Reddit reviews The Secret History of Star Wars
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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.
It's really not "revisionist history."
There was a book published a while back called "The Secret History of Star Wars." It goes through every incarnation of the screenplays, and includes interviews with most of the important figures behind the original trilogy (Lucas, Kurtz, Marcia, Kershner, Kasdan, etc.) and really pinpoints who inspired who and when.
Kurtz was a major influence on the early drafts. He told Lucas what would and wouldn't be possible, and gave Lucas regular tips on his screenplays (which changed drastically through every draft). Without Kurtz, the main character would be a kid named Mace Windu, Han Solo would be an alien, C-3PO would be a "used car salesman"-type droid, and there would have been a lot more political influences (Palpatine was originally heavily inspired by Richard Nixon).
Seriously, go check it out. It's a great book, and highlights that Lucas had a TON of great ideas, but he (self-admittedly) had trouble translating them to paper. He hated writing, and Kurtz was one of his major encouragements to keep at it.
I think Lucas is/was a genius for creating SW. I adore the man. But I also recognize that he had a lot of help, and - just like the story of the main characters - SW was a saga of many moving parts. It was Lucas' grand vision, yes, but... without Kurtz, Kasdan, Kershner, etc., Star Wars would be very different from what it is today.
Completely untrue. It was because Lucas wanted a primitive army to defeat the technologically superior Empire, but Chewbacca had already been established as being as advanced as anyone else, so he made them tiny rather than huge. Source.
This is a nice write-up. Before I get into it, you mentioned a Rinzler-style tome on the ST. I'm hoping something like that will eventually get released, but I also think it would be really interesting to collect as many interviews or notes to try to piece the production together. It's possible that even if they did release a Rinzler-style book, they might leave some stuff out too.
More quotes that might be relevant.
A few days before TFA released, Daisy Ridley spoke of Rey in an interview with Telegraph.
>"It was wonderful for me because although it's a big action film, the emotional story is wonderful and I think that shines through. Rey's parents left her at 5 and we meet her when she's late teens or early 20s and for someone to keep hopeful that there's a better life to come I think is astounding. Though she starts off alone, she very much finds her place in a group of people and that's lovely."
In 2016 while promoting another film, Ridley says this to Timeout.
>“I thought a lot was answered in The Force Awakens,” she told the publication. “Then after the screening I went for a drink with my agent and everyone, and we were chatting away and I realised that oh, in their minds it’s not answered at all!”
>
>'And I do find it quite funny that people keep asking about it. Just yesterday a guy asked to take a picture with me, and went "Is Luke your Dad"? And I was like, "chill out, you’ll see"!'
In another interview before TFA's release, Slashfilm spoke with JJ and they started talking about how he viewed the Force.
>For me when I heard Obi-Wan say that the Force surrounds us and binds us all together, there was no judgement about who you were. This was something that we could all access. Being strong with the force didn’t mean something scientific, it meant something spiritual. It meant someone who could believe, someone who could reach down to the depths of your feelings and follow this primal energy that was flowing through all of us. I mean, thats what was said in that first film!
>
>And there I am sitting in the theater at almost 11 years old and that was a powerful notion. And I think this is what your point was, we would like to believe that when shit gets serious, that you could harness that Force I was told surrounds not just some of us but every living thing. And so, I really feel like the assumption that any character needs to have inherited a certain number of midi-chlorians or needs to be part of a bloodline, it’s not that I don’t believe that as part of the canon, I’m just saying that at 11 years old, that wasn’t where my heart was. And so I respect and adhere to the canon but I also say that the Force has always seemed to me to be more inclusive and stronger than that.
These quotes lead me to think that JJ also had Rey as a nobody.
Regarding Colin Trevorrow's quote, I honestly think that is pretty vague. When he says "We're", I thought he was referring to Lucasfilm, him, Rian, just in general. At this point, did he have a cowriter? Also, if you continue on to the rest of what he says in that ET interview:
>I love Rey…I love her, I love what she represents in that universe and where we can take her. It’s pretty incredible.
