George Lucas shared first specifics of the ST

@Josh Yes very cool.....I am reading "The Making of Star Wars" that has a lot of Lucas' original ideas from pre-1970. Let me do some more reading and I will share some stuff here. Suffice it to say, the first draft of "The Star Wars" (as the original was called) is incredibly different from how it turned out!!!!!

 

I would have LOVED to see this to be honest. It really sucks that TPM and all really put a damper on his aspirations and his feelings about the biggest thing he loves aside from his kids and his family. Imagine an ST that goes away from the actual war aspect and blends all three trilogies together.

 

As a world-builder, GL is above all else. You just can't buy that level of imagination. And also, integrity. He cared about his world, not about market research.

 

Lucas is an idiosyncratic film maker, he would have made something truly new. I expect that he is right that a lot of fans would have hated it, I suspect i wouldn't have been one of them though. Having said that I'm not at all sure what he's talking about, it sounds crazy intriguing.

 

It's a shame, and it's well documented, but the negative reaction to the PT really sealed the fate of a Lucas ST and the property's subsequent sale to Disney.

It sounds like his vision for the ST would have been a huge departure so it's a tremendous shame we will never see it realised.

 

I still suspect that someone or something was pulling Snoke's strings. Could this be it?

 

It is hard for me to see what he means by this, but I suspect the best indication we have are the Mortis episodes in series 3 of the Clone Wars. I personally loved those episodes so I'd be very keen to see a trilogy based around something like that. The main Lucas Star Wars sections the OT the PT and Clone Wars each have a very different approach and I sense that this would have been different again. An extension, whereas I just don't get the feeling of real imaginative engagement with Star Wars in the Disney films.

 

Mortis I love.

Microbial force eating critters controlling the universe I'm voting a hard pass on.

I think George Lucas is a genius but not a god. Give me a lotta AOTC over this.

Over explaining down to the fundamental nature of the universe while over rooting it in the physical and suiciding all further storytelling possibilities are not attractive outcomes for me.

Old George Lucas = Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter.

New salty about the prequels response George Lucas = we aren't even this crude matter just playthings for ultra tiny crude matter, there is nothing else.
Go away and suck a whole carton of eggs whilst you kick those rocks.

 

SW is at its best when Lucas develops the story and another director puts his stamp on the characters. The Prequels are a very ambitious story that ties nicely into the OT, but it is executed poorly because Lucas is not great with actors, used too much CGI, and . Whereas the ST is very unoriginal and doesn't really tie that well with 1-6, yet it is executed nicely as the characters are relatable, not as much CGI, and the acting is better. I would have loved to see Lucas story executed by JJ, RJ and CT.

 

He wrote and directed 4...

 

You can see the flaws of the Prequels with Lucas directing style as the acting is bad, and some of the big plot points were executed badly.

 

I find it odd that people think 1-6 themselves tie together. For me each trilogy take place in clearly distinct universes and arguably even 1 and 2-3 also are in parallel dimensions just more closely related ones.
If someone said the ST is like that I wouldn't argue it to death but I definitely see the OT R1 and the ST at least in much more proximate existences than any of them have with the PT.

Don't mistake this for me saying the PT is less Star Warsy or whatever because that is not what I mean because the PT is very much Star Wars just Star Wars from another dimension like Star Trek has the mirror and Kelvin continuities.

In fact, I think George Lucas actually created at least the first two Star Wars series to the point that serious consideration should be made about the OT being remade to reflect the prequels and the PT should be remade to fit the originals because they jibe so poorly due to retconning and drastically different iconography and character interaction styles too.
In any event I totally pan this turkey of a concept even if Hitchcock, Lean, Kubrick, 35 year old Lucas, Leone, Kurosawa, Stone, Coppola, Capra, Ridley Scott, Scorsese, DeMille, George Miller, and Spielberg are running the show.

Maybe David Lynch or Terry Gilliam could make those an entertaining last Star Wars movies ever?

Or we could try Waitti or Lord and Miller to farce and joke it up enough to win Oscars and allow everyone to take it as a high brow spoof.

