George Lucas on the meaning of Star Wars

Orson Wells made Citizen Kane to sell snow globes and sleds.

But you don't see Orson Welles going back 30 years after he made a movie that made him popular, filming additional scenes, cutting out the more memorable stuff that made the movie itself memorable and give it a happy ending with Kane winning his election and keeping his wife.
 
GL can say what Star Wars means to him and that's fine. Whether I agree with him or not in no way changes what Star Wars means to me.
 
Gentlemen-it really is time to put the records straight.
Firstly, "Toygate" is really only applicable towards the end of the Original Trilogy. As said George Lucas eventually got lucky with the merchandising deal, because absolutely nobody wanted either the toy or general product licenses from the original Star Wars, hence the legendary Xmas “Empty Box” campaign and it was ONLY after SW became the mega hit that it was did the entire retail industry wake up to the fact there were huge markets for this kind of product.
When ROTJ was written,that was the point at which there were some VERY deliberate decisions made to cash in on the franchise, because George needed the money to fund the developement of Lucasfilm and escape from the system that had, in all honesty, treated him VERY badly. Who wouldn’t have done the same? After SW they still tried to screw as much as they could from him, despite what he had done for the studio.
I don’t think anyone REALLY understands here just how hugely stressful the experience of getting Star Wars done was for George and how terribly bittersweet its eventual success was. Nobody had any faith in what he was trying to do. He struggled to get any kind of a working script accepted for it. Nobody wanted to fund the making of it. Shooting it was a nightmare, with crew ,cast and Fox executives ALL doubting what he was doing, and making his daily life a living hell, to the point that he nearly had a nervous breakdown. He was almost hospitalized because of the physical effects of the stress and pressures. They bullied and almost fired him from his own movie and were within a few boardroom votes of killing it dead !!!!!! By the skin of his teeth he managed to finish it and even then most of his film “friends” told him he had made a “dog” (with one or two notably talented exceptions).
Now ,how the **** would you feel when everybody in that industry is suddenly all congratulating themselves because you’ve arguably created THE landmark moment of recent cinematic history for them and had an unimaginable success with it. The very same people who, just months ago, tried everything in their power to bury you and your career so deep into the ground you would never work again. You’d do everything in your power to keep them at arms length (if not further) and become as totally independent as you can be. Which is exactly what he did. And if he used the merchandising rights to do that then it just shows how clever he was to do so in the end. He was a brilliant business man who has quietly revolutionized the entire way we literally see cinema today and the whole industry knows it .
I am amazed he was as generous and fair with people as he was in the end by the way he shared those profits from the first Star Wars. Personally I’d have hired people to break the odd finger or two on the quiet. But you know what , he’s a much nicer guy than me.
The TRUTH is George Lucas is an incredibly decent human being. One of the best.Just look at his charity work.Honestly, he’s probably one of those guys who is too reasonable to people for his own good and none confrontational, so eventually he has to excluded those who cause him grief by quietly pushing them aside rather than beating them back into line. That’s not his style of management, unlike many . But he rarely failed to reward them well for the work they did. He’s a typical introvert who found himself pushed into a position of power and responsibility he really could never have imagined and in all truth he probably didn’t want it. But by heaven he made it work and you need to take a real look at what he ultimately accomplished. Its a vast legacy.
Everything in that interview is almost exactly what he said nearly forty odd years ago about the Force and the Journey of the Hero. I know, because I read and watched it all back then. Yes, there is no doubt that the subsequent stories changed but that’s exactly what film scripts and any fiction does as it evolves. I suggest you read “The Making of “ trilogies to understand it better. Whether all those choices where right or wrong are entirely a matter of personal opinion. Financially , the bottom line is that they were hugely successfully.
Did I love the prequels? No I did NOT!!!! But there are loads of other films that are considerably worse than them, I know because I‘ve had to watch thousands of them. And there are millions of others that did and do like them very much. So I’m careful not to heap the same scorn upon them as some people still do today because they think Star Wars, from what ever age it comes from and for what ever age group its fans are , is still rather childish and stupid and geeky. I strongly beg to differ !!!!!
As I’ve said before, I think George Lucas did us and the universe in general a huge favour in doing exactly what he did with his company and the new SW sequels, by letting go of the reins and letting the franchise evolve beyond its concepts and origins , arguably by letting them grow back towards them. It goes to show what a fantastically shrewd business man he is, and from what I’ve seen and learned so far about the future of the series, it was a brave and brilliantly clever thing to do. I hope he continues to enjoy a long and happy retirement. God only knows he deserved it.
 