What does he mean by "what she represents"? Personally, I'm inclined to think it has something to do with JJ's quote above. And at this point, Rian's script has been written, and Colin has read it so he knows that would be answered in Rian's film. I mean, I guess one could say Colin was going to retcon it in nine, but I think we would need more evidence for that. I just think this quote is so vague that we could interpret either way.
One interesting note from your quotes is that Daisy thinks JJ had drafts (draft of a script, a single-page outline?) of the next two films, but JJ makes it sound like he just had ideas, nothing written out.
To me, the emphasis is on that there were no dictated story beats. Any potential ideas for the story were only talked about, but never written down, or set in stone. So maybe KK had some ideas for what she would like to see, but she also gave the writer's creative freedom to tell the stories how they wanted. And even if JJ had other plans for Rey's parents, it seems like he either liked Rian's change or thought it was a better decision.
JJ Abrams close friend Greg Grunberg said this to Washington Post about JJ's thoughts on Rian's script:
>"He read it and said something he never, ever says,” Grunberg, who plays pilot Snap Wexley in the new film, tells The Post’s Comic Riffs. Grunberg said that Abrams called the Episode VIII script “so good” that he wished he had written it.
It seems weird when you put this alongside Simon Pegg's comment. So either Pegg only meant that a few ideas were being thrown around but JJ wasn't decided on any, or JJ had an idea of Rey having an important lineage, but he changed his mind about that idea once he read Rian's script. If Rian had changed something so fundamental that JJ had "set up", I just think he wouldn't have said those things to Greg. And JJ's quote about his views on the Force seems to really line up, message-wise, with Rey being a nobody.
I know that Rian asked JJ to have R2 go with Rey to Ach-To instead of BB-8, and I think getting rid of the floating rocks was another thing Rian may have asked JJ to remove, if that story is true. I mean, in TFA, Han says, "He was training a new generation of Jedi. One boy, an apprentice, turned against him, destroyed it all. Luke felt responsible. He just walked away from everything." And that's what we see in TLJ.
Rian actually says this regarding Luke being detached from the Force at a SXSW panel according to Flickering Myth:
>“For me, the reason that Luke had to turn off the Force was because of Leia. Because if he didn’t, if he had a connection to Leia, if he could see his sister suffering, if he could hear her calls for help, there’s no way he’d be able to do what he thinks in his head is what he has to do – which is to stay on that island (Ach-to) for the greater good of the galaxy.”
I'm guessing JJ just hadn't considered that, much like how he had Leia walk past Chewbacca at the end of TFA.
I'm kind of curious though, is not having a definitive outline for the trilogy a bad thing? I mean, the OT was definitely not planned out, but it worked. Just sort of think it is a false equivalency.
Anyway, I know that you're not a fan of the new films, especially TLJ, and I like the new films, but I think it is cool how you are collecting sources and trying to piece the process together. Thanks for sharing this! It's a cool discussion, and maybe the truth is somewhere in the middle.
Also, if you haven't read it, I would also suggest picking up Kiminski's "Secret History of Star Wars". It's a great book and could be used as a resource if you do any further research regarding George or 1-6.
He doesn't "talk shit" as in insult people or put people down, but he frequently "talks shit" as in makes up complete bullshit lies to explain explain things or rewrite history. It's not to insult people, but it feels to me to be a form of insecurity that he is unwilling or unable to admit that anything was a "mistake" or that he changed his mind ever.
A fantastic book about the history of the franchise that provides all sorts of citations demonstrates how Lucas's favourite phrase is "I always intended..." (as South Park famously parodied).
Star Wars was originally (or at least very early) conceived as a Flash Gordon serial of a dozen films - but like James Bond with completely independent stories set around the same characters/universe, with Lucas directing the first, and handing the reins to other directors for each subsequent film.
At some point it becomes more of a saga... then you get the trilogy... the prequels... the sequels... in the interviews preceding the mid-90s special edition VHS tapes he alleges to have always planned a 9-part story with 4-5-6 being the middle, and having plans for the stories for the other two trilogies. Later he claimed he never actually had anything planned for the sequel trilogy beyond a brief outline, and I think even later still he denied ever planning a sequel trilogy when he realized that he was going to make the series about the rise and fall of Vader (who was dead after ep.6) which would make a sequel trilogy out of place.