 

I think Lucas did his best to tie the 1-6 story together as it has a clear narrative throughout (I'm not going to debate the execution because the PT is heavily flawed, so I am just sticking with the storyline). The 1-6 story is essentially about the rise, fall and redemption of Anakin Skywalker, as he is the only character to get a true arc from an innocent little kid to his death. That is the micro story, whereas the macro story arc is the rise of Palpatine from politican, to Chancellor to Emperor while in the process maneuvering the Empire to take hold of the government over the Republic through the Clone Wars. Even though you have villains throughout like Darth Maul, Dooku, and Grevious, the real villian who is The Phantom Menace is Palpatine.

If you take a step back, that is a really cool story of Anakin/micro and Palpatine/macro, and again I'm not debating the execution of the PT because it is horribly flawed. The ST essentially feels like a tacked on story even though you have the return of the OT characters. Yes you can link some narrative elements to the 1-6 story, but the overall arc of Anakin and Palpatine ended in ROTJ. The brillance of Lucas 1-6 story is that Luke is the real hero in the end and the macro/micro story of 1-6 isn't even about him!

I enjoy the ST movies as I think they are better executed then the PT (light years better), but if you are asking me on a pure storytelling sense, it's a blah/unoriginal trilogy in that respect. There are so many things taken from the OT and shaken up and repackaged it showed Disney had no clue where to take this Saga after they split with Lucas. In the end, they gave the fans what they probably wanted after all these years: The OT part 2 with a few left turns. Lucas was right that fans wouldn't have liked his new trilogy (and even said to Charlie Rose in 2015 that Disney wanted to make a movie for the fans), because SW fans don't really like change. Look at the Civil War going on after Rian Johnson threw a few curveballs at them.

 

That fits with the early concept art revolving around a villain that consumes the force. We know much of Lucas' idea such as Luke in exile were used in the rewrites, so most likely that's how the whole Whills thing tied in; on the villainous side.

Perhaps they deemed it was time for the Jedi to end, and the ST revolved around "cheating destiny"? I have no idea.

 

Lucas stopped directing films after ANH. He approached several directors for the prequels but no one was brave enough to take on the task, so Lucas after 22 years of directing nothing decided to tackle the prequels on his own. Artist change over years, George wasn't that young hungry director anymore, he became the Emperor, king, tyrant, and dictator. Films are collaborative efforts and Lucas reined overall no one questioned him.

Maybe he learned from his mistakes, maybe he would have come back and showed everyone that he didn't lose it with the Sequel Trilogy but, alas... he sold all off to Disney because believe it or not the backlash hurt Lucas, Lucas is not a god amongst men, he is just a man... Now the same people who trampled on him like a wild stampede are questioning if he would have done a better job if he did not sell... OY VEY Now RJ is being trampled on like Lucas hopefully, RJ's trilogy will bring him back...

 

That's... a bit harsh...

 

For a long time now i've felt the problem with the PT wasn't the overall ideas, which were good. It was the execution, the script. The fact that it felt like it was maybe version two of a draft, not version 10. With A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back, there were numerous rewrites. Especially for A New Hope. Lucas needed someone to tell him "no" on the PT, and Rick McCallum wasn't that guy.

The ST feels like it has no direction. VII asks a ton of questions, and then VIII says the answers don't matter. You hit the nail on the head with what is good about the ST... The acting is far better. The effects look better, but the story feels like it is being made up as we go along (and surprise surprise it IS being made up as we go along).

I would have loved seeing them take George's original ideas and rework them, not throw them out completely. Perhaps even work with him so that what you get is something closer to the quality of ANH and ESB. Films that tie in to the overall saga. These just feel like they have been tacked on, and that's because that is exactly what has happened.

 

So...in this scenario, the galaxy far far away has what could be called gods, and they control not just the galaxy but everything else that exists, but they're tiny. True power hides where no one would think to look. That's freaking beautiful, I love it!

 

So, the Force is basically like a pro-biotic yoghurt. There are "good bacteria" and "bad bacteria". In your gut/galaxy.