Lit Star Wars Archives Episode 1-3 The Prequels

I don’t think Lucas is claiming that he “always” intended anything here. I also think he has sometimes misremembered his past ideas and that fans have misinterpreted that as deliberate revisionism. For example, when talking to Alan Dean Foster during the writing of Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, Lucas misremembered the third draft of ANH’s screeplay as having Vader take orders from a greater evil.

 

I've said before that it feels like at some point Lucas starting reading a lot about microbiota and decided it was the coolest thing ever. This is... pretty much a view unique to him.

I'm not even, like, saying this as someone who's against these ideas. (I do not, in fact, actually hate midichorians per se). But I also definitely don't see the "wow! tiny organisms!" factor, or see it being a common feeling.

 

Quite the contrary.

It really is not what people think it is. It is much more spiritual than biological. But both science and metaphysics meet to make it work. Guess it takes some esoteric background to understand cause from the bits here and there fans think it is either too science and not enough spiritual or take it too spiritual and ignore the science behind it. But it is no either or.

It is more quantum physics than biology. And that is closest science ever got to spirituality.

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I mean I do wonder at what point Lucas started getting into these ideas? Was it something that he had the idea for in from the beginning but Time and Technology just didn't allow him or was it just something that perhaps in the 90's Lucas read up on and started getting invested in.


It is kinda important to remember Lucas had a lot of the vague big ideas and creative instincts we see in the Prequels and TCW from the start but technology and the people around him (Kasdan, Martia Lucas, Kurtz etc.) either tamed or thing just got in the way and he backtracked on.

Fact is I guess that Star Wars is a ever evolving thing and it was bound to evolve from it's original incarnation of A New Hope.

Reminds me a bit of how Kingdom Hearts started out as this simple concept of "Anime Protagonist meets Disney characters" to now having his very overcomplicated world and lord behind it.

 

I mean, I'm sure that's what it evolved into eventually - and I obviously can't comment on what a book I don't own says. But if you look at everything he's said previously around TPM, it really seems like the fundamental root of midi-chlorians is extrapolating the theme of 'symbiosis' to how our bodies contain microorganisms that work with them to function (the name itself is probably a derivative of 'mitrochrondia', although I'm not sure if there's ever been an explicit statement of that). And beyond the mere "don't science the Force" backlash, I really do think that a huge part of the fan disconnection is that most people just don't find microorganisms as interesting to contemplate as Lucas does.

 

@ColeFardreamer

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I wonder who the villains were in Lucas’s late 1970s/early 1980s sequel trilogy plans.

 

I mean i think main theme we can gather from all of this is.

Lucas is into a lot of deep interesting stuff that due to technology and those around him he was able to boil down into something palpable for general audiences to swallow and the more and more freedom in terms of tech and creativity the got the more he was able to do things his own way but makes things likes palpable for general audiences as time went on.

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We know that...It was the Emperor.

 

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Yeah, it would have been the Emperor. It's been known for a long time that he wasn't intended to be defeated in Episode VI until Lucas decided to make it the finale of the saga (for the moment).

 

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Which is the great irony of Episode 9 we have now...The Emperor got to be the final villain of the Saga (At the moment)

 

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Hard to say that the Sifo-Dyas thing was ever "straightforward." TCW absolutely made a mess of it but even in AOTC whatever had supposedly went on with Sifo-Dyas was muddled and unclear. Ultimately I think the idea was supposed to be that Dooku killed Sifo and then assumed his identity to place the clone order, but the movie left it vague at best.

 

I mean, originally

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the order for the clone army was going to have been placed by a man called 'Sido-Dyas', who was transparently (to the audience) an alias of Darth Sidious. The problem is that Dooku openly reveals the existence of a Sith Lord named Sidious to Obi-Wan later on, and even though he's not an entirely trustworthy source, it makes the Jedi look like idiots if they don't pick up on it. So 'Sido-Dyas' became Jedi Master Sifo-Dyas in the actual AOTC, but that just raises further questions: who was this guy? Was he actually a Jedi? Why did he think he was ordering the clone army? What's his connection to the events of TPM, if any? Was he even the one who ordered the army, or was he dead at that point like Obi-Wan thought? Etc.

I actually think TCW's "The Lost One" made things vastly clearer. The situation in AOTC is not remotely 'straightforward.'

 

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I wonder if either of these ideas could have worked:

- Talzin survives TCW and is the big bad of Episodes 7-9.

- Maul returns to Sidious’s side in Rise of Skywalker.

