Lucas "planned to make EpVII himself" - USA Today interview

I think that regardless of Lucas' ability to write a tight, logical script, it's for the best for the SW saga that much younger creatives take the reins. Lucas clearly is a young-at-heart temperament, but age and wisdom have blunted his instinct for story and so we saw the SW films increasngly convey drama articulated through talking heads, round table discussions, cautious investigation and plodding walks along long corridors while looking pained. I do feel that Lucas was already outgrowing SW during ESB and wanting to focus on other projects but recognised the value of maintaining the SW brand. Years later, after all his companies were stable and self-sufficient, Lucas felt a nostalgic pull back to SW, but he had lost some of his youthful vigour and could only try to emulate it, and not succesfully. He was only invested technologically.

Anakin really is an OT-styled hero trapped in the stifling prequel era of decorum and dignity and understandably loses control of his repressed passion whom the Emperor's establishment ultimately brings to heel. We might compare Anakin to the 1970s Lucas, and Vader his older, willingly entrapped authority figure who is bound by convention, is slower and ponderous.

So if young Lucas is the impetuous and emotionally challenged youth breathing fire, and older Stately Lucas the bucket of sand, in terms of SW movie production, it's exactly these young, elastic-brained and hungry creators who will rekindle the wild energy SW needs to pick up speed and surge. For better or worse they energized Star Trek and are pouring the same liquid dynamite into SW.

 

If Lucas were making the ST (if he still owned Lucasfilm) I firmly believe there would be more PT tie-in's. Of course we haven't seen the movies yet, so nobody knows how many PT references there will be, but I still say there would be more if Lucas were making it. Dare I say even a cameo of Jar Jar just to screw with the older fans......

 

My only guess would be that if Lucas was able to have overseen the sequel trilogy to the end, any spinoffs would be retroactively filling in the gaps between the film events rather than jumping further into the past or future. There would be riffs on material from all 6 existing films and no particular favouritism.

 

Talk about dodging a bullet, this is more like dodging the nuke. He would, based upon the prequels, have killed the series.

 

Love Lucas and love Star wars.. always will.

I'm glad someone else is making them now though. The PT wasn't well received by most and GL was well criticised.. unfairly imo - a huge amount of time/money/effort was poured into the PT and he gave us more Star wars. That said.. they didn't match the OT imo and i haven't watched any of the PT movies more than twice - which speaks volumes when i've seen the OT movies *cough* lots. (i wouldn't even give the number on here it's that high lol)

i'm confused as to why some seem sure that the new movies will follow GL's treaments... do we have any knowledge of that actually being true?

 

From what I remember reading, there were 2 things Disney wanted from Lucas before the sale: A rough outline for the ST, and the guarantee that Ford, Fisher, and Hamill would return to their roles. I know that Lucas had lunch with Fisher and Hamill in early 2012 (before the sale) and either or Hamill or Fisher said he showed them the rough outline for the ST.

Now how rough was the outline? That is really the key question? Just my gut tells me its pretty rough that spells out the protagonist character arc, the villain or villains, the overall plot, the fate of the main characters including Luke, Leia and Han. I say this because the reason JJ and Kasdan took over writing Episode 7 was they supposedly wanted to give Han, Luke and Leia bigger roles then Lucas had planned for them, and JJ also said he wanted to give them the proper sendoff.

Overall, I think JJ and Disney are using Lucas's overall theme from this outlines, but the nitty gritty of each movie will not come from Lucas.

 

You took the words right out of my mouth-we dodged a bullet.

I am of course forever grateful to GL for creating this world that we all love, and despite their numerous flaws, I did enjoy many aspects of the prequels. My relief does not only stem from the problems of the prequels, but also from GL's last film, Red Tails.

In my opinion, Red Tails was an absolute disaster of a film. Not only did the audience deserve a much better film, but the veterans, the Tuskeegee Airmen deserved a better portrayal of their courage and sacrifice during WWII.

I appreciate GL, but he is not the filmmaker he once was, and I'm glad the Star Wars torch has been passed to a new generation of filmmakers.

 

I've never actually seen Red Tails, but based upon reviews and even your opinion, it's clear that he hasn't learned anything from the Star Wars prequels. It seems to happen to a lot of directors as they get older- they lose their edge. But of course, he did create Star Wars and that's a series that's going to continue on for centuries.