That's just one example. He claims to have always planned the stories as they were, even though it's clear that Vader wasn't written as Luke's father until a revised draft of Empire (Vader is more of a henchman to Tarkin than a central villain in Ep. 4 - he didn't become the menacing figurehead leader of the empire until Ep. 4) Various lines in Ep4 have to be twisted to fit the father narrative - most famously Obiwan's "true... from a certain point of view" line.
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:
https://www.amazon.com/Secret-History-Star-Wars/dp/0978465237/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2X43O7YDRXML1&keywords=the+secret+history+of+star+wars&qid=1551223399&s=gateway&sprefix=the+secret+history+of+star%2Caps%2C183&sr=8-1
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.
You, my friend, need to read this book:
The Secret History of Star Wars
The book goes into Lucas' old drafts of SW and notes and basically everything that led him to creating SW. I agree with you that he made a ton of stuff up as he went along. Hell, he didn't even pick up on Vader being Luke's father until the middle of writing ESB script. It's all in this book. He basically went in to ESB wanting funds for Skywalker Ranch. Then went into ROTJ because he needed money because of his divorce. Then the Prequels were basically the same, needed money, kids were older.
The most interesting thing is the old drafts of SW and the names and places that were originally in place. The Jedi were known as the Jedi Bendu Warriors. Bendu has been introduced in Rebels season 3. The Ashla and Bogan were also introduced in Rebels. Vader was originally a different person and part of the Knights of the Sith. Knights of Ren are in the ST. Wendu was originally the main character. What I'm getting at is the LF Story Group is definitely picking through Lucas' old notes, drafts, ideas to assist in creating new SW content.
The Secret History of Star Wars by Michael Kaminski (here )
does a pretty good job of showing you that Lucas really had no plans beyond the first movie! Everything else was made up later on!
Check out this book: The Secret History of Star Wars
It is an amazing read. The author also has a website:
(http://secrethistoryofstarwars.com/index.html)
See The Secret History of Star Wars. IIRC Vader was originally intended to just be an ominous general for the Empire, like General Grievous. His mask and suit were a space suit so he could survive in space, and he was supposed to take his helmet off. When Lucas saw a rough cut with the breathing sound Ben Burtt put over James Earl Jones voice he decided to have Vader keep the mask on, and began to develop a back story to explain why he always wore it.
Marcia Lucas, for one.
This book goes into a lot more detail about it though.
https://www.amazon.com/Secret-History-Star-Wars/dp/0978465237
I think this sheds a lot of light on the whole mess. The cliff notes of it is basically what Dannik said: that the early movies were very collaborative, and as Lucas got propped up higher and higher he no longer had some other influences to reign him in.
The Secret History of Star Wars https://www.amazon.com/dp/0978465237/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_CbWzybABWFGNX
This will answer all your questions. Get it on Kindle.
But basically, Lucas had this very rough sketch of ideas and everything was written from that. The movies were written in the order they appeared.
How is it lazy? George always intended the Episodic saga to be about the Skywalker family. His original outline was 12 movies. 1-3 focus on the father & his fall 4-6 on the son & the fathers redemption 7-9 was the search for the daughter/sister 10-12 the story of the grandchildren.
However all this was condensed when making ROTJ so that the daughter became Leia & that George would only have to do 1-3 to create a complete story, seemingly abandoning 7-12 in the process but when he sold it on, he also sold his original ideas and outlines for 7-12.
Disney/Lucasfilm have just condensed the story down a little. 7-9 are essentially the grandchilren's story as it was always somewhat planned. Furthermore they seem to have resurrected Palpatine being the ultimate father i.e Anakin's creator in Darth Vader issue 25.
