Episode I. I'm not sure if this is true, but a part of me wonders if Lucas regretted switching to such a young version of Anakin for that movie, and would have preferred to still start the trilogy out with the character at a young age, but old enough that they could keep the same actor and show them growing with each movie. I mean, that's sort of what happened in the prequels, only with Natalie Portman for the full three movies, and partially with Hayden Christensen once they brought him in. I'm also very curious about Lucas's original treatments for Episode I, which apparently dealt with the origin and fall of the first Sith Lords. That does explain why he had such a clear backstory for them. And I wonder too whether that story would have also tied to the midi-chlorians and the Whills. Someone on Reddit mentioned Madeleine L'Engle's book A Wind in the Door as a possible influence or at least thematic parallel to some of the themes that Lucas hinted at when he cryptically mentioned the Whills a few years back. I've never read it, but it's intriguing, though perhaps a more literal exploration of the microbiotic world than what Lucas may have had in mind.
