If the Saga isn't perfect, where did it go wrong?

Where did the saga go wrong?
For me it's details. GL always claims himself to be a visual storyteller. Im all in for that concept - as long as it means to use stong and emotional pictures to tell a story. And he does that in both trilogies. But that concept is overused if it means that only pictures matter, and not the details of the story. Sadly in the PTs there are a lot of continuity errors, where I wish, GL had taken a bit more time sorting them out, than tinkering with CGI stuff. I loved and respected his stories for almost 30 years now and know them by heart - I wish, he did so, too.

 

Even if there are redemptive scenes in the original scripts, it still wasnt primarily about a son redeeming a father, like Lucas claims in an ep3 doc

 

Just give us proof that Lucas has lied once.

 

That's because he thought that Star Wars could be his only shot at it.
GOD! Why can't you just take GL's word for it?

And even if he is putting a spin on it, who cares?
Go hand him an invoice on everthing you've spent on Star Wars saying "I want my money back you dishonest filmaker".

 

Again, circumstantial evidence says otherwise (eg. why was Star Wars just 'Star Wars' originally, with no formal subtitle added until after ESB was made/being made???)

And speaking of 'nebulous', that's part of the problem here - the ad-hoc extrapolation that you're making here by saying that nebulous, left-over unused elements that were reused later, somehow translates to having a 'saga' from the get-go. Ugain, unused elements don't equate with having concrete, whole storylines........

I think that before we get to the 'proving' part, it's necessary to ask you if you really could faithfully place yourself 'behind' Lucas's 'current version' of the truth?

I mean, the phrase 'current version' implies something that has changed, and can change further......does that sound to you like something that can be used as an accurate gauge of what happened in the past (how SW was developed)???

Do you consider self-contradiction the same thing as lying?

Besides, tell me why is it necessary to 'prove' that Lucas has lied ('always' smells of red-herrings and strawmen....), when establishing how SW was conceived and developed involves working in the realm of probabilities ? There's no need to demand more than is necessary.

 

Stryphe's non-mod post

The question was "where did the SAGA go wrong" Not where did the Original Trilogy go wrong.

Right, I got that the first time, but you also mentioned that the PT and OT are like oil and water. So, if the problem with the PT is that it's oil, not water, doesn't that mean this problem occured when GL went back to do the PT and started making the oil, and thus made TPM? (mixing a lot of metaphors in with actual points, hope that worked )

After all, stylistically and storywise, changes - as you rightfully pointed out - came about in ESB. I haven't seen anything conclusion that he'd written ESB, or even large parts of it, pre-1977. But is that a wrong direction to take, all the same? I don't think so. Why not? Because it works. Why does it work? Because it was a very well made film. If TPM (and the other PT movies) was as well made as ESB, despite stylistic differences, would you feel that it was a wrong turn, even with the making-it-up-as-he-went-along approach?


"I think that came about because of the winnyness of Anakin."

I saw this phenomenon as early as 1989; the prequels had nothing to do with it.

Really? I've only ever noticed the phenomia BP pointed out. I never heard this in '89. Actually I didn't know anyone who were talking about SW in 1989.


Again, as far as the 'big script' that was impossible to make one movie out of - that is refering to the rough/first draft done in '74, a draft that was approaching 200 pages. That draft has been been shown to have some elements of ESB and ROTJ

What elements of ESB, though, beyond an astroid chase? I was only aware of a few ROTJ elements.

 

I can't believe how people that love something so much can find so much to complain about.

I LOVE Star Wars, and yes I love AOTC and even Ewoks.
I grow up with Star Wars, it's a part of me, its in my DNA, it's part of who I am. I love it, my wife loves it, my kids love it, Alice loves (your father's right). For the 2hour or some min of film, it does what it sets out to do. It entertains me.

 

That's just the point that I'm making to RocketGirl, Stryphe. It's just 'elements' ......it doesn't translate to having a formed 'Original trilogy' or 'saga' from the get go, not even in 'outline form'.



I don't have a problem with the majority of the changes that were made (with the OT at least...). I don't look at it the same way as BlackPool in that instance. I agree with you about ESB, Stryphe, and there's only a few things I might have wanted different about ROTJ (not the final outcome, though).

 

Stryphe's mod post


No, not "Whatever"; your perspective is weird, and quite possibly unique, as I can't recall hearing anyone else express it before.

Weird? That's a borderline flame, maybe it wasn't meant that way, but let's not go that direction.


