Lets talk all things Star Wars

[robn1]

I guess char broiling Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen doesn't count.

And the two scanner guys on the Falcon, and the two guys in the control room. And all the storm troopers they killed during the escape. And the four TIE pilots, and all the other TIE and Rebel pilots. And all the guys on the Death Star. And... and...

This story sounds so much better than what we got, you shouldn't have sold it George.

 

[HeartBlade]

Yeah. I think George also bought into the meme that Stormtroopers can’t shoot because of ANH despite the fact that the stormtroopers were explicitly told not to kill so they can locate the rebel base and blow them up.

They shot up the rebels in the opening corridor pretty easily and were described by Obi Wan to be more accurate than sand people in killing jawas. They didn’t really get to show their stuff in ESB and RotJ, well great militaries have lost to gurellia warfare...

Lucas’ treatment sounds far more logical than what we got in the ST. The rebels have won so it makes sense that rebuilding will be the main theme and it is very difficult to do (see any country after a successful revolution apart from the US). It would be very hard to give a “right” answer on what the solution would be but makes for an interesting world and more grey than the black and white morality that was the OT.

Leia as the “chosen one” kind of seems to be taken in jest here. She isn’t the chosen one in terms of bringing balance to the force but is the chosen one, the hero, who brings peace to the galaxy. It fits her best since she was definitely the most politically savvy one and the one with the most legitimate leadership potential of the 3 heroes so it makes sense that Leia would take the reigns.

What a wasted opportunity though. Luke and the Jedi would be a non-factor/limited factor in this version of the ST because the Jedi are still in training. It would also be a great opportunity to show how much of a Master Luke has truly become since he will face and likely overcome Obi Wan’s rival (it also makes me think that Luke truly wasn’t going to die as Mark stated, at least in this version since if Luke dies, there is no one to continue the Jedi order. Leia is a politician and would have her hands busy running the galaxy to train).

The conflict of the trilogy/series of movies after the ST is already set. Leia is the glue that holds together but she is only human. When she dies, there will be an inevitable power vacuum and factions will rise arguing who should fill in as the next leader.

 

[Psab keel]

It certainly sounds more interesting than the ST we got, though the idea of Maul being the central villain sounds dumb. It could have been someone else. Though by and large I do like the reconstruction idea and it's part of why I've thus far enjoyed the Mandalorian. To me there is more story potential in that area than in just resurrecting the Empire in the form of the First Order.

Though in a few months he may give us his "original vision" for the ST because he can never make up his mind. I can't put much stock in his intentions because he's a consummate revisionist.

 

[Captain Dunsel]

So the new Star Wars Archives book is coming out. And some people have got them earlier. In it we see another one of George Lucas's "plans" for the Sequel Trilogy. I'm not sure what year it's from, definitely post The Clone Wars, but pre Michael Arndt. Anyways at one point George was going to the Sith return and Darth Maul and Darth Talon be the main villains, with Leia becoming The Chosen One....

THE CHOSEN ONE

George Lucas: When writing the movies, I tried to make sure that aliens and droids got killed, but not people.

Paul Duncan: A lot of stormtroopers died.

George Lucas: That's right, but you didn't know they were people. We did kill three humans and that was unfortunate. I was always bothered by it.

Paul Duncan: When was that?

George Lucas: On the Death Star, when Han and Luke go into the prison with Chewie to rescue Leia, they shoot three Imperial guys. The guards drew their guns and fired first, but it's still a shame.

Paul Duncan: Really?

George Lucas: Yeah, we very consciously didn't kill very many humans in those movies.

Paul Duncan: What about the stormtroopers? They look robotic, but they're not.

George Lucas: How do you know what they are?

Paul Duncan: Did you have a different idea of what they were?

George Lucas: Yeah, they started out as clones. Once all the clones were killed, the Empire picked up recruits, like militia.

They fought, but they weren't very good at what they did.

Paul Duncan: That's why they kept missing.

George Lucas: That's why they kept missing. Then after the Rebels won, there were no more stormtroopers in my version of the third trilogy.

I had planned for the first trilogy to be about the father, the second trilogy to be about the son, and the third trilogy to be about the daughter and the grandchildren.

Episode VII, VIII, and IX would take ideas from what happened after the Iraq War. "Okay, you fought the war, you killed everybody, now what are you going to do?" Rebuilding afterwards is harder than starting a rebellion or fighting the war. When you win the war and you disband the opposing army, what do they do? The stormtroopers would be like Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist fighters that joined ISIS and kept on fighting. The stormtroopers refuse to give up when the Republic win.

They want to be stormtroopers forever, so they go to a far corner of the galaxy, start their own country and their own rebellion.

There's a power vacuum so gangsters, like the Hutts, are taking advantage of the situation, and there is chaos. The key person is Darth Maul, who had been resurrected in The Clone Wars cartoons—he brings all the gangs together.

