Johonebesus wrote:
Eldfart, I am curious about your views on a related issue: Lucas' alleged dishonesty. The book documents statements that jive with my early memories, that Lucas did in fact publicly claim that he intended to make nine movies. Recently he has explicitly stated that he never made any such claim, that it was a 'figment" created by the press and he jokingly played along. This appears to be simply untrue.
May 24, 2005, 8:45AM
Is Lucas secretly planning another Star Wars trilogy?
By LISA ROSE
Newhouse News Service
Call them the Phantom Movies.
During the pre-release hullabaloo for The Empire Strikes Back in 1980, George Lucas suggested that the Luke Skywalker saga would not be complete after three films, or even six films. He spoke of intentions to make Star Wars a nine-installment franchise.
It was widely reported in print throughout the 1980s that he would create two follow-up trilogies, one going back in time to explore Darth Vader's roots and another turning the clock ahead to revisit the further adventures of his heroic son Luke Skywalker.
Yet it looks like that third set of films has vanished from the radar like a starship in hyperdrive.
According to Lucas, the new Jedi epic Revenge of the Sith is the swan song for the series. He believes the third prequel, which follows Anakin Skywalker's devolution into Darth Vader, provides the closure fans seek.
"The (series) starts with Darth Vader as a young lad and ends with him dying so I don't know where else I can take it," says Lucas. "It's what I wanted it to be."
The director denies ever stating that he'd make Episodes VII through IX, blaming the media for reporting rumors as fact in the early days of Star Wars.
Speaking to journalists earlier this month at his Skywalker Ranch headquarters in Marin County, Calif., Lucas said the hype was "created by you guys, not by me."
Technically, he never promised nine movies, but the news stories of Luke redux weren't pure fiction.
"We made an announcement to the press, 'There's enough material for three trilogies,'" says Gary Kurtz, producer of Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back. "It wasn't that nine films were going to be made. It was to give you an idea of how much material was there."
Before Lucas wrote the script for 1977's Star Wars, he put together a novel-length treatment tracing the intergalactic exploits of Skywalker and son. In the blueprint, the plot spanned beyond Luke's young-adult years to portray him as an elder Jedi.
"He went on to become the master and pass on his training to someone else," Kurtz says, via phone from the U.K. office of his production company, Bella Jazz.
Kurtz adds that at one point, there was even talk of expanding the chronicle to 12 chapters.
"There were a lot of things bandied about. There were people who wanted to do novels, tangential stories that have nothing to do with the main story of the films. Every one of those could be turned into a film. There was an idea about using R2-D2 and C-3PO in a feature, or Han Solo's adventures. I suppose you could invent things forever, but I don't think anything concrete was too seriously considered."
According to Kurtz, the possibility of a third trilogy diminished when Lucas veered from his treatment to create Return of the Jedi. The original tale he mapped out didn't feature Ewoks or a second Death Star, and it culminated with the death of Han Solo. Princess Leia parts ways with Luke to lead those who survived her home planet's destruction.
The most critical change, however, was incorporating what would have been the climax of Episode IX, a showdown between Luke and Emperor Palpatine.
"The idea was that the Emperor would be hinted at and maybe seen occasionally but there wouldn't be a final confrontation with him until the ninth story," says Kurtz, who ended his association with Lucas after Empire, partially because he was displeased with the aforementioned revisions. Kurtz currently has three indie projects in the works, including 5-25-77, a comedy about a teenager's failed attempts to see Star Wars on opening day.
In Lucas' world, the Star Wars circle is complete. He plans to lower his directorial profile and work on smaller, more personal pictures, he says.
"I would lay money down that his heirs 20 years from now decide to continue the saga," says Anthony C. Ferrante, editor in chief of Cinescape, a genre-oriented movie magazine. "You can never say never. For the longest time I thought, 'No, he'll never do more Star Wars movies after Jedi. It's the '90s, he's never gonna get around to it.' But he did."
You were saying?
Then there is the issue of his original plans. Lucas has deliberately given the impression that he had the whole story planned out from the beginning, that it was always to be the tragedy of Anakin Skywalker. Most evidence indicates that this is untrue, and that he only merged Vader and Anakin while writing TESB.
Generally, he probably did. The thing about Lucas is his habit of merging and splitting characters, as well as his habit of swapping names. The Darth Vader that appears in ANH is a composite of Prince Valorum and Darth Vader from his early drafts.
Another thing to keep in mind would be two of the major influences on
Star Wars: Wagner's
Ring operas and John Ford's
The Searchers. In the former, the hero finds out that his enemy is in fact his long lost father. In
The Searchers, it's strongly implied that Debbie is Ethan Edwards' daughter and that Martin Pauley (her adopted brother) is Edwards' bastard son. I'd also point out that
Chinatown was all the rage when Lucas was still writing
Star Wars and it has a plot twist very similar to the Luke/Vader one. Just because Lucas didn't write it down 35 years ago doesn't mean he wasn't thinking about it.
One more thing: all the sequels and prequels are made up of ideas Lucas wanted to use in the first movie, but for a variety of reasons, couldn't. Was he kicking around the idea of Luke being Vader's son while writing ANH? I don't see any reason to believe he wasn't.
Now, leaving aside the whole question of quality, do you accept that Lucas has, shall we say, played into the hype surrounding Star Wars, and that he has been a bit less than straightforward regarding his early plans? Not that this is malicious or any sort of grand conspiracy, just that he, as a Hollywood type, has played along with and encouraged the "myth" of Star Wars, even if doing so necessitates that he play loose with the facts.
Do
you remember everything correctly from 35 years ago? I think it's comical for someone many years later to pretend to know what a total stranger was or was not
thinking during the Nixon/Ford administration.