 

Does it say when he started thinking about selling?

 

Nope

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Thank you for those excerpts! Here are some thoughts on the ST and Sith info:

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I can see why Disney would have opted to go their own way. They wanted a story that worked as a sequel to the movies, and especially to the OT. Lucas, on the other hand, had been working on TCW for years, and before that he had spent nearly a decade working on the prequels. So for him, the sequels were an extension of his new work, though fused, too, with his older work.

The idea of part of the sequels being set soon after ROTJ makes me wonder if he at any point considered doing the sequels as another animated series. Or possibly as a set of animated movies. We know he talked to Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher early on, but perhaps the idea then was that they would do voice work. This is just speculation. But if that were the case, I can definitely see Maul making a lot of sense as the new main villain.

In any case, it’s curious that Lucas doesn’t talk too much about the grandchildren, at least in these excerpts. Maybe he has some limits about what he can say due to selling the treatments to Disney? I’ve heard some fans say that the sequel treatments he sold are different from the sequel ideas he has teased, though of course they would be connected by some thread. But I don’t know if this is true.

In any case, I also wonder what kind of villains, besides Talon and Maul, would have been around. They mention stormtrooper remnants, but would they have been associated with Maul’s syndicate? These other groups sound a lot like Moff Gideon in the Mandalorian. Indeed, if Lucas were thinking of the sequels as a continuation of TCW, it would also make sense for them to include the Mandalorians or the Death Watch in some way. Would Maul have taken back control of the super-commandos as part of his plans to regain power?

This makes me think about the info @ColeFardreamer shared about the Rule of Two. Maul is no longer a Sith, but the situation for him is similar to that of the Sith after the last time they destroyed themselves. He has no solid power base, giving the Republic and the Jedi room to grow and become strong. Perhaps Talon’s eventual attempt to turn a Skywalker grandchild to the dark side would have been a repetition of that pattern of betrayal.

Indeed, and this is now just speculation, but based on the new info about the ancient Sith Lords, it would make sense if Maul’s situation paralleled not only Darth Bane’s but also that of the first Sith Lord. In older drafts of Star Wars ‘77, Lucas had the Sith be a clan of pirates who were taught the ways of the Force by a fallen Jedi. That idea changed in time so that Darth Vader was the only Sith, but the same design thread eventually resulted in Boba Fett and, by extension, the Mandalorians. So I wonder if the Jedi Master who fell to the dark side left the order with his apprentice and took over a Sith warrior clan (a people, but not a species) in his bid to increase his power base. That would explain where the fallen Jedi got their new name and language. And it’s a solid parallel to what happens in TCW (and possibly Lucas’s ST) with Maul and the Mandalorians.

Anyway, that’s just mostly baseless speculation. But I do find that feudal century of Sith rule to be very interesting. I’m getting more of a Japanese Warring States feel from it than European feudalism, especially because of Lucas’s influences. Well, if I needed an excuse to watch some Kurosawa films again, here I have it!

 

@Sauron_18

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It's also a great rebuke of some overzealous EU fans who think Lucas had nothing to do with TCW and all its continuity issues with the EU were just Dave Filoni's fault. But reading this, all clearly building off from what was established in those TCW arcs, shows that Lucas was heavily involved.

 

I find myself with the mental image of George, Rian Johnson, and J.J. Abrams sitting around a table in the dark corner of a bar, swapping tales of over-the-top fan hate and clinking their glasses together in solidarity...

 

It's interesting now moving forward., since I think we're getting this strange (But I think for the most part nice) of Lucas's ideas with other peoples flourishes, mixed in with Legends material since I'm sure at least most of the authors and Story Group folk are fans of that stuff.

 

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The chain of events seemed pretty clear to me watching AotC:

1. After Maul's death, Dooku becomes Sidious's new apprentice.

2. Sidious and/or Dooku manipulate, mind trick or impersonate Sifo-Dyas, a member of the Jedi Council, so they can place an order for a clone army on behalf of the Republic.

3. They kill Sifo-Dyas to cover their tracks.

It's never spelled out in detail, but the gist is there. Obi-Wan learns that Sifo made the order, but that Jango was recruited by Tyranus. At the end of the film, we learn that Dooku is Tyranus. Ipso facto, the Sith are behind the clone army.

Like I said, seems pretty clear to me. So either it is fairly straightforward, or it is incredibly convoluted and I'm a super-mega-genius for figuring it out. I'm happy with either option.