Paul Duncan: Was Darth Maul the main villain?

George Lucas: Yeah, but he's very old, and we have two versions of him. One is with a set of cybernetic legs like a spider, and then later on he has metal legs and he was a little bit bigger, more of a superhero. We did all this in the animated series, he was in a bunch of episodes.

Darth Maul trained a girl, Darth Talon, who was in the comic books as his apprentice. She was the new Darth Vader, and most of the action was with her. So these were the two main villains of the trilogy. Maul eventually becomes the godfather of crime in the universe because, as the Empire falls, he takes over.

The movies are about how Leia—I mean, who else is going to be the leader?—is trying to build the Republic. They still have the apparatus of the Republic but they have to get it under control from the gangsters. That was the main story.

It starts out a few years after Return of the Jedi and we establish pretty quickly that there's this underworld, there are these offshoot stormtroopers who started their own planets, and that Luke is trying to restart the Jedi. He puts the word out, so out of 100,000 Jedi, maybe 50 or 100 are left. The Jedi have to grow again from scratch, so Luke has to find two- and three-year-olds, and train them. It'll be 20 years before you have a new generation of Jedi.

By the end of the trilogy Luke would have rebuilt much of the Jedi, and we would have the renewal of the New Republic, with Leia, Senator Organa, becoming the Supreme Chancellor in charge of everything. So she ended up being the Chosen One.

This sounds VERY MUCH like the period of time in which The Mandalorian is set with pockets and remnants of the Empire on the Outer Rim, gangsters filling the power vacuum left by the fall of the Empire, the New Republic struggling to establish governance, etc.

All of this is sooooooooo much more interesting, and logical, than the sudden appearance of the “First Order”, the test tube baby Snoke, and the survival of the “only mostly dead” Harold Q Palpatine.

 

[harrisonp]

I think if Talon came onto the scene without Maul (who has raised her in secret and now died) it would work better.

 

[HeartBlade]

True, I don’t like revived Maul either (and hasn’t Maul died in the cartoon) but maybe replace him with a crazy militarist Jedi to contrast the new order with the old or something may be interesting. Having Maul does is a great option though since he is the head of black hand and a former Sith so it makes sense that he is a threat and would make a good opponent for Luke philosophically.

yeah too be fair, this could be one of 100s of trilogy ideas Lucas thought up (I don’t see anything about the Whyllys and midiclorians which was supposedly the theme of the ST in the script treatment).

 

[Joek3rr]

Yeah. I think George also bought into the meme that Stormtroopers can’t shoot because of ANH despite the fact that the stormtroopers were explicitly told not to kill so they can locate the rebel base and blow them up.

They shot up the rebels in the opening corridor pretty easily and were described by Obi Wan to be more accurate than sand people in killing jawas. They didn’t really get to show their stuff in ESB and RotJ, well great militaries have lost to gurellia warfare...

Lucas’ treatment sounds far more logical than what we got in the ST. The rebels have won so it makes sense that rebuilding will be the main theme and it is very difficult to do (see any country after a successful revolution apart from the US). It would be very hard to give a “right” answer on what the solution would be but makes for an interesting world and more grey than the black and white morality that was the OT.

Leia as the “chosen one” kind of seems to be taken in jest here. She isn’t the chosen one in terms of bringing balance to the force but is the chosen one, the hero, who brings peace to the galaxy. It fits her best since she was definitely the most politically savvy one and the one with the most legitimate leadership potential of the 3 heroes so it makes sense that Leia would take the reigns.

What a wasted opportunity though. Luke and the Jedi would be a non-factor/limited factor in this version of the ST because the Jedi are still in training. It would also be a great opportunity to show how much of a Master Luke has truly become since he will face and likely overcome Obi Wan’s rival (it also makes me think that Luke truly wasn’t going to die as Mark stated, at least in this version since if Luke dies, there is no one to continue the Jedi order. Leia is a politician and would have her hands busy running the galaxy to train).

The conflict of the trilogy/series of movies after the ST is already set. Leia is the glue that holds together but she is only human. When she dies, there will be an inevitable power vacuum and factions will rise arguing who should fill in as the next leader.

It certainly sounds more interesting than the ST we got, though the idea of Maul being the central villain sounds dumb. It could have been someone else. Though by and large I do like the reconstruction idea and it's part of why I've thus far enjoyed the Mandalorian. To me there is more story potential in that area than in just resurrecting the Empire in the form of the First Order.

Though in a few months he may give us his "original vision" for the ST because he can never make up his mind. I can't put much stock in his intentions because he's a consummate revisionist.

I like the reconstruction idea too. Particularly with the Jedi. It would have been a good way to explore the Jedi order, the good and the bad, why the Clone War era Jedi messed up.