I hate how independent thought in this country is such a dirty thing. I have to agree with RocketGirl on this one, that you are acting like a sheep about your view on the PT and any time I hear the same tired criticisms of the PT I usually walk away

You know the old saying about assume. BP expressed his displeasure at TPM prior to signing on the JC, and was actually the first person I knew who expressed displeasure at it, at all. if anything, he's someone who was copied, not someone who copied others. I can vouch for the legitimacy of this statement. This is why one should not assume. You really don't know. Also, this is why pyscho-analyzing people on a message board is not a good idea; there is too much you don't know about someone to come to a truly meaningful conclusion.

Besides, let us be honest, pyscho-analyzing is just an intellectually lazy way of trying to be "right", when the intellectually honest way seems otherwise too difficult. It's the easier path to simply make accusations about someone's mentality state or thought process, in hopes to seemingly discredit them without having to discredit or rebuttal the actually argument or deal with the topic at hand. How many times do we see people accuse one another of being too easy to please or too hard to please, a blind follower or a bitter skeptic, lost in the past or haters of the past, selfish or suck-ups? These accusations are quite common, but they do not address the points made in any given debate - they just try to sweep them under the rug in favor of trying to make one's self look somehow superior to one's debating opponent.

Aside from the problems with flaming that arrise from this line of argument, it's also intellectually weak. In Saga, we strive to maintain a higher standard of discussion. It's consider an "in-depth" forum. We don't ask for everyone to be Rhone scholars, but we do try to avoiding certain things that would be counter-productive to the in-dpth aspect of the forum. This pyscho-judgemental babble may fly in other forums, but it won't work in Saga, as it is counter-productive to the purpose of the forum.

Regarding Lucas's lying or not-lying: This is a debatable point. There have been comments made by Lucas that cause me to question his truthfulness at times (ones in which Toschi alluded to). However, I have decided not to label him a liar, for several reasons (reasons I'll save for another thread). Maybe he is, maybe he isn't. Neither would surprise me. But if he is, it's not a debate that is going to be productive to this thread, as it would derail it too much, so I would redirect people to take it to a different thread. And it's not anything either side will prove, honestly. It seems like it should be cut in dry, but we live in a society that treats the truth like a POV, and coming from that standpoint, either side - right or wrong - will merely see the POV they wish and the debating will be endless, as is with many things on the JC.

 

That's just the point that I'm making to RocketGirl, Stryphe. It's just 'elements' ......it doesn't translate to having a formed 'Original trilogy' or 'saga' from the get go, not even in 'outline form'.

Right, I understand, but my question here was more to sinister (or anyone else who could fill it in): Did we have any evidence, other than taking GL at his word, that anything specifically about ESB was written down? Sinister pointed out a few legimate elements about ROTJ that had been clearly developed from pre-1977 days, but was there anything I don't know about from ESB that was written down? This isn't to try and prove GL a liar, I want to know, what were the ESB ideas in early drafts?

 

It doesn't matter. The relevent point is that GL had more than just ANH in mind when he made ANH. Sure, it may not have been fleshed out, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that ANH wasn't added to, the story was pared down to ANH to make it doable; there always was more.

That was what I was trying to get across when I went to refute BlackPool's assertion that the Saga went wrong when Lucas decided to make more than just ANH. Period.

 

BP wasn't attack GL's decision to make more than one SW movie, he was criticizing the approach.


It doesn't matter. The relevent point is that GL had more than just ANH in mind when he made ANH.

Maybe not to you, but it matters to me. People have told me for years that the trilogy was all one draft cut-up, but all I have seen is that one draft had most of ANH and some ROTJ elements in it that were cut out and then later used at the end of the trilogy. Best I can tell ESB was written totally from scratch post-May '77, and if there is evidence to the contrary, I'd be very, genuinely interested in seeing it.

 

I just did, its in the ep3 chosen one doc

 

But BP's criticism of the approach certain made it sound as if the problem BP had with the approach was that Lucas decided to make more than just ANH. Perhaps BP ought to re-word it, because it's just not scanning any other way to my eyes.

Well, I'm not those people, and I can only argue my own side.

 

If you want proof that there was always gonna be more than one film if the first was successful, that there was an overall story...all you have to do is look at ANH.

Darth Vader doesn't die...he escapes at the end of the film...there's the proof.

If ANH was supposed to be the only film, then having Vader escape would never have happened, since he is one of the villains and it would have been pointless to have him disappear and not have his story be wrapped up.

The second proof comes from Tarkin earlier in the film where he mentions that the Emperor has dissolved the Senate...why is this important? Because it shows that Tarkin doesn't rule the Empire...there is an even greater power out there, and like the previous point, it would make no sense for the Emperor to even exist as an offscreen character if he wasn't going to be explored later on.