For reference
Palpatine Anakin's father
https://youtu.be/y3cNmV0jPNY
A link for a book detailing all the above & has an extensive chapter detailing Lucas' sequel plans. I've owned a copy since before Disney bought Lucasfilm.
https://www.amazon.com/Secret-History-Star-Wars/dp/0978465237/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=F7LRMGOVZF0M&keywords=secret+history+of+star+wars&qid=1555362829&s=gateway&sprefix=secret+history+of+st&sr=8-1
This book goes through a lot of the history and states what was likely established before the sequels and what was established later during their development. I don't know when he claims the Luke's father element was likely conceived. It was kind of amazing how they were able to make the sequels fit together so well. The prequels were horribly executed and had an open slate. There was very restrictions set forth outside of the story from the original trilogy.
An entertaining read! (I tend to gravitate towards transcripts over videos.)
As promised, a few critiques:
> Everyone had a “whoah, what the...?” moment when they first saw Jar Jar Binks...What’s the racial message here Lucas?...And what about the aliens that the Jar Jarians were fighting, these creatures that had flat faces and yellow, slanted eyes, and were all secretive…
This is a treacherous road to walk, because a lot of this outcry came from people outside of the cultural groups, assuming offense for those in them. I'm not remotely trying to exonerate Lucas for his decisions here and I'd be lying if I said I didn't immediately see those stereotypes, but given the actual thesis of the rest of your piece, I feel like this set of controversies--real or imagined--might be better left excluded.
> Then in the new movies, there's Queen Amalama ...dabadoo , whatever her name is.
"Amidala" is not a terribly difficult or silly name. The recurring mockery of it throughout feels out of place and doesn't add anything.
> We're seriously meant to believe that they couldn't defend a shed in the woods from a pack of plush toys with pre-bronze age technology?
The realities of the situation on Endor often get overlooked because of the Ewoks' external appearance. Take a look at what we actually know about them (and none of this is "creative reinterpretation" -- it's straight-up in the movie):
Ewoks are small, furry, "cute" -- but are also roughly on par with wookiees in terms of physical strength!
All military technology can be abstracted as a "force multiplier." A spear causes more harm than a fist. A blaster more harm than a spear. But physiology is also a force multiplier. A 10 kilo stone hucked by a scrawny human is not going to have the same capacity for harm that a 10 kilo stone hucked by a world-class pitcher does. Ewoks, as silly as it may superficially seem, are scary with "pre-bronze age technology."
But even despite all of that, go back and watch how that battle plays out. After initial confusion in the Imperial ranks as the realization that they're under attack from a huge indigenous force that they previously had dismissed as harmless and docile, the Imperial forces are winning. The turning point in the battle comes only when a Rebel (Chewbacca) commandeers an AT-ST, granting the Rebel forces access to Imperial armor and bringing technological parity to the forces deployed on the battlefield. Only at this point do the Rebels start turning the tide of battle; before this, Ewoks are being slaughtered left and right.
> You see, think of it like this. History is written by the victors. So maybe what George Lucas is doing is writing this whole series from a meta-contextual point of view, showing us history as it would be depicted if the forces of evil had won.
> ...
> If that's what George Lucas is doing, it's fucking brilliant. The hints are there, but you have to peel back the layers of propaganda to look for the real story.
This is partly the premise on which this subreddit relies, but walking this line requires careful navigation. In particular, dismissing the movies purely as invented propaganda isn't terribly useful. If you have no canon on which to rely, you can't even have a discussion -- no matter who you favor. If, however, you take a limited view of the films-as-propaganda and assume everything depicted is "real" but it's edited in such a way to advance a specific narrative, then you have some room for interpretation that doesn't cast the baby out with the bathwater.
That brings us to...
> Was there really a death star? Everyone who supposedly witnessed a planet being destroyed by a “death star” are all dead now, except, by no coincidence, for Luke's sister.
> It was Luke and the Jedi cabal who blew up Alderaan!
This is where you lost me. If you go down this path, you've ditched canon and you're purely into fan fiction. That's fine; there's some great fan fiction out there, but it's not really something you can build a coherent, broadly-appealing argument out of the way you can when you limit the degree to which the films "lie" (namely: purely by omission, rather than actual distortion).
> And then I saw Indiana Jones part four , and was reminded that, Lucas is just a hack .
