Re: Star Wars Episode VII
I remember seeing an interview of sorts with Lucas (maybe in one of the DVD featurettes?) in which he discussed sitting down to write the script for Episode III. He said something to the effect that he realized only then that he'd spent so much time on politics in Episodes I and II that he didn't know how he could fit everything into Episode III that he needed in order to tell the story he wanted to tell, and came just short of admitting he'd screwed up and was going to have to rush Anakin's fall to the Dark Side.
Even though the prequels tried to change it, these are still separate trilogies. The Original Trilogy I STILL consider to be it's own story, and stands well on it's own.
[...]
I never liked the views that if you look at the first 6 movies it's really about Vader's redemption. No. It's Annakin's story for 3 flicks, then Luke's.
These are part of my grumpiness with Star Wars that dates back to Return of the Jedi. Prior to that I was too young to notice the ramifications of the Episode numbers, and wasn't digging into the "making of" stuff yet. But George's original notes were for twelve installments -- six "From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker", and six -- preceding -- "From the Adventures of Obi-Wan Kenobi". After Star Wars, when he was looking at the realistic possibility of sequels, he scaled the earlier stories to three (didn't have much in the way of notes for that period, and was developing more going forward from
A New Hope), and in his circum-
Empire interviews talked about a nine film saga, and the re-release of Star Wars in theaters now had "Episode IV" tacked onto it. After
Empire, though, he was starting to get tired of doing Star Wars movies and shoehorned the rest of what would have been four films into one and went on to other things. Like
Howard the Duck.
When he looked at revisiting
A New Hope for its twentieth anniversary, Rick McCallum was the one who persuaded Lucas to do the Prequels and, during pre-production for those, that the arc was the story of Anakin's rise, fall, and redemption. The less I say about that, the better. I do not know enough cuss words in enough languages to adequately express my great contempt for the post-
Empire handling of Star Wars canon. "Fixing" all of that, amongst other things, is what I was addressing in my rewrites that I mentioned over in the "Things You're Tired of Seeing in Films" thread.
Six films From the Adventures of Obi-Wan Kenobi -- establishing the setting, introducing Kenobi as a young Jedi Knight, going through his discovery of Anakin, the years-long series of related conflicts later referred to by historians as the Clone Wars, the eventual and inevitable fall of the corrupt Republic, the loss of Anakin to a new Dark Lord of the Sith, the Jedi Purge, and Kenobi going into hiding as the galaxy slid into darkness. We don't see Yoda, we don't know Anakin becomes Vader, we don't now Luke has a twin, Anakin doesn't know his wife is pregnant when he leaves for the last time, and so forth. Preserve the surprises of the Original Trilogy. Keep Anakin as a supporting character, as he isn't strong enough to be the central figure. And so forth. I liked the writing challenge of not showing Anakin going to the Dark Side, but -- after viewing the later films and discovering that Vader was Anakin -- one could go back and re-watch the earlier films and see hints in what he's saying and doing that he's thinking things that are dangerous or a Jedi, and that you'd feel forgiven for missing them, because you were paying more attention to Obi-Wan since he was the main character.
Like that.
--Jonah