But with that said there's a big glaring problem. George says that this is meant to take place a few years after ROTJ. Unless he thinking of recasting or digitally de-aging. A time gap of a few years just doesn't work. Sure you could push the whole rebuilding the Republic/Jedi thing 30 years in the future. But then you have to extend the civil war, and have it that our heroes never really brought peace to the galaxy, even if it was only for a time. As why would it take so long for them to start rebuilding?

HeartBlade, this is what the author of the book who interviewed Lucas said about Leia.

 

[harrisonp]

Yeah Maul being back would have needed to happen in a movie before his stint on Rebels ended that potential

 

[Psab keel]

Not to mention didn't Maul get killed by Obi-Wan AGAIN in Rebels? So would he have to be resurrected again?

 

[harrisonp]

Not to mention didn't Maul get killed by Obi-Wan AGAIN in Rebels? So would he have to be resurrected again?

That was kind of my point, he would have needed to stay away from Rebels. But that said Rebels likely would have been different or nonexistent had George not sold and made the ST himself.

 

[Psab keel]

Yeah that would have been a huge problem.

 

[HeartBlade]

I like the reconstruction idea too. Particularly with the Jedi. It would have been a good way to explore the Jedi order, the good and the bad, why the Clone War era Jedi messed up.

But with that said there's a big glaring problem. George says that this is meant to take place a few years after ROTJ. Unless he thinking of recasting or digitally de-aging. A time gap of a few years just doesn't work. Sure you could push the whole rebuilding the Republic/Jedi thing 30 years in the future. But then you have to extend the civil war, and have it that our heroes never really brought peace to the galaxy, even if it was only for a time. As why would it take so long for them to start rebuilding?

HeartBlade, this is what the author of the book who interviewed Lucas said about Leia.
View attachment 1366900

yeah that makes sense regarding Leia. It’s just that the chosen one is often referred to the one who brings balance to the force which is more metaphysical in nature and that is Luke. However, the chosen one that brings balance to society and thus establishes peace must be Leia. She is the only one with the leadership and intelligence to do so (Luke is still a farm boy and Han is a smuggler). So phrased that way, yes Leia is definitely the “chosen one” in bringing peace. It just seems a little jest to use the particular phrase chosen one here due to its implication.

Regarding the time length, reconstruction takes a long time and this is the entire galaxy we are talking about. A ton of stakeholders, opposing interests, opportunists, etc. From the sound of the script, it seems the Empire army didn’t immediately collapse after the emperors death and they have been beaten up to the point where the rebels can declare victory and start rebuilding a new government.

This scenario would also make sense for new main characters to emerge like Kiara. Luke is now busy trying to reestablish the Jedi, Leia is head and Han may be a general or something. These guys are too busy leading and VIP to risk going out into the field. Granted Luke must be the one to confront and defeat Maul but the new blood would do better making their own mistakes as they explore the galaxy and adventure.

 

[Sluis Van Shipyards]

So the new Star Wars Archives book is coming out. And some people have got them earlier. In it we see another one of George Lucas's "plans" for the Sequel Trilogy. I'm not sure what year it's from, definitely post The Clone Wars, but pre Michael Arndt. Anyways at one point George was going to the Sith return and Darth Maul and Darth Talon be the main villains, with Leia becoming The Chosen One....

THE CHOSEN ONE

George Lucas: When writing the movies, I tried to make sure that aliens and droids got killed, but not people.

Paul Duncan: A lot of stormtroopers died.

George Lucas: That's right, but you didn't know they were people. We did kill three humans and that was unfortunate. I was always bothered by it.

Paul Duncan: When was that?

George Lucas: On the Death Star, when Han and Luke go into the prison with Chewie to rescue Leia, they shoot three Imperial guys. The guards drew their guns and fired first, but it's still a shame.

Paul Duncan: Really?

George Lucas: Yeah, we very consciously didn't kill very many humans in those movies.

Paul Duncan: What about the stormtroopers? They look robotic, but they're not.

George Lucas: How do you know what they are?

Paul Duncan: Did you have a different idea of what they were?

George Lucas: Yeah, they started out as clones. Once all the clones were killed, the Empire picked up recruits, like militia.

They fought, but they weren't very good at what they did.

Paul Duncan: That's why they kept missing.

George Lucas: That's why they kept missing. Then after the Rebels won, there were no more stormtroopers in my version of the third trilogy.

I had planned for the first trilogy to be about the father, the second trilogy to be about the son, and the third trilogy to be about the daughter and the grandchildren.

Episode VII, VIII, and IX would take ideas from what happened after the Iraq War. "Okay, you fought the war, you killed everybody, now what are you going to do?" Rebuilding afterwards is harder than starting a rebellion or fighting the war. When you win the war and you disband the opposing army, what do they do? The stormtroopers would be like Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist fighters that joined ISIS and kept on fighting. The stormtroopers refuse to give up when the Republic win.