Lucas can't write a screenplay to save his life. There's a lot of "hidden" history to the development of Lucas's successful films and a great deal of it hinges on the moderating influence of his ex-wife Marcia. This book, in particular, is a remarkable look at how Star Wars came to be, far more in-depth than the better-known Rinzler book.
But Lucas can spin a good story. This thread from a few days ago has quite a few people realizing or sharing the beat-for-beat story of the prequels, for example, and exposing through those beats that the story that plays out in the prequels is actually really cool. It just gets lost in a terrible set of scripts.
> Still, we've got the story we've got, the most deceptive and seductive pro-fascist narrative ever written. The Jedi mind trick has been played on all of us. “This is not the hero's journey you were looking for.”
I get a little frustrated with the characterizing of the Empire as "fascist." For some perspective, when it comes to Star Wars, I am (obviously) pro-Empire. But when it comes to (for example) Star Trek? The Federation is the sort of future that I want for our world. And I don't consider those views in conflict.
Unfortunately, it's difficult to articulate all the reasons why with any brevity. Largely, it stems from the scope of the governing body vs. the sovereignty of member "states", the radical social and economic changes that occur in a post-scarcity (or, if not post-scarcity, at least super-tech) society, and a bunch of other high-concept ideas.
"Fascism", though, is frankly too simplistic a political mindset to feel applicable to the Empire. As is nationalism more generally, really. Nationalism carries with it implicit assumptions of other nations and that's simply not what we're talking about with the Empire--it is the galaxy (with a few small enclave exceptions and unsettled areas).
That aside, though, it's a fun read and I applaud the analysis.
That's what George Lucas said, at one point, but not actually what happened. George is NOT a reliable source - he has contradicted himself many times. Read Kaminski's The Secret History of Star Wars (https://www.amazon.com/Secret-History-Star-Wars/dp/0978465237 ) and you can get the outlines of what really happened.
George sketched out, very loosely.... a pile of notes called (among various names) 'The Star Wars, from the adventures of Luke Starkiller', but it was nothing like the Star Wars movie. The 'Jedi-Bendu' were a family-guild kind of thing, there was no Darth Vader, no Han, 'Luke' was a middle-aged general, there was no Death Star...
Those original notes were not a coherent story, and what there was of it, wasn't good. It was just a sort of comic-flavoured soup.
Everything about Star Wars was in flux right up to the final of the first movie (which was NOT called 'A New Hope' - it was retitled that in a rerelease, because of Empire).
After, or alongside, the Star Wars movie he then sketched out a possible sequel... Splinter in the Mind's Eye. Whoops! That's the one where Luke and Leia are definitely not siblings, and 'Kyber crystals' were a big deal (reintroduced back into the EU and then Disney-EU, but not originally a thing in the movies).
THEN, AFTER Star Wars became a big hit, THEN Lucas BEGAN sketching out plans for sequels, claiming variously at different points between 1978-1983 that he was going to make three movies, or nine, or twelve, and that he had full outlines for them all. He didn't, but he said he did for the press. His big plan was going to involve every film being directed by a different director. I can see how KK might feel that she wanted to try that plan just because Lucas once wanted to do it - but it wasn't really workable to start with.
He also spins off the comic rights, so multiple Star Wars comics appear, all of which are their own thing. Somewhere around here also the Han Solo 'Stars End' etc novels.
He did make Empire next (completely invalidating Splinter of the Mind's Eye in the process), and ONLY in the process of writing that episode did he decide to merge Anakin and Vader - we know this because there's an early draft script floating around where the big Vader reveal isn't 'I am your father' but just 'look the Dark Side is powerful' and it plays out a bit like the Throne Room scene from ROTJ. What 'there is another' was supposed to refer to is unclear at this point - but could have referred to a new character, Luke's sister, who was not Leia.
Meanwhile Lucas is having a divorce and everything's not going well for him, so he just wants to end Star Wars ASAP. The whole 'lots of directors' idea just shrunk down to one trilogy.
THEN he makes ROTJ and changes everything up again, deciding to make 'Luke's sister' and Leia be the same character.
Then he develops LucasArts, which do their own thing with canon. Also West End Games create a Star Wars RPG which is pretty good.