As for Lucas planning the saga...it's half true...Lucas changed and move things around as he went through each draft of the original script and then as he worked on TESB and ROTJ. The story was always there, just not necessarily how we eventually saw it.

For example, there was supposed to be a 7, 8 and 9. These films would have focussed on Luke as aa Jedi, going to find his long lost sister (who wasn't Leia) and having his final confrontation with the Emperor.

All this was condensed into the second hour of Return of the Jedi, because Lucas was burned out after 3 films and didn't want to make anymore. Other ideas like Luke being an old general were moved so that Obi-wan became that character, the Death Star was moved to ANH because the film needed a climax.

Lucas had the story, but it was never set in stone...he changed things as he went through the films but always kept to the general idea.

As for the prequels...well I think there was always a "Chosen One" in some form...at the beginning of one of the cuts for ANH, when it was called "The Star Wars" when the intro was:

A long time ago in a galaxy, far, far away, a great adventure took place...

before that there was a passage from the "Journal of the Whills" that mentioned the coming of the "Son of Suns" so the idea of a Chosen One wasn't new to the prequels.

 

The most notable TESB element was the asteroid chase and that Luke's training would continue. The former is just an element that was developed into a plotline for Han and Leia. The latter was a given. There was also that in ANH's first draft, the planet of Alderaan had a city located in the clouds. Which would go on to become Bespin while Alderaan was finalized in ROTS. Another element, which carried more into ROTJ, was that Leia had a deep secret that almost no one knew about. Though rather than being a sister, she was Luke's cousin who would turn out to be a princess of an important world. There were a few elements, but the vast majority were things that came into the PT or ROTJ.

TESB didn't have as much that made it into the final film, because of the fact that Lucas had an idea that was different from the final product. Namely the story outline that would become "Splinter Of The Mind's Eye", the first eu novel. Namely the inclusion of the now infamous Kaibur crystal, a world that had a vast swamp area and an old woman who claimed to know the ways of the Force. But when Lucas had the money to do the next film, he abandoned that concept and Alan Dean Foster turned it into an original adventure. SOTME was to be a low budget sequel should ANH not do as well. Thus it is, unlike the others, different. For lack of a better term. Meaning that TESB had fewer elements from ANH's script drafts than then the other four films in the Saga.

There is a clue in the third draft of ANH about Vader that seems to indicate some sort of connection to Luke.

VADER: "You're next, Blue Five... I have this feeling I know you. The Force is strong with you."

It could mean that Vader sensed that he was a Starkiller/Skywalker, but it could also indicate something else. Something more. Also in this draft, Luke's father is first named as Annikin.

 

WHY is it so hard for some people to believe that there were other chapters already written for Star Wars? And why argue over it until little veins start popping out of your neck when you have no real argument anyway?

... I thought the question of this thread was "If the Saga isn't perfect, where did it go wrong?"

Well I'll tell you where it went wrong.

I was a fan back in the day.
Star Wars didn't have the armchair pundits and Star Trekkish nerdiness about it then. There was no geek stigma to Star Wars back then. SW was once cool and fun. SW fans could laugh at Trekkies and not feel like hypocrites.

So where indeed did it go wrong? It seeped its way into the den of all geekdom - comic book shops. Then came the PC games - and with the rise in popularity of the internet and the advent of fansites, it was downhill to eternal geekness.

See, for the last 15-odd years, the Star Wars fan base has been hijacked by the kind of people that made regular Joe SW fans become closet fans in desperate disassociation. We had to box our collections away in order to continue having sex with real people.

Go through some threads, find some topics where I or others have tried to add levity, jokes, or fun - and see what prevails. Witness the scathing remarks within 5-page-long arugments about the daftest details about George Lucas' writing intentions or armchair editor remarks or some bloody planet from page 253 of some obscure role-playing comic gamey thing.

That's where the Star Wars Saga has gone wrong.
It has nothing to do with George Lucas.

 

Jamiebacca, this thread isn't about the SW fan culture, it's about the movies. Stay on topic.


But BP's criticism of the approach certain made it sound as if the problem BP had with the approach was that Lucas decided to make more than just ANH. Perhaps BP ought to re-word it

Well, I'll leave that to you and BP. In the context of his later posts, I understood what he was getting at. If I misunderstood, I am sure he will correct me.


If you want proof that there was always gonna be more than one film if the first was successful, that there was an overall story...all you have to do is look at ANH.