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Yea, idk if anybody else feels this way, but Kurtz to me has always come across as a little bitter that he didn't get his way in the end and this sounds to me like more of that.

I seem to recall that ESB also reached a crisis point, like Star Wars, which necessitated Lucas going cap in hand to investors at the 11th hour to save production. Under Kurtz's watch costs had got out of hand and threatened the whole thing. It's great to have creative flexibility but I think Kurtz was naive to the realities of that and Lucas understood completely the responsibilities of independence.

I do believe Lucas to be an important part of storytelling and cinema, a gifted and talented man. And though many helped bring Star Wars to fruit, Lucas is the centre of it all - the concept, the ambition and self- belief. Perhaps that self-belief became stubbornness which created problems in the Prequels, but it does seem to me that most creatives, be they writers, authors, musicians or film makers, have their best work in the early part of their lives. Their latter work seems to be complicated by audience awareness, and an introspection or over examination of what made their breakthrough work successful, and is never as interesting, imo.
 
Yep, even after all the success of Star Wars the studio suits still tried to stitch him up and to milk as much profit from him as they could. I find it rather wonderfully apt that in the end it was all the changes to the technology of film making that he instigated at Lucasfilm resulted in them having to come to him than the other way round. The whole digital revolution in cinema is really based on what he poured into R&D at Lucasfilm and what he spearheaded.
 
I agree. I think there has been way too much Lucas bashing in the past several years. I feel for the man in that it went so far that he was saying "Why should I do anymore, the fans hate everything I do." Regardless of who helped him along the way, or how out of control it got--we would have none of this without him. We owe him a great debt.
 
You know none of us were there with Lucas and Kurtz and all the other people behind the scenes on any of the movies so building an opinion on hearsay and conjecture is kind of silly. I don't hate or love Lucas I simply have been appalled at times over the somewhat childish, contradicting, and vacuous direction Star Wars went in after ESB and Indiana Jones went in (to a lesser degree) after TOD.
 
When ROTJ was written,that was the point at which there were some VERY deliberate decisions made to cash in on the franchise, because George needed the money to fund the developement of Lucasfilm and escape from the system that had, in all honesty, treated him VERY badly.

I agree with what you've said generally. But I've always thought the complaints about ROTJ being sold-out have been a bit overblown.



Han Solo didn't die -
It would have seemed stupid to kill him after not killing him in Bespin and then dumping the first 1/3rd of ROTJ into rescuing him. If they were ever going to kill him it should have been done in Bespin.


The Ewoks existed -
They were 1/4th-scale replacements for Wookies. Wookies had been established as too intelligent & technologically advanced for the "primitive insurgency" role by then. They were a bit too cute but I have never found that too objectionable. Plenty of "cute" animals can be capable & potentially dangerous.


Jabba's palace & barge was full of action-figure material -
Jabba's palace & barge was the bigger grander Mos Eisley Cantina scene that was already brainstormed when they were shooting ANH. GL was not looking to compromise his SW movie for toys back in 1976.


Speeder bikes -
Speeder bikes were Luke's landspeeder with more resources. GL was the teenage hot-rodder who grew up & did American Graffiti.


The 2nd Death Star was unoriginal -
Maybe so. But how many "2nd Death Star" toys did you have as a kid? It arguably weakened the movie but it didn't help merchandising.


ROTJ wasn't dark enough in general -
ANH wasn't all that dark either. ESB was the second act of the play, the darkest part. I have never understood why people complain about ROTJ being lighter than ESB. (Was ROTJ a weaker movie than ESB & ANH overall? Yes. But most movies are.)
 
Having seen them all upon original release, I had come to expect basically three acts/environments from ROTJ, the recipe was predictable at that point.
The rumors at the time... Luke will die. The expectation was we were losing one of our heroes.
I distinctively remember thinking the first act was incredibly silly with all the muppets and nonsense, the barge battle helped with Luke finally show off his stuff. So I thought ok what next?
I was giving up after the second act basically. Ewoks was simply too much to handle, blank eyed chubby fursuits. the speeder bike stuff was ok, but nothing we hadn't seen on CHiPs. LOL The third act pulled the film out of the fire for me, now we were getting into the more serious issues to face.
I remember being let down by John Williams some.. There was more re-used stuff then I would have liked to have heard.
I still cringe at things in the third act though. That horrible Chewie Tarzan yell thing just was a spit in the eye to dignity.
So all that was my perception in 1983 when it was new, it hasn't changed much since.
 