Then in the early 90s Lucas spins off a second attempt at the Star Wars novels with Bantam, starting with Zahn's Thrawn trilogy, which draws heavily from the WEG RPG and is outstandingly good, followed by the Kevin J Anderson Jedi Academy novels which are... outstandingly not good. Also Dark Empire comic, which thinks it's in a different continuity (Luke and Leia have one kid, not two) but gets merged in later.
THEN MUCH LATER he decides to make the Prequels, and pretty much makes up everything on the spot again, ignoring all of the EU.
Then he sells to Disney and they... spectacularly fumble everything.
tldr: George Lucas claimed multiple times that he was following a grand masterplan. But the truth is he wasn't. He had vague notes and a vague feeling of what his Star Wars was like - and it was always much more like the Prequels in his mind than it was like the OT. But the Star Wars that was actually filmed emerged slowly and painfully film by film, with maybe very rough beats like 'there is an Emperor and there is Vader' but nothing really more than that.
Yea, Lucas has definitely built himself up in recent years (read since at least Return of the Jedi). Highly recommend The Secret History of Star Wars to anyone who's interested. Most of the credit for 'hole-proofing' the SW universe goes to the people who wrote and managed the books/comics/games during the 90's on. A continuity LucasArts holds sacred but that George Lucas ignores and changes on a whim.
<Nerdism increasing>
Hell the man had to be reminded that Obi-wan needs to end up with Anakin's lightsaber and his idea of an epic Clone War was 3 million bounty hunter clones in a universe numbering in the trillions. (real world scale if all the armies in the world had a maximum of 6000 personel at any one time) That and Attack of the Clones was his idea of an epic love story...
</nerd>
Based on my source the work of Joseph Campbell was something Lucas didn't read until after A New Hope, maybe even ESB. He later attributed more credit to this work than it really deserved (perhaps to make his work seem more intellectual?)
Both certainly correlate with the mono-myth idea. I just think Lucas likes to over-play the influence on SW. Dune, I can't comment on since I've never read the autobiographies of Herbert.
Ugh, I hate to be this guy, but Lucas' original intent in V was for the other to be an unknown person, who would be introduced in the movies following RotJ. But by the time he'd got to writing Jedi, he was exhausted and his marriage was falling apart. He just wanted to wrap the whole thing up. Leia was not the intended "other" when Empire was being written. She was not Luke's twin sister. That was all on-the-fly writing during the outlining for Jedi.
Edit: Every Star Wars fan should read The Secret History of Star Wars. It's really good.
I'm fairly sure there's still some early versions of Empire floating around where Anakin Skywalker is a completely different person to Darth Vader. IIRC, Luke was originally going to meet up with Anakin to complete his training rather than Yoda. Even going back to the original film it's clear that when Vader is addressed as Darth that they're using his forename rather than a title, that was a later retcon.
On a similar note, when Empire was being made George Lucas was talking about making another 3-6 films (he even talked of 20 films at one point as I remember) following on from the original trilogy. Yoda's line about another would have led into the follow-up trilogy but was shelved when Lucas got burned out from filming the originals, plus he couldn't work out how to insert another jedi into the story without damaging the existing story since everyone would simply ask where they had been in the first trilogy and how no one had noticed a second jedi aiding the Rebellion.
Lucas' answer to that was to make Leia & Luke siblings, which tied up the looming plot hole. There's even some hints that Leia was already using the force without realising it during Return of the Jedi when she chokes Jabba - that chain around his neck wasn't going to be enough to choke him, but her latent powers allow her to perform the same type of force-choke that Vader does throughout the films.
Anyone who is a Stars Wars nerd to the same degree as myself might want to read The Secret History of Star Wars which goes into a lot of details about the creation of the films.
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.
One story corroborating
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.
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.
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.
>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.
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
Empire Building is a great read and goes behind the scenes of the original trilogy with second-hand accounts. I've also heard good things about The Secret History of Star Wars, but I haven't read it myself. The author has posted additional essays on the website though which are great reads, especially the one about Marcia Lucas.
Please read "The Secret History of Star Wars".
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