If you want the honest answer: Lucas planned for there to be a sequel trilogy focusing on Luke searching the galaxy for his long-lost sister. However, when they got around to writing/filming ROTJ, Lucas was going through a messy divorce and wanted to take a break from Star Wars to raise his kids.
So, instead of fleshing out the storyline in any meaningful way, they decided to just wrap it up and make Leia Luke's sister. There was no overarching plot laid out ahead of ROTJ for Leia and Luke to be related, it just kinda... happened so that they could wrap up loose ends.
No. Star Wars was meant to be a single movie that Lucas made when he couldn’t get the Flash Gordon rights. After it blew up, they made plans for a trilogy, and put “Episode V” in front of ESB. Around that time, Lucas started talking about how he has always planned it as a grand trilogy of trilogies, but that’s not true, they made it up as they went along for the first trilogy.
There are quite a few sources for this but here’s a good starter:
Except in George's sequels Anakin was supposed to return to guide his children & grandchildren. Anakin tied the saga together. That's the real reason why George changed Sebastian Shaw to Hayden Christensen in the special edition. He was supposed to come back but Disney threw that out along with Lucas' plans.
And by the way Qui Gon was also supposed to return as a proper voice in both Episodes 2&3 further expanding on force ghosts. Unfrortunately Liam Neeson couldn't do it so it was left as a brief conversation. Maybe we'll hear him in the Obi Wan mini series instead.
Read this book for more on how Lucas made the saga & his dropped sequel trilogy ideas.
https://www.amazon.com/Secret-History-Star-Wars/dp/0978465237?ref_=d6k_applink_bb_marketplace
Actually according to The Secret History of Star Wars, the first draft of The Empire Strikes Back by Leigh Brackett is titled "Episode II: The Empire Strikes Back", casting doubt on whether or not Lucas always planned it all out. Additionally, that same draft featured Anakin's Force ghost appearing on Dagobah with Obi-Wan. Anakin and Vader being one and the same wouldn't happen until draft two.
The book also notes that at different points, the size of Star Wars kept changing. At one point he said 9, at another point he said 12. And around that time, the series would be less of a saga, but more of a James Bond style franchise, where each installment is set in the universe, but every movie isn't necessarily the next big arc in one character's life. It might revolve around a different character, and jump backward and forward in time. Episode II might be Empire, but Episode III might decide to be a prequel about Obi-Wan. Lucas also considered letting into other directors and writers in to give their own flourish, akin to Bond. Not to mention Empire and Jedi.
That's one tiny detail, whereas you're flat-out wrong about everything else on such a comprehensive (and already proven-wrong) scale that I don't even know where to begin.
Go read The Secret History of Star Wars. That book does an amazing job sifting through everything Lucas ever wrote to figure when and how Lucas came up with the major ideas for all the Star Wars films: https://www.amazon.com/Secret-History-Star-Wars/dp/0978465237
Because George changed his mind a lot while making the first film. Originally it was going to be a standalone film. But he had enough material for other films, so he chopped it down to size and shelved the unused ideas until he could use them later. And at that point, there wasn't really an idea to do a trilogy per say. Rather that Star Wars could just keep going like James Bond. This was where the often mentioned 12 or 15 episode idea comes from. There could also be Prequel films, but prior to actually thinking of having a Prequel Trilogy, instead "Star Wars" would still be Episode I, and a Prequel about Obi-Wan might be Episode V, the fifth film to be made. You'd still watch it in episode order, but the timeline could jump around. Because prior to actually writing The Empire Strikes Back draft 2 and deciding only then that Vader was Luke's father (draft 1 by Leigh Brackett had Obi-Wan and Anakin's Force Ghosts on Dagobah), the Prequel Trilogy idea had yet to take root. Once it did, Empire got the Episode V subtitle, meanwhile "Star Wars" was rereleased in 1981 as Episode IV: A New Hope a year later.
In short, George made it up as he went along. Source.
Because at that time there wasn't a saga planned, and Darth was Vader's first name.
For much more detail on this, and ~~my~~ many other interesting tidbits, see The Secret History of Star Wars.
(edit: I accidentally a word)
That's true, his wife I think (as attributed by many associated with the film) saved the film from mediocrity. There's a great book that includes an entire chapter about her http://www.amazon.com/The-Secret-History-Star-Wars/dp/0978465237
Theres also a fantastic article online out there about her, but I can't find it right now.
