Re: Star Wars Anthology (Young Han Solo)
To be fair, you're assuming that George was solely responsible in the first case. With Gary and Marcia involved, to say the least, that's a big assumption. George's initial instinct might've been something much broader, but which was tempered by the "no-men" around him, rather than the "yes-men" who surrounded him during the prequels.
None of this, by the way, is to diminish Lucas' talents. He's undeniably talented. But I tend to think (and I've said this before) that Lucas is fundamentally an idea man, whose ideas break down thusly:
- 5 out of 10 are really dumb or unworkable.
- 3 out of 10 are really pretty good, and if massaged a bit, could be brilliant.
- 2 out of 10 are pure genius that no one would ever think of in a million years.
With the OT, especially the first two, you got the last two and massaged versions of the middle 3. The remaining 5 never made it to the screen because of budgetary limits, or someone saying "George, that's a dumb idea. We shouldn't do that." With the PT, you got all 10 on screen. Absolute brilliance in some places, other places where you can see the germ of a brilliant ideas whose execution was botched, and a whole lot of crap as well.
Very true, Dano. And don't forget Richard Chew.
Listening to some of the dreadful dialogue that Carrie and Mark and Harrison read in their auditions, which thankfully was revised or scrapped altogether, was written by George, and makes me wonder--did HE revise/replace it, or did someone else? We know Brian DePalma told George his 7 paragraph crawl for Star Wars was ridiculously long, when George showed it to him in late '76 or early '77, insisting he sit down with George so the two of them could revise it together. Similarly, did he, or one of George's other buddies help revise that awful, wordy, techy, dialogue used in the auditions? Dunno.
So, your point is well taken. Although I disagree that 2 out of every 10 ideas in the PT were genius. More like 2 in 50. Or 100.
Having said all that, since we don't really know who may've contributed what to Star Wars, I'm gonna give George the benefit of the doubt that's it's almost exclusively his baby. And it was genius storytelling. He didn't do everything. But he hired John Williams. He hired Ralph McQuarrie. He hired Stuart Freeborn. He cast Carrie, and Mark, and Harrison, and Alec, and Peter, and David, and the tall Peter, and so on, and so on. (Obviously, I'm leaving out tons of major contributors, but you get my drift.)
Most importantly, George was the ultimate decider. And I stand by the two examples I used to illustrate the difference between George's high-SWIQ humor in Star Wars, and his low-SWIQ humor in the PT. George thought Jar Jar was hilarious. If that's not evidence of a low SWIQ, I don't know what is.
The Wook
