OFFICIAL NEWS Disney didn’t Use George Lucas’ Ideas for The Force Awakens.

According to THR at the time (November 2012), some of Lucas's original vision was this:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/new-star-wars-movie-michael-388424

 

Look at what BigShinyRobot is saying now....
http://bigshinyrobot.com/58402/disney-still-using-lucass-star-wars-ideas/

 

$acrilege.

 

From the article:
"But this new Lucas quote shouldn't give people any reason to think that they just tossed Lucas' story in the garbage."

No reason to think that? No, none at all, aside from George saying exactly that.

 

It was a sad news to me. One thing I was liking about the New trilogy was that they were using the ideas of the Maker himself. But now I don't know what to expect from the movie.

 

That paints it in a different light. I maintain that the best way for TPTB to go about making the ST is to take GL's broad outline for the ST and some of his ideas, and fill out the canvas on their own in order to make the best Star Wars production they can. The collective resume's of TPTB behind TFA and the rest of the ST speaks for itself. All these elements taken together and this should be the great experience we all want to see.

 

Well......hmmmmm...now it just means that it could be a disappointing new take, or it could have been a great save by JJ and Kath. We won't know until everyone's memoirs are released and we see the movies. For now, I think it is probably best that George's treatments remain locked up with little discussion in any 'Making of' ....' until #9 leaves the theater to avoid any ugliness, and to allow JJ/KK's vision to stand on it's own without unfair comparison(s).

George's vision has always worked best under constraints and I do hope something of his remains within the trilogy as Star Wars wlll always be his creation. However, I also get the feeling, at least from interviews with GL, he is a touch melodramatic/sensitive/myopic what have you. I think that part of his personality has only grown over the years as he was allowed/given more and more control over all aspects the process without constructive feedback. So perhaps he is overstating the loss of his 'story' in the interview, with even the minimal amounts of change to things.

Let us be real though, at some point George won't be with us anymore. It was going to change hands eventually.

 

So these films are officially fanfiction...

 

The new peeps are still the main characters otherwise the big 3 would have been in the teaser

 

agree 100%

What did you expect? They just try to fight the fire now when damage was made..they know this is bad news fore a lot of core fans..

 

Not sure how to feel about this, I always felt loosely sticking to the major plot points of Lucas' treatments might be the best way to go, with Michael Ardnt focusing on tightening up the story and improving subplots.

Ardnt (Toy Story 3, Oblivion and Little Miss Sunshine) apparently submitted a treatment for a full trilogy shortly after the Disney sale, I assumed that meant Disney sent him Lucas' treatments and he edited them into something better.. but now we know Ardnt is probably the main writer of The Force Awakens; I hope he is at this point.

J.J. and Kasdan are definitely good screenwriters, but they haven't shown much ability when it comes to creating their own stories.. No offense to them but Super 8 was nothing special, and Kasdan's films have always been kinda average outside Star Wars. I'm hoping they just tightened up the screenplay..

Though my source tells me that J.J. made big changes.. changing planets around in the story etc. Rey and her village/Boyega's Tatooine scenes were supposed to be on a snow planet.

I hope this doesn't turn into another case of 'too many cooks in the kitchen' Star Wars has never had this many people responsible for the story.. I know there are a couple of other writers involved who will go uncredited.

 

You beat me to it. I hope at the least there is his foundation left and they didn't throw everything away. That would be the ultimate slap in the face.

 

I came back from my cabin this evening, a pleasant long weekend it was, with my birthday party and all, kids went to bed, I´m opening this site....and the perfect evening was gone with the first lines of this article. Now I just feel sad...When I first heard that Lucas sold his company, I was confuse and didn´t know what to think....then news came that there will be more star wars movies based upon George´s stories...the whole new trilogy plus spinn offs (which are not that important to me really)....and more when they said George will be there as the uber brain to ask if this or that is right, if this or that character would go this or that direction etc....it was soothing. I had this assurance that the spirit of the maker will be there, that George´s vision since the 80. would be made. I didn´t mind making minor changes...it was just a plot after all, all the dialoges and twists would do Disney people! And that wasn´t enough? They thought they could make up a better story? Call me nostalgic but I still can´t believe it.....Sure they had reasons to keep this secret...now we see that all that George Lucas´s backpacking is pure xxxx-xxxx and that he really has nothing to do with the sequel. What a disappointment...I was so looking forward to see it in december and now I´m just empty and the enthusiasm is gone.... the real Star Wars will be forever just the six movies - to me. And this is just another EU stuff....

 

Don't jump the gun man

 

Han has a ton more room to grow. We have not seen him on this side of his career as general of the republic, husband and all around not complete scoundrel.

 

I posted this in the comments section on the Ep VII News blog, but I thought it was worth reposting here as well:

I wouldn’t take ol’ George’s words too literally, folks. God love him, but he’s made so many blatantly contradictory statements over the years about the Star Wars stories that I always end up taking a wait-and-see attitude when he says something like this.

It’s certainly possible that LFL/Disney threw out Lucas’ entire ST treatment and started from scratch. However, I think it’s just as likely that they kept the basic themes (rebuilding, moral and philosophical questions) of his treatment, but changed other aspects of it like character focus or even story. Or, it may be a similar story, but they didn’t do it exactly as Lucas wrote it up, and to Lucas this means that they threw out his story.

Let’s not assume anything just yet. And, of course, it’s also possible that Lucas was being serious when he said for years that he didn’t have a Sequel Trilogy story, and ROTJ wrapped everything up, but that he then cobbled something together to sweeten the deal when he decided to sell LFL. It’s possible that his ST story just wasn’t very good, especially if his heart wasn’t truly in it and he just wrote it for the sake of the LFL sale.

I’m not anywhere near ready to write off TFN on the basis of this latest quote from Lucas, and I don’t think any of us ought to be. Not just yet, anyway.

 

Really folks, did you think Disney was going to let George meddle and get everything he wanted after paying him billions? You all should have expected this in some way and now you won't see the movie(s).? Whatevs - as I said, we wont know how much was scrapped until we get more behind the scenes info. KK is a friend of Spielberg/Lucas, so I highly doubt she would spit in his face so easily. People need to settle down until you get the facts instead of being alarmists. Iger and the execs are not going to really get their hands dirty unless these movies suck. This is all JJ and Kath for now.

 

lucas said previously that the treatments he gave them for 7, had a lot of plot holes. For one I think they were about 10 pages, which is short for a treatment. I take this news to mean that the writers had to first fill the plot holes. Once they did that they either realized they couldn't fill them or it took them in a new direction. I have long felt that when shooting ROTS Lucas made changes to the original plan. He said that he intended to finish the series with ROTS. To me one example of this is killing Amidala. In Jedi Leia says she has memories of her mother, but in Sith we see her mother died when she was about 10 seconds old. I know force memory and crap like that. I think this is an excuse. Also, I don't remember the name but there is an EU book in which Luke goes looking for the grave of his mother, only to find there isn't one. Amidala spends two movies as a character hiding from everyone, only in the end to spend the last movie basically doing nothing but being pregnant. This is just an example of something that "might" create plot holes. Sometimes the plot holes are so large that its best to go back to the drawing board and start over again.