That's how it was during the prequels, when he had absolute power and the final word on everything. But during the OT era, he had to compromise and just roll with the limitations and input from others around him. Check out The Secret History of Star Wars sometime, it's a fascniatind read. Lucas hated having others coming in and making changes that were ultimately what made those movies beloved classics.
Lucas didn't find out about Campbell's work until he'd started work on the script for Empire - a friend mentioned Campbell to Lucas, who of course fell in love with the guy's work and used it to help flesh out the new epic tone Lucas wanted to impart to the series.
Really, if anyone wants to read an incredibly detailed book about how all 6 Star Wars films were written - from the moment when Star Wars was nothing more than a random list of names scribbled on a piece of paper to the writing of the last-minute reshoots for Revenge of the Sith, I suggest folks check out The Secret History of Star Wars: http://www.amazon.com/The-Secret-History-Star-Wars/dp/0978465237
If you want a real idea, I've heard good things about this book. I learned a lot about Lucas' ex wife who won the Oscar for editing Star Wars.
He really didn't. His plans for Star Wars changed all the time. At one point he even thought of doing 12 episodes. At another point, Empire was Episode II as per the first draft of the script and Anakin's Force ghost was on Dagobah. He was wholly separate from Vader initially. Leia originally wasn't planned to be Luke's sister. At one point the various episodes would have no defined chronological order as Lucas once envisioned it as a potentially endless number of movies like the Bond franchise, where different directors and writers would come in, and Episode IV could very well be a prequel about Obi-Wan before jumping back to the present with Episode V.
And when the saga did start to take shape after Empire, he originally had the Emperor surviving in Jedi for the heroes to face again in the Sequel Trilogy. A story which IIRC would have also featured the "other" Yoda spoke of, who was NOT Leia. Hell, much of the incertainty of whether or not he'd be able to make more than one movie is why the Death Star is in A New Hope instead of being held off for then part 3. And the page of notes he had for the Prequels were largely something he wrote just so he knew where everyone came from. But again, Empire used to be Episode II. The plan to flesh those notes out into chapters and renumbering the films only came during making Empire.
In fact after Jedi, he cancelled all plans to make more movies, then later decided to do the Prequels while claiming he would make the Sequels, then after Sith he suddenly turned around and said it's a 6 part saga about Anakin and there's no more story to tell. And then of course once he sold Lucasfilm to Disney he suddenly pull story treatments out of thin air that did NOT resemble his original ideas for the Sequels.
To summarize, the only plan Lucas had was to make a bunch of movies that would be tributes to all his favorite things growing up. But that's it really. But he's spent years claiming that it was all planned because the legend sounds better, and fans would like to believe that he's some genius that knows what he's doing and the franchise is in safe hands. But in truth he was just really good at being his creations Han Solo and Indiana Jones: making it up as he goes along. Source: The Secret History of Star Wars.
The look on Rick McCallum's face is priceless.
Also, I LOVE the Plinkett reviews.
"WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOUR FACE?!" I couldn't stop laughing. I spit out this line every now and then as a reaction to something minor, and it still gives me a good giggle.
BTW, I would heartily recommend "The Secret History of Star Wars" by Michael Kaminsky:
It's a superbly researched and annotated book that focuses specifically on just the writing and production of the first six films. Kaminsky's prose is concise and dispassionate, and really just lets the facts stand by themselves.
I read it in less than a week and it's one of my favorite books of its kind.
The Secret History of Star Wars is a book all about this sort of thing. I haven't read it myself, but I've heard good things.
https://www.amazon.ca/Secret-History-Star-Wars/dp/0978465237
Don’t believe anything Lucas has ever said about having all the movies mapped out. Read The Secret History of Star Wars and you’ll see the parent poster is correct
https://www.amazon.com/Secret-History-Star-Wars/dp/0978465237
One: https://may4bewithyou.com/why-does-obi-wan-call-darth-vader-darth/
Three: http://www.forcematerial.com/home/2016/12/01/the-origin-of-darth-vader-the-name
Just drop it, dude. Is pestering me really worth your time?
It's a book by Michael Kaminski. I'm not sure what you are looking at. https://www.amazon.com/Secret-History-Star-Wars/dp/0978465237
Some extensively researched reading material for you: https://www.amazon.com/Secret-History-Star-Wars/dp/0978465237
So for starters, let's put Disney to bed for a few minutes. Disney has had a long day. Lucasfilm, the company who actually produces Star Wars and deals with everything short of like release dates, is the same company who produced the prior six Star Wars films, is also the company who produced the last five Star Wars films. We good so far?