 

Quite odd, though. If Lucas did indeed mean for Sifo-Dyas to be just another apprentice of Palpatine, would that not contradict TCW somewhat? I have to admit, I haven't seen the Sifo-Dyas stuff in the CW for ages, however, so I could be wrong. And I do agree that having Darth Maul be the big bad of the ST would just feel slightly off in some way.

The "few years after ROTJ" also confuses me. How was he going to pull that off exactly, in a technical sense? De-aging technology? So when were Vader's grandkids meant to be born? Quite a few things don't seem to match up with other little pieces we've heard over the years. I would assume, as does what happen in the developmental process, a lot of Lucas' ST ideas were forever changing and morphing.

 

When Lucas is talking about his ideas for the ST is he refering to stuff he wrote in the 80s and later in the 2000s ?

 

Almost certainly these are his ideas after the early 2000s, and likely even after the sale to Disney.

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The Sifo-Dyas stuff is not necessary to explain what happened in AOTC, nor does it clash with TCW. But it does add a new dimension to the character as well as to the Sith’s rule of two, which does make the story a bit messier, but arguably also more interesting. I kind of like the idea that Sidious could, technically, “create” new Sith with ease.

 

Sifo-Dyas

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Well I always suspected him to have been a Sith Apprentice. Back in the Plagueis novel Palpatine was interested in him too and it seemed to me as if Dooku's test would involve getting rid of his best friend/rival while Sifo's test would be to place the order and by doing it betray the Jedi/Council. Sifo failed, Dooku got rid of him and placed the order in his name.

But, what I want to know most now about him is this: What Sith name did Sifo-Dyas get if he was a proper apprentice? Or did he never reach the stage to recieve one due to failing one test?

And as weird as it may be, I have the headcanon that Sidious had some fun with Sifo-Dyas long before he became a Jedi Master and was somehow involved in why Sifo-Dyas got named Sifo-Dyas. Maybe he even was a Sith plant all along, given away to the Jedi as an infant by a secret Sith parent?

Also, a lot of Jedi names have a certain sound and naming system. Qui-Gon Jinn, Sifo-Dyas, Ki Adi Mundi, etc. that from a real world perspective sounds very spiritual and asian-esque. Infants given to the Jedi get a new name, a Jedi name (case in point, Baby Ludi!). So who knows what real name many Jedi were born with, or if they were given up to the Jedi without even recieving one from their parents! The fact that Jedi get a new name (much like their Sith counterparts do with a Darth name, nice paralell there) got lost though over the course of the Prequels and was more prominent around TPM rather than the rest of the movies and Prequel EU. Anakin and older people joining the Jedi got no Jedi name obviously because they were already used to their parent given name. So which Jedi has another name we never knew about, eh? Or a different family name? Are we ready for Obi-Wan alias Ben Lars?

Very great analysis and post, thx for that! Especially the part about the paralells to old abandoned OT concepts and all the paralells and repetitions and cycles between PT, OT, TCW, etc. which fit right into ring theory and Lucas modus operandi.

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What I think is important to keep in mind is that Lucas probably would have had his ST use a major timejump again like between TPM and AOTC. The first movie set closer to ROTJ, the others 10-15 years later probably to have the little kids from the first grow up to take the passing of the torch trials.

In that regard, a lot he told seems to be from his first movie where the old guard still is prominent and rebuilding. What though might have happened after the timejump? The next generation grown up willing to take over, the old guard still active trying to hold them back and spare them what they had to live through. Typical parent-child situations of children wanting to learn the hard way on their own going against the parents. Here the seduction of the dark side of one child may come into play.

But, like with the PT, that concept and setup of a trilogy has one major flaw. Any conflict only erupting in full between the 2nd and 3rd movie happens offscreen unless a tv show picks it up and shows it like TCW did. And any redemption between the 2nd and 3rd movie seems rushed and difficult to do if he only fell in the 2nd movie.

Lucas seems to have intended to do the first movie as OT nostalgia with the Big Three and little kids and rebuilding, then jump forward to the kids grown up and passing the torch. The Disney ST tried the same, but spaced it out different by moving the entire trilogy to a later date and spreading the Big Three among the movies instead of having all in one place. It still ran with the OT nostalgia bit for all three movies instead of just the first. And still had a lot of the conflict happen offscreen as the first and second Disney ST movie basically happened in the same time flowing seemless into each other as if they are one movie split in two parts (which they actually originally were before they expanded each to be their own thing).

