Star wars question

that sounds like folklore, to me.

 

Hell, Lucas wrote 'A New Hope' as a novel, too. Was it based on the manuscript?

 

go read Harry's post. Geez man there's proof out there.

 

it's funny. i just got thru reading something that i think sums it all up:


A George Lucas quote from Denise Worrell's book Icons (1989): "There are four or five scripts for Star Wars, and you can see as you flip through them where certain ideas germinated and how the story developed. There was never a script completed that had the entire story as it exists now. But by the time I finished the first Star Wars, the basic ideas and plots for Empire and Jedi were also done. As the stories unfolded, I would take certain ideas and save them; I'd put them aside in notebooks. As I was writing Star Wars, I kept taking out all the good parts, and I just kept telling myself I would make other movies someday. It was a mind trip I laid on myself to get me through the script. I just kept taking out stuff, and finally with Star Wars I felt I had one little incident that introduced the characters. So for the last six years [1977-1983] I've been trying to get rid of all the ideas I generated and felt so bad about throwing out in the first place."


i think he's still doing that. i think he had a bunch of ideas and he's spent 6 films putting them on the screen. i think he's had the outline of a story (standard messiah story) with some names he came up with 40 years ago and he's been putting them on film ever since.

i don't think he had a cohesive saga with general outlines of what happened in each part as some would suggest. heck, i think it wasn't until filming star wars that he decided that ob1 would die fighting darth vader. how do you have parts 5 and 6 done with ob1 still alive?

 

Guess you missed my post Nut.

Not only is there a plot outline (albeit, it's something like 30 pages, handwritten) for the story arc that became the first six episodes, there are actually several rewrites out there too. Lucas rewrote the story several times over the course of about two years before coming up with one that was similar to the movie he eventually made.

The early drafts were based on Annikin [sic] Starkiller, or Mace Windu as the lead character. The jedi were the "Jedi Bendu" and weren't the mystics that we know them as (another group was). The Sith appeared in the original script. Vader is an amalgamation of several characters, including General Volorum (the name Lucas gave the Chancellor in the prequels) and Annikin's original father, whose name I forget (he wore a suit like Vader's). Annikin has a brother named Deak, and Leia came and went and came back again in the script rewrites. She was originally some kind of half-deity. Han originally wasn't human. Ben Kenobi was originally gonna be Annikin or an elder "general skywalker".

About the only major plot rewrite was making Vader Luke's father. Originally, he killed Anakin, just like Obi-Wan says in ANH. That was a script rewrite during ESB - made the story more compelling.

 

Han and Chewy were sorta mixed. They were originally one character that became two.

 

I read something about Han being a big green alien in early plotlines & script drafts.

The yoda character was concived as a little rat guy, and wookies and jawas were interchangeable. Lucas liked both and both names.

In the end, Star Wars is the best and worst of what happens when you have a basic story arc and then constantly rewrite it as you do each movie. The dialogue is terrible because Lucas can't write it, and it was never a priority. That style is prone to plot holes and inconsistencies, which IMO Lucas did a great job shoring up. But it's also flexible enough to constantly work in new ideas which can make for some really memorable scenes.

LoTR, my other favorite fantasy/sci-fi fix, is the opposite. The story was ridiculously flushed out and virtually unmalleable (risk the wrath of alienating all fans). It rode on rails from start to finish. Definitely a more finished/polished and cohesive product, but there's nowhere left to go with it.

Lucasfilm or 20th Century Fox could be making SW serials for decades if they wanted because Lucas fully populated and organized his universe, and wrote a story arc which is completely open ended at the start and finish (and inbetween, tangentially).

I like both, for different reasons.

 

yeah, your post came as i was looking for information. but this post here is exactly what i'm getting at. he had some kernels of various ideas and ended up making star wars. he even had an idea for a cheaper sequel that turned into splinter in the mind's eye when star wars made so much money and it was clear he could be more ambitious.

i don't deny he spent years working on story ideas, but i think there's this sense that the ep1-9 were all worked out and ready for film by the time he started shooting ep4. by the time ep6 was done, i don't think ep1-3 was anything more than "anakin studies under ob1, has kids with some chick, turns to the dark side, becomes darth vader, fights ob1 and ends up falling in lava (or something) -- oh and something about a clone war and the rise of the empire."

given the different permutations that he's written, ep1 could have introduced both darth vader and luke's father as seperate people and it would fit with his early notes. by ep3, it becomes clear that ob1 is luke's father and a general in the rebel army (or whatever the faction is). that would also fit his notes.

 

Some decent Sith backstory is covered in the Knights of the Old Republic games on PC and XBox. They refer to the Sith as followers of an ancient extinct race. They trained on Korriban. Good games, I highly recommend them.

The plot is set up so you get a choice of how your character responds to others. It enables you to be a light side or dark side jedi depending on your disposition.

 

Ah, but there is no dark or light side of The Force. There is only The Force and what you choose to do with it.