Having seen them all upon original release, I had come to expect basically three acts/environments from ROTJ, the recipe was predictable at that point.
The rumors at the time... Luke will die. The expectation was we were losing one of our heroes.
I distinctively remember thinking the first act was incredibly silly with all the muppets and nonsense, the barge battle helped with Luke finally show off his stuff. So I thought ok what next?
I was giving up after the second act basically. Ewoks was simply too much to handle, blank eyed chubby fursuits. the speeder bike stuff was ok, but nothing we hadn't seen on CHiPs. LOL The third act pulled the film out of the fire for me, now we were getting into the more serious issues to face.
I remember being let down by John Williams some.. There was more re-used stuff then I would have liked to have heard.
I still cringe at things in the third act though. That horrible Chewie Tarzan yell thing just was a spit in the eye to dignity.
So all that was my perception in 1983 when it was new, it hasn't changed much since.

I was at opening night for all the OT movies (and 2 out of 3 PT movies as well) and I share your pain. I found ROTJ sloppy at times, cheap looking at times, I was horrified by the burping, the blubbering Rancor keeper, the Ewoks (and the fact no Stormtrooper fires a shot at them), Luke and Leia as brother and sister, etc. It was an amazing disappointment for a die hard Star Wars fan back in the day.

Two other things:
Number one there is no meaning to Star Wars, it's a friggin movie for gods sake. A simple story of good vs evil with cool ships and thing going boom.
Number two just because a movie is dark doesn't mean it's good. ESB is the best for a number of reasons. ROTJ didn't suffer from a lack of darkness it suffered from a lack of quality.
 
I recognize George Lucas on all that he's accomplished and I am very grateful for it (THERE WOULD BE NO ALIEN OR STAR TREK: TMP!), but he's not the best thing that's happened to the movie industry. I dare say he's not even the best thing to happen to Star Wars. He just... ugh. He's kind of like the story teller who is willing to share his stories with those who want to hear it, but keeps insisting that they only interpret it from his perspective rather than their own. It's that line of thinking that makes me feel like he doesn't respect his audience simply because they don't see his movies as he does. And it sucks even more because the way he sees his own stories keeps on changing.

At least when Richard Donner recut Superman 2, he did so with the admission that the cut he was making would never truly represent the film he would have made had he not been fired during it's production. Not because there wasn't enough footage or special effects to complete the new cut, but because he's changed as a film maker and as a person over the years that the decisions he makes today would not have been the same decisions he made in the new cut would not be the same decisions he would have made almost three decades ago. That kind of admission is really telling because it clearly describes how Lucas has dealt with the Star Wars films over the decades, but you'll never hear him admit it.
 
I recognize George Lucas on all that he's accomplished and I am very grateful for it (THERE WOULD BE NO ALIEN OR STAR TREK: TMP!), but he's not the best thing that's happened to the movie industry. I dare say he's not even the best thing to happen to Star Wars. He just... ugh. He's kind of like the story teller who is willing to share his stories with those who want to hear it, but keeps insisting that they only interpret it from his perspective rather than their own. It's that line of thinking that makes me feel like he doesn't respect his audience simply because they don't see his movies as he does. And it sucks even more because the way he sees his own stories keeps on changing.

At least when Richard Donner recut Superman 2, he did so with the admission that the cut he was making would never truly represent the film he would have made had he not been fired during it's production. Not because there wasn't enough footage or special effects to complete the new cut, but because he's changed as a film maker and as a person over the years that the decisions he makes today would not have been the same decisions he made in the new cut would not be the same decisions he would have made almost three decades ago. That kind of admission is really telling because it clearly describes how Lucas has dealt with the Star Wars films over the decades, but you'll never hear him admit it.


You would really benefit from reading the 3 Rinzler books...
 
Just wanted to say I really liked Jonah's comments on the Star Wars Saga and I find his ideas illuminating. I have one other thing to add to the conversation. In 2000 I had a job as the head writer of Season Four of Dawson's Creek, a one hour teen soap for the WB network. One of the staff writers on Dawson's Creek was Jon Kasdan (not Jake, his older brother). Jon made his cinematic debut as the baby being washing in the sink in the movie THE BIG CHILL. But in 2000 Jon Kasdan is in his early twenties. He is the son of Lawrence Kasdan. One day, while we were working on breaking the story of a new Dawson's Creek episode, Jon Kasdan told us a secret: His father, Lawrence Kasdan, had been approached by Lucas who was about to do the Prequels to the Star Wars Trilogy. George had wanted Lawrence Kasdan to script the prequel trilogy and in exchange for Lawrence's work on the prequels, Lucas was willing to let Lawrence Kasdan direct one of the prequels. But Lawrence felt he'd already paid his debt to George and passed on the offer. I remember thinking, "damn, we could have had prequel scripts written by a master screenwriter. Ahh, what could have been. I now hold out hope for the JJ Abrams/ Kasdan script for Episode Seven. It just might be amazing.

