I am about 99% positive he did explicitly state there were to be nine movies, but my memory isn't perfect, so I'm not going to continue to argue the point until and unless I dig up some quotes from 1979-80. However, I might point out:You were saying?
That sounds like a bit more than rumor and idle speculation.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.
From what I gather, and not only from the source in the OP, it wasn't so much plotlines that had to be cut from the movie as individual scenes that got recycled in later films. The prequels weren't really mapped out as much as barely sketched. It's not unusual for movie makers, especially in Science Fiction and Fantasy, to outline a bit of a backstory for their worlds. Nowadays such outlines are commonly called "Bibles." I see no reason to doubt that the backstory in 1977 was pretty much entirely included in the novelization of the first film, and naturally modified after the second. The prequels weren't completely outlined, and Lucas had to pretty much write them from scratch, only having the basic ideas about a republic turned to despotism through the political machinations of the Sith Lord, the rise and fall of Anakin, the extinction of the Jedis, and some vague Clone Wars. All the details, Naboo, Padmé, little Anakin's virgin birth on Tatooine, etc, were thought up as the fourth film was written.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.
There is nothing for me to remember thirty-five years ago. However, twenty-five years ago I was making up a fantasy world of my own. I remember quite a bit about what I was thinking then, and how it evolved from year to year. I might not remember every detail, but I can certainly remember major plot points, like when I came up with the name of the planet, when I settled on the properties of the different colored crystals, etc. Of course, I wasn't an adult, and I didn't commit any of this to paper. I have a hard time believing that Lucas just forgot when he decided to make the whole story about Anakin, or made the Emperor the Sith Lord rather than just a corrupt politician. I am also skeptical that Lucas intended for Vader to be Anakin when he wrote a lot of material without any hint of that little detail.Do you remember everything correctly from 35 years ago?
We can't know with absolute certainty what he was thinking. We do know what he said, and at least in part what he wrote. We know that early drafts had Anakin and Vader as separate characters and that the first draft of TESB did not include the father revelation. We know that collaborators were surprised when that detail was revealed. We know that, in light of the second and third movies, the first movie seems kind of creepy, between a lying Obi Wan and the incestuous tensions. We know that the name Darth Vader was used for a henchman long before the final version was written, making Lucas' later claim that he came up with the name as "Dark Father" rather questionable.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.
I'm not saying that all this is bad, or Lucas is some sort of villain, just that there is a lot of hype, even mythology, around the creation of Star Wars, and that Lucas has been less than completely forthcoming about his early plans and intentions. To hear many hard core fans talk, Lucas set out from the beginning to make a six movie story chronicaling the "Tragedy of Anakin Skywalker", and Lucas himself hasn't done much to refute this idea, and has even encouraged it, despite that it simply isn't so. He may have come up with this idea as early as the production of TESB, but it doesn't seem to be his original intention. The author cited in the OP blames Lucas' insecurity and reluctance to admit that he changed his mind. I'm more inclined to think that he has encouraged the hype to further the commercial success of the franchise. There are some people who just like to bash Lucas and Star Wars. Then there are others who are skeptical of the hype surrounding the series. The two are not the same.
Pre-1977: The Adventures of Luke Skywalker, Episode I: Star Wars