They want to be stormtroopers forever, so they go to a far corner of the galaxy, start their own country and their own rebellion.

There's a power vacuum so gangsters, like the Hutts, are taking advantage of the situation, and there is chaos. The key person is Darth Maul, who had been resurrected in The Clone Wars cartoons—he brings all the gangs together.

Paul Duncan: Was Darth Maul the main villain?

George Lucas: Yeah, but he's very old, and we have two versions of him. One is with a set of cybernetic legs like a spider, and then later on he has metal legs and he was a little bit bigger, more of a superhero. We did all this in the animated series, he was in a bunch of episodes.

Darth Maul trained a girl, Darth Talon, who was in the comic books as his apprentice. She was the new Darth Vader, and most of the action was with her. So these were the two main villains of the trilogy. Maul eventually becomes the godfather of crime in the universe because, as the Empire falls, he takes over.

The movies are about how Leia—I mean, who else is going to be the leader?—is trying to build the Republic. They still have the apparatus of the Republic but they have to get it under control from the gangsters. That was the main story.

It starts out a few years after Return of the Jedi and we establish pretty quickly that there's this underworld, there are these offshoot stormtroopers who started their own planets, and that Luke is trying to restart the Jedi. He puts the word out, so out of 100,000 Jedi, maybe 50 or 100 are left. The Jedi have to grow again from scratch, so Luke has to find two- and three-year-olds, and train them. It'll be 20 years before you have a new generation of Jedi.

By the end of the trilogy Luke would have rebuilt much of the Jedi, and we would have the renewal of the New Republic, with Leia, Senator Organa, becoming the Supreme Chancellor in charge of everything. So she ended up being the Chosen One.

I wasn't real big on bringing Maul back, but I'd much rather watch this than what we got!

 

[sztriki]

I just find it staggering how much Lucas doesn't understand his own creation. He did change as a person and an artist, no doubt but he fails to understand that every piece of art or work reflects a very specific period in the artist's life. I wrote songs and painted/drew pictures, built models etc 10 years ago that I would never do today, simply because I've changed and I want to say something else with my artwork. Sure there are bits that I find embarassing now but they are still part of my past and I kight not want to release or display them I still embrace them. Lucas instead of embracing his past self and the outcome of that he keeps looking back with regret and denial.

 

[Psab keel]

I often wonder what else he could have done had he been able to move on from Star Wars.

 

[CadetTK2386]

It's funny, the studio that was working on the cancelled Darth Maul video Game in 2011 has talked about how George only approved the game if Darth Maul and Darth Talon would team up in it. Even after the Studio explained to George that Darth Talon was from 100 years after Return of the Jedi, he simply told them to "Figure it out."

I guess after that game fell through George got hung up on the idea still really wanted to see them Team Up for some reason.

 

[HeartBlade]

Darth Talon unfortunately would get bashed for being a “sexy evil chick” in our current climate though so that could be a reason why Disney avoided it. Darth Talon is a twi’lek and their only depiction in the movies so far have been dancing slave girls.

I don’t know about Lucas but he may just be fed up with filmmaking. His two top properties, Star Wars and Indiana Jones, were bashed by fans and critics alike and his visions and tweaks also got bashed. For a time, he was considered a joke of a director like M. Night (I honestly don’t get why Abrams doesn’t get his treatment since his schtick is literally mystery boxes but don’t answer what’s inside or be disappointed).

I agree that the PT was flawed and Indy 4 was a poor outing (probably due to Last Crusade being such a great ending and Mutt sucks) but not all terrible. Gicen his love for tv serials, I would love to see Lucas behind a streaming show where he can just go hogwild. A tv show only really needs a core fanbase to “make it” although I get it could be seen as a step down prestige-wise.

 

[sztriki]

I often wonder what else he could have done had he been able to move on from Star Wars.

Well that's the thing. I think it's in the "People vs George Lucas" episode of Half in the Bag where they talk about this. He did SW which was based on the TV scifi/fantasy stuff he watched as a kid. Then Indy was based on the adventure serials he used to read as a kid. And then...? Granted I've still yet to see THX and Graffiti, but I wouldn't bring up Willow or Howard the Duck as major achievements. Plus I need to see Radioland Murders too.

Also can I just say that Darth Talon is probably the stupidest name since...well Darth Maul or General Grievous I think. Scissorpunch took the cake later but damn, really?

 

[harrisonp]

HeartBlade Not that she isn’t inexplicably sexualized, but Aayla Secura was a Jedi at least

 

[Psab keel]

I personally love THX and Graffiti but other than those Star Wars and Indy he doesn't have a lot of variety to his name. Which is fine but as I've been saying for years I think his greatest achievement as a filmmaker and his creative legacy should be measured by his technical innovations as much as Indy or Star Wars.