Alan
 
Responding first to the comments from batguy...

When George made Star Wars, he didn't expect it to do anywhere near well enough to justify a sequel, so he felt no worries at lifting elements from later in the notes to solve story needs in the film he was making. The Death Star was supposed to be far later in the story. So when he got there, he had to make it bigger and badder to compensate, and not just repeat himself. I find his approach very weak, though. A skilled writer could come up with a viable alternative to a Death Star. A skilled writer could also come up with a solution to developing Chewie as more sophisticated as his people were supposed to be when we got to them at the end of the arc.

I'm still not gonna reveal my "it's a trap!" twist, but my solution for the Wookiees was simple -- if the Empire is keeping them as slave labor, they'd be denied access to technological items in their pens/camps/whatever. But they're intelligent and innovative, so they'd come up with low-tech alternative made from what they did have on hand. And I still have some fun "Lord of the Flies" stuff going on with the Wookiees' kids that the Empire is holding hostage in their own encampment. A lot of the Ewok stuff from the film we got was Wookiee kids going tribal in my rewrite.

And, for Alan Cross and to follow up on what I alluded to earlier with my Prequel rewrites, I'll just do an overview of my approach to Episode I. Coming in in media res for Star Wars was fun and a neat cinematic device, but Episode I needs to frikkin' establish the setting. I have this as the only one that doesn't start with the "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...." text -- and make up for that by naming the Episode "A LONG TIME AGO". My opening crawl is strongly influenced by Alan Dean Foster's forward and first few lines of the Star Wars novelization:

Another galaxy. Another time. The Galactic Republic is the Old Republic of legend. For most, its origins are lost in the shadows of the distant past. For them, it has always been, and that is enough.

However, any structure that endures long enough will fall victim to corruption, and ambitious individuals will pursue opportunity at the expense of those who cannot fight back.

Now, turmoil has engulfed the Republic Senate. Taxation of outlying trade routes has seen unchecked corporate interests threaten to blockade member worlds to force settlement in their favor. The Supreme Chancellor of the Senate has secretly dispatched his trusted friend, Senator Bail Organa of Alderaan, to the remote planet of Naboo to enlist the aid of famed negotiator and Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi....

I play gratuitously fast and loose with a lot of the story elements. Obi-Wan is from Naboo, as is his friend and mentor Qui-Gon Jinn. Amidala is the hereditary monarch, thank you, though it is somewhere between Queen Elizabeth I and II as far as authority/power go. The opening shot is a re-creation of the one from Star Wars, but with the Tantive IV looking a lot newer and cleaner, and no Star Destroyer in pursuit. When Bail shows up to get Obi-Wan's help, Qui-Gon has a Feeling he is needed, too. And the Queen insists on going, as well -- in her own starship, of course. Obi-Wan goes with her, Qui-Gon goes on the Senator's ship. An unseen enemy was lurking and attacks as they leave. The Senator's ship makes the jump to lightspeed, but the Queen's ship is disabled and has to limp to Tatooine.

They set down on the outskirts of a small settlement (Anchorhead) and walk to one of the farmsteads, where they find a teenager working on the moisture vaporators. He greets them without turning around. Obi-Wan feels a stirring in the Force. This is Anakin. He was born in space. His parents were free-traders with their own tramp freighter. Pirates attacked and boarded them. Daddy was killed. Mama and baby were sold into slavery. Cliegg Lars saw her, bought her, freed her, married her, and adopted the kid. So Owen and Anakin grow up together and are pretty close in age. Owen is a salt-of-the-earth type who plans to follow in his father's footsteps. Anakin is desperate to get off that rock, and when Obi-Wan tells him their plight, he sees his chance.

The big conflict of this film is trying to fix their ship and get to Coruscant, while their mysterious attacker keeps interfering. I readily admit I can't stand Maul. So my bad guy is Ventress -- who is Rattataki, thank you. Though they get things working again, the conflict migrates to Coruscant, where Qui-Gon ultimately falls to Ventress, who escapes. No use of the word "Darth". We get to see Anakin impressing Obi-Wan with his piloting skills, and Obi-Wan convinces the Council to let him take Anakin as his Padawan.