What you're suggesting is that George Lucas is capable of improvising and retconning a story at each and every turn (which he absolutely did), but the filmmakers behind the Sequel Trilogy are not.
Just because you do not like the ST and just say Disney Bad™ as shorthand for why you don't like it does not mean that the filmmakers who made these films are any less of Star Wars fans than you, nor does it mean that they did not care passionately about what they were doing. Just because the end result is not what you liked does not mean that Lucas improv good, "Disney" improv bad.
Lucas has always said his saga was about the Anakin (the father) Luke & Leia (the children) & then Anakin's grandchildren.
Try reading this
https://medium.com/@Oozer3993/george-lucas-episode-vii-c272563cc3ba
And more importantly this which draws from lucas's own notes & interviews during & after the making of the original trilogy.
https://www.amazon.com/Secret-History-Star-Wars/dp/0978465237
From Empire onwards he'd intended a 9 or 12 part saga telling the full story of the Skywalkers. Over time it was condensed down.
Lucas has always said his saga was about Anakin (the father) Luke & Leia (the children) & then Anakin's grandchildren (although originally Leia wasn't one of the children).
Try reading this
https://medium.com/@Oozer3993/george-lucas-episode-vii-c272563cc3ba
And more importantly this which draws from lucas's own notes & interviews during & after the making of the original trilogy.
https://www.amazon.com/Secret-History-Star-Wars/dp/0978465237
From Empire onwards he'd intended a 9 or 12 part saga telling the full story of the Skywalkers. Over time it was condensed down & altered but the main theme about Anakin, his decendants & legacy was always the same.
We will eventually get something like that, time will come for a journalist to write something like this: https://www.amazon.com/Secret-History-Star-Wars/dp/0978465237 detailing the early years of the Star Wars Disney era.
This article quotes a book specifically about the history of Star Wars.
How about another article?
Marcia Lucas even has an Oscar for her editing of Star Wars
Marcia Lucas had a significant hand in Star Wars.
George got lucky with marrying Marcia, just as much as he got lucky with Star Wars.
If you have other links/sources that can demonstrate that Lucas was the only brains behind all of Star Wars, I'd love to see them. Until then, I'm pretty sure the books and the Academy's awards will stand.
>Why do people always say this? How did Lucas become what he hated or like the empire at all? I really don't understand this."
Sorry, but your position is uninformed.
Let's begin with George Lucas in 1970, a fresh USC grad about to begin work on THX-1138 with Francis Ford Coppola. The movie ultimately flops badly. He then moves on and tries to get American Graffiti made, but no one wants it. Even after it's a surprise hit, it's still hard to get his dream made, Star Wars, because no one believes in Sci-Fi films because of Ed Wood (among other reasons). Lucas, then, was much like Luke Skywalker, the underdog taking on the big studios in order to score a Death Star-sized hit. He was passionate about his films and getting them made and nothing else, at least professionally.
Star Wars eventually gets made by Fox and is a hit. The rest is history and the franchise generates nearly $30 billion from 1977 to 2012, before the Disney deal. To get there, Lucas signed multiple deals with multiple gigantic corporate conglomerates to pimp out the franchise and grow Star Wars into the consumerist wet dream it is today. As one example, of many, in 2012 (before the Disney deal), VW ran a Superbowl ad that featured a cutesy Darth Vader kid trying to use the Force. Want to know what else the company was doing at this time? It has something to do with violating the Clean Air Act and deceiving the American people into believing their cars were environmentally friendly.
Star Wars, under Lucas, did promotions with nearly every big company you have ever heard of. The list of affiliations and partnerships and tie-ins with companies that have done horrible things in the name of profit is endless. Star Wars-themed products, under Lucas, have ranged from toilet paper to Jar-Jar Binks lollipops. And all of those decisions go back to Lucas, who acquired the merchandising rights to the series back before A New Hope was made, by giving up $500,000 in directing fees to Fox.
Ultimately, Lucas WAS Star Wars until he sold it off to Disney (he would later seemingly regret the decision in an interview with Charlie Rose and refer to Disney as 'white slavers').
Lucas did help make the Indiana Jones series with Spielberg, but he never made another film until the prequels because he was busy maintaining the empire he had built through all of the toys, promotions and tie-ins. Lucas had successfully turned his beloved property into a cash machine.