Darth Vader doesn't die...he escapes at the end of the film...there's the proof.

Yes, this shows he wanted to do more, but did he plan to do [x] number of films, where [x] is greater than two? He ends ANH in such a way that it doesn't need a sequel, even with Vader still alive. Sinister pointed out that SOTME was an intended sequel, which carries forth none of the elements that make the greater saga (thus it was easily swept into EU as a fun, but unnecessary read), but does allow for Luke to fight Vader as a continued rivalry goes on.

Keeping Vader alive, well, it's kind of like the Connory Bonds. Number 1 always got away, but each Bond movies resolved its storyline and did not require another sequel to complete the story. However, with Number 1 still alive, there could always be a Spectre based Bond movie.


The second proof comes from Tarkin earlier in the film where he mentions that the Emperor has dissolved the Senate...why is this important? Because it shows that Tarkin doesn't rule the Empire...there is an even greater power out there

But it also says they need the Death Star to maintain the Empire without the presence of an Imperial senate. Without the Death Star the implication is that the Empire will begin to collapse. And remember another line of dialogue "... the Rebel Alliance is more dangerous than you realize." "Perhaps to your fleet, general, not to this battle station." The Rebel fleet was originally a formatable foe for the Empire.

Leaving the Emporer alive doesn't necessarily mean there is more conflict to come. If the Emporer lost the upper hand, an inevidable victory for the heroes can be assumed. However, leaving him alive does leave room for sequels.

I don't doubt GL wanted to do more than one SW movie. Because he used the Flash Gordon opening scroll - which was used as a means of showing a story's place in a series of continuous stories - this alone implies he wanted it to be a part of something bigger, but what? Eventually, a six movie Saga, but what was it intended to be in 1976-77? I don't think even GL knew then.

 

Actually it says that the regional governors will have direct control when the senate is gone. The Death Star was an instrument of fear, not a political tool.

ANH was designed in a way that it could stand alone, but at the same time leave things open enough for the story to continue. Start out as one film, then split into three, and those three then split into three...and the final three was condensed into Return of the Jedi.

 

Hey, did anyone miss this from a couple of posts earlier??? (I think so........)




So much disinformation has been spread about how SW was developed, that I think it calls for clarifying discussions on the matter, incorporating many things that have been public knowledge for years now but isn't that well known among newer fans.

Therefore, these discussions would seem to be necessary for the time being, however 'geeky' it may seem to some people.....

 

The most interesting piece is the now "infamous" Gary Kurtz interview where the background to the Saga is divulged and we get to know another perspective on the goings-on behind the scenes. Unfortunately, it's often disregarded as sour grapes, but it's still interesting to have someone speak out in contrary to Lucas' "one story" claim.

 

I think he is serious when he says that he had one story for three films. He might not have had all the details of the second and third acts, but he knew that there was enough room to do those two. Some stuff was probably in solid form, both on paper and in his mind. He did toy with the notion of doing the backstory and a forward story. That he could even possibly go up to 12 films all told. Then he parred it down to nine films. The problem became that he was burned out by the time ROTJ came around and ideas changed. I think it is clear that at the time he started TESB, that he had outlines for both it and ROTJ. But as TESB evolved into what we know it as, a lot of ideas were changing and certian old ones were springing up again. In a way, these ideas were coming together without realizing it until they were laid out. Like cutting out Leia and Luke's romance in TESB, thus showing that he intended for Han and Leia to get together and made it clear this was happening. He had the idea of there being a sibling as far back as the beginning, but the gender and purpose evolved until he decided to make it Leia. And in looking back, he saw that the story evolved to the point where he could really do that and get away with it.

Anyway, I believe he had three films in one storyline. 7-9, which were ideas and a loose outline evolved into ROTJ. The backstory was something that he couldn't really escape, even if he tried. So that's why we have them. He probably felt adamant at the time that it would be nine films. But more and more as time passed, it became obvious that this wasn't what he really wanted. More and more, he saw where this was going which was matching up to what he had thought of, but never expressed.

 

Hmm, I thought 'Saga' meant all-encompassing. Musta hit too close to home!

 

Actually this forum is for topics that encompass the six movies and the movies only. It says so in the header, so it must be true...

 

As the Spiked one said, it's a Saga forum. A thread about fans would be more fitted in SWC, but with SWC's "films\fan" policy, perhaps not even there (you'd have to take that up with Strilo). Some fan-based discussion may (may) be allowed in certain instances, but is not allowed to derail a thread. I already detailed the why's of this in a post above titled Stryphe's mod post. Read that and then PM me if you need any clarification.