In a way Lucas ST handled the next generation a bit like the Legends Expanded Universe, the first movie probably uses the little kids like in the Jedi Academy Trilogy and Crystal Star books as instinctive forceusers saving the adults already showing potential but lacking training. After training then after the timejump, we might get YJK onwards styled story for them with one kid falling, the other set to fight it. And then both uniting in the end as synergy against the big bad.

Lucas Sequels over time

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Lucas ST was always evolving, as it should, obviously over time. But not all versions are adressed in the book, just the relevant one and given its a PT focussed book and the PT and TCW were his last big thing, that is what this book and this books ST version is about and evolved from.


In the 70s,...
Lucas toyed with SW as a pulp space fantasy series like Flash Gordon that despite being a Saga he split into parts would feel way more like an ongoing serial following the main cast (to which not always Han Solo was counted even). The "Sequel" developed for movie but turned book "Splinter of the Mind's Eye" is the best example here. But as he actually developed TESB and thought about its potential continuation in a trilogy, his work got way more cyclical and found its narrative structre (ring theory, Campbell, etc.).

In the 80s,...
After TESB, the question became "Should ROTJ be the end, or is there more after it?" and despite plans for more after it ("There is another", The Emperor as main bad, finding Luke's sister (not Leia), etc.), it was decided to make ROTJ an end. Hence the changes to its original plot, bringing in the Emperor early, making Leia his sister and such changes.
After that, obviously fans wanted more and with comics, rpg and games expanding the universe slowly, the ghost of an ST ever coming was ever present and based in the old abandoned concepts. Will the Emperor return? Will the dark side forever dominate Luke's destiny, given his Force vision in the Tree-Cave-Temple on Dagobah? Is Boba Fett dead?

In the 90s,...
Still continuing the late 80s trends and rumors about a ST coming one day hopefully, the Legends Expanded Universe grew and explored the post ROTJ as a Lit version of Sequels working many concepts and ideas into various sources, sometimes even in several instances and variations. The Emperor returned, Luke fell and got redeemed, the next generation faced the same fears, challenges, falls and redemptions. But the announcement of the PT after the Special Edition turned the focus on the formerly off limits past and Clone Wars. The hope for an ST was not forgotten but no longer the focus.

In the 2000s,...
The PT underway or done and TCW ongoing, it was finally time for an ST. Now or never kinda, and all coming full circle it needed the PT and TCW as much as the OT as foundation. But technology still was not where Lucas wanted it to be and even his Underworld tv show hit delay after delay. And the more TCW advanced, the more concepts he seeded in it for what he really was working on with Underworld and the ST. As Underworld and the ST though were pushed further and further back again, their concepts in part also got reworked into TCW episodes in later seasons maybe. Some at least, that could double as seeding any future potential ST.

In the 2010s,...
Frustration on a high, Lucas creativity would not stop, but a sale to Disney became more and more likely as he still continued to figure out his ST and technology.

The rest is history.


But what I think is apparent is that the ST did not change much over time. Details sure, people switching roles, yeah. But the main idea was constant.

Initially the OT heroes had to deal with the Emperor after Vader was gone and turn a successful Rebellion after ROTJ into a successful New Republic to counter the Empire and defeat it. A story from rebellion to rival state to finally victory over the entire galaxy.
With ROTJ killing the Emperor, the story did not shift much, it just resurrected him. And instead of fighting a still active Empire, it became a strong Imperial Remnant diehards not giving up despite the decapitation of the Imperial government, awaiting the Emperors return.
With the addition of the PT to draw from, a microbiotic world layer got added to the spiritual side of the ST and the main bad could be the reborn Emperor, or other returning badguys like Maul or even Plagueis somehow to get the ST full circle. But still the OT heroes were rebuilding and facing unrepentant pockets of Imperial extremists with their terrorist states and crime on a high.
And even despite lots of changes under Disney, the ST story is the same! The Remnant became the First Order, the Emperor got reborn, the Republic struggles to rebuild and the next generation is tempted and some fall, and are redeemed.

Despite Lucas changing his mind, adding new stuff and even Disney revisions and detail scrubbing, we got the ST, THE ST in its core. The rest is beautiful cosmetics.

 

Yes! ALL THIS...Especially Lucas ST

I hope one day we realize this once all the tension and newness dies down and all the false narratives go away.

 

@ColeFardreamer @Sauron_18 @Jid123Sheeve

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I wonder: What if, when Zahn and Veitch first proposed Thrawn and Dark Empire, Lucas said, “Nope, the story ends with ROTJ. You may not publish anything that takes place afterwards”?