To be continued in Episode II -- THE APPROACHING STORM

When I was writing it, I showed my draft script (longer than this thumbnail, obviously) to several of my friends. All of them, like me, felt drastically let down by the Prequels. All of them said they would have gone to see what I wrote at least twice. That's why I feel so frustrated by what George directly gave us. Even first-rate authors like Terry Brooks, R. A. Salvatore, and Matt Stover were only able to make them endurable, not engrossing.

--Jonah
 
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Responding first to the comments from @batguy...

When George made Star Wars, he didn't expect it to do anywhere near well enough to justify a sequel, so he felt no worries at lifting elements from later in the notes to solve story needs in the film he was making. The Death Star was supposed to be far later in the story. So when he got there, he had to make it bigger and badder to compensate, and not just repeat himself. I find his approach very weak, though. A skilled writer could come up with a viable alternative to a Death Star. A skilled writer could also come up with a solution to developing Chewie as more sophisticated as his people were supposed to be when we got to them at the end of the arc.

I'm still not gonna reveal my "it's a trap!" twist, but my solution for the Wookiees was simple -- if the Empire is keeping them as slave labor, they'd be denied access to technological items in their pens/camps/whatever. But they're intelligent and innovative, so they'd come up with low-tech alternative made from what they did have on hand. And I still have some fun "Lord of the Flies" stuff going on with the Wookiees' kids that the Empire is holding hostage in their own encampment. A lot of the Ewok stuff from the film we got was Wookiee kids going tribal in my rewrite.

Exactly. It's a really simple solution. You can still have the wookiees be technological underdogs due to simple lack of access to anything technological, which, if they're slaves, makes perfect sense. The Rebels show up, arm some of them, but the rest are required to use lower-level tech and improvise booby traps. Kinda like the Viet Cong that inspired Lucas in the first place.


With respect to the prequels...man there are so many places to improve that story, and so many changes one could make... Still, your version sounds cool. I'm sure folks can come up with other good versions, too. That's the thing that was such a disappointment about them: there were so many better ways you could've gone. I honestly get the sense that Lucas lacked focus in his story, and wasn't viewing each prequel film as building on the next one. It feels more like he had moments he wanted to show, and so he made films built around those moments. But the moments themselves are only loosely connected, and the story overall ends up hurting for it.

Ah well.
 
You know none of us were there with Lucas and Kurtz and all the other people behind the scenes on any of the movies so building an opinion on hearsay and conjecture is kind of silly.

My opinion of Kurtz stems from impressions I've gotten of him from interviews and such, not the behind the scenes stuff.

Lawrence Kasdan, had been approached by Lucas who was about to do the Prequels to the Star Wars Trilogy. George had wanted Lawrence Kasdan to script the prequel trilogy and in exchange for Lawrence's work on the prequels, Lucas was willing to let Lawrence Kasdan direct one of the prequels. But Lawrence felt he'd already paid his debt to George and passed on the offer.

Well he certainly has strong negative opinions about the PT. Seems to me that, if this is true, he really has no right to complain about them.
 
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The Rebels show up, arm some of them, but the rest are required to use lower-level tech and improvise booby traps. Kinda like the Viet Cong that inspired Lucas in the first place.

I know, right? That solution/rewritten element I came up with around 1992, back when I was just focusing on making Jedi a better story and before I uncollapsed it back into four films.

I'm sure folks can come up with other good versions, too. That's the thing that was such a disappointment about them: there were so many better ways you could've gone. I honestly get the sense that Lucas lacked focus in his story, and wasn't viewing each prequel film as building on the next one. It feels more like he had moments he wanted to show, and so he made films built around those moments. But the moments themselves are only loosely connected, and the story overall ends up hurting for it.

Precisely. I don't much like his persona, but have you seen Plinkett's reviews of the Prequels? He's spot-on in so many places. All the standing around in semicircles talking (usually about politics), the same cinematography 101 level scene construction in all three Prequels -- establishing shot, medium shot, alternating waist-up dialoguing shots, back to long shot... same number of shots, held for the same lenth of time, almost down to the tenth of a second. And one of my favorite Star Wars memes I've seen out there was a still from the scene between Anakin and Padme in AOTC (when she's wearing her bondage outfit and he's angsting) that says "Still a better love story than... Well, no, actually, it's not." There was a lot more onscreen chemistry between Padme and Obi-Wan (leading to some slash-fic and fan theories about the twins' true parentage, etc.).

A good film-maker recognizes their limitations and weaknesses and shores them up with individuals who are strong in those areas. George has done the opposite over his arc -- he started with complementary personalities who improved the overall result, and gradually winnowed them away until he was running everything with a bunch of people who wouldn't tell him no.

--Jonah
 
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