Yes, he was also expanding ILM and Skywalker Sound at this time (with SW money), and while expanding your vision and making sure your creation stays in your hands (until Disney calls with $4 billion), is admirable, especially in this day and age of no-shame franchise movies, Lucas became the worst of that extreme. Filmmaking is widely referred to as a collaborative process by those who know it best, and Lucas, during the prequels, exercised complete control. He did not listen to (or did not hear) any suggestions from colleagues, who were too scared to question the giant. And look how those films turned out. The Secret History of Star Wars reportedly details how this came to be, speaking to George's discomfort with Irvin Kershner's handling of ESB and the effect this had on him not taking anyone else's opinion in the future. Hence the flaws of Return of the Jedi and the prequels. It's also worth noting that ESB was the film Lucas was furthest removed from, and it is commonly acknowledged as the best Star Wars film. Lucas, on the other hand, believes it's the worst Star Wars movie ever made, including the prequels.
To add to the list, try to find a home video release of the originals. They don't exist. Why? Because Lucas believes his crummy special editions are superior. All of the films have been re-released multiple times in both theaters and on home video, but never in their original forms, save for some Laserdisc bullshit and a re-release on the special edition DVDs that featured low-quality audio, perhaps on purpose.
Look, I like the guy. Star Wars is my favorite thing. I think he was noble in his intentions of wanting complete control, but I also think, somewhere down the line, this got the better of him and he, at very fucking least, sold out.
So, um, yeah... that's why people always say this.
I can not recommend enough The Secret History of Star Wars, which I read back when it was a free PDF available online. It is extremely well researched and has a hell of a lot of interesting detail about the trilogy and its origins. It is particularly detailed on the origins and evolution of Ep IV and sheds a lot of light on the multitude of changes the first film (and even the next two) went through.
One thing I learned from that book is that Lucas has been bullshitting (or "Trumping") his way through life a lot longer than I realized. Lucas's favourite phrase was immortalized in that South Park parody where they have a trailer for the CGI enhanced South Park pilot - "For instance, in the scene at the bus stop, we always meant to have Imperial walkers and giant dewback lizards in the background, but simply couldn't afford it."
The phrase "I always intended" is George's crutch. When the Special Editions came out, he relied on that heavily. He claims he always intended [Spoiler alert] Vader to be Luke's father, when that is demonstrably not true. He claims at various times that the OT was always supposed to be part of [insert number of films]. In reality, he originally envisioned a 12-part serial run of independent stories like Flash Gordon or James Bond with each one directed by someone else. When the SEs came out in the mid-90s, he said he always intended 9 episodes (Prequels, OT and sequels) and that he had the stories pretty set out for all of them. Later he said he never intended to do sequels and that he only had a sheet of paper with rough notes. He claims the films were always intended to be the story of Darth Vader, but the idea for Vader to be Luke's father didn't even come into play until a late draft of Empire. Only after he did the Prequel Trilogy and decided that the 6 films tell the story of the rise and fall of Darth Vader did he declare that he never intended sequels (because then, once Vader is dead in VI, there is no logic to having sequels that he isn't in if it's the Vader story).
But from the book, something I noted was that there is a magazine article from something like the late 70s where he was already lying and saying "I always intended there to be..." a certain number of films, that was total BS given his intentions had flip flopped a number of times by that point.
It takes about ten seconds of thought and about 30 minutes of research to figure out why the OT worked, and the PT was terrible.
George Lucas is the story and mind behind the three original films. To me, that's it. Character development, the settings, the writing, that belonged to Kasdan, Kirschner, and Kurtz. A New Hope was a MAJOR fluke to me. Lucas did not bring the best performances out of Ford, Fisher, and most notably Hamill. It's not like Mark Hamill's acting improved from ANH to ESB, he had a MUCH better director and screenwriter to help him out.
This, sadly, is why Hayden Christensen is looked at as a terrible actor to anyone who's only seen him in Star Wars. He had Lucas writing his lines and directing him. For fucks sake, Lucas morphed different takes into one, giving a non-organic feel to the actor's facial expressions. Even brilliant actors like McGregor, Neeson, and McDiarmind were plagued by terrible writing and directing.
Anyway back to the OT, Lucas became very uncomfortable after ESB was released, because he felt "challenged" by Kasdan and Kirschner. I think he himself even saw how ESB was practically a masterpiece. After that movie, he decided to give himself more control over the next SW movies, and in the end we ended up with ewoks blowing up AT-ST walkers, Jar Jar Binks stepping in shit and being farted on, and lines about hating sand. You should really read this book to get a clearer understanding of how Lucas, after ESB, became egotistical and always fell on 'I created Star Wars!" to give himself more power during production.
Here's the link to buy the book if you'd like to support the author: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0978465237/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awd_pR4Fwb032PGHA m