 

I believe this is a very true statement that goes for most great directors when they get old. You look at all of Lucas's friends: Brian Depalma, Francis Coppola, Ron Howard, Rob Reiner. All of them put out great films in the 70's, 80's, and 90's, and I can't think of the last great film any of them have put out in the past 10-15 years? I think these guys are hungry when they're young, and as they get older and probably have kids, they sort of lose that edge, as that clearly happened to Lucas.

The only exceptions I can think of is Ridley Scott, Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorcese consistently put out great films even as they have gotten older.

 

I saw this quote from Lucas..

"The only thing I really regret about Star Wars is the fact I never got to see it - I never got to be blown out of my seat when the ship came over the screen, ... The next one, I'll be able to enjoy it like anybody else."

No pressure JJ. How has he slept in the last year at all?

 

For me I think Lucas got away with it until Attack Of The CGI.. The story of that film is practically non existent, you can sum it up in a couple of paragraphs and Anakin was a total CREEP! How could anyone relate to that guy..

You should never make a sequel with a protagonist portrayed by a brand new actor, that's movies 101. Look at Speed 2. This is why Anakin should have remained practically the same age throughout the trilogy.

The droid factory was godawful too, such a lame attempt to top the C3P0 sub-plot of Empire.. The Coruscant imagery DIRECTLY ripped off Blade Runner as shown in the Plinkett review, the imagery also tried very hard to mimic Empire. It's as if Lucas realised his failure with TPM (a film I again thought was passable for Star Wars) so went and watched all the best sci fi movies ever made for inspiration, except he COMPLETELY missed the point of what made them good. He was utterly clueless and arrogant during the making of episode II.

The green screen performances were lame, none of the characters were allowed to have any charisma either.. They had to obey Lucas' weird new vision of the way people acted in the Star Wars universe which directly contrasted with the down to Earth personas of Luke and Han.

The CGI was not good enough to pull off what he intended, the Geonosis/Kamino scenes looked cartoonish, and the BLAND directing style just made it borderline comical, was Lucas even awake? Yoda's fight with Dooku was HILARIOUS, which is also a direct contrast to what was intended with the scene. I hate that Obi Wan/Anakin/Yoda/Dooku fight scene so much.. Feels like something pulled straight out of a superhero cartoon and the special effects again.. were abysmal.

Putting Boba Fett's dad into the film was another RIDICULOUS idea, now the stormtroopers have even less of an excuse to hit their targets.

The only enjoyable part of the film was Obi Wan doing that mind trick on the guy at the bar on Coruscant, another scene which ripped off Blade Runner's imagery.

Now we have the creepy and sickening romance/date rape scenes between Anakin and Padme, we really did not need to go into cheese-ville to have the romance explained to us, just have a one minute kissing scene like Empire did, and have hints throughout the dialogue.

Shmi's fate was just tacked on, why not have her get killed off in The Phantom Menace instead? The childhood trauma would make Anakin's Vader transition more plausible later on.

Anakin was a dislikable character, as was Obi Wan at times (though I could argue he's at his most dislikable in Revenge Of The Sith)

Actually i'm going to take a detour and talk about this awful moment in Revenge Of The Sith.. Obi Wan jumps down before saying this line to Greivous..



I mean seriously? First of all:

1. Giving him one of Alex Guinness' lines is just awful.
2. Making him seem charismatic, even cocky after all of his emotionally flat moments throughout the prequels is just awful.

Why George?

Anyway, Attack Of The CGI was easily Ewan Mcgregor's worst performance of the three films, though he looked the part (except when he used fake hair/beard for the reshot scenes) There are times where his delivery is so unbelievably flat. Alec Guinness' Obi Wan was far more interesting and likeable.

All in all, an awful movie which should be thrown into the fires of Mustafar.. I felt like Lucas stood in front of the cinema screen and flipped me off for 2 hours. In fact that would have angered me less. Attack Of The CGI really is awful, I want it to take it's clothes and records and get out of my apartment before I call the cops. What a creep of a movie.

I'm done with Attack Of The CGI, this is the last I ever want to hear of it. I've said my piece. It stinks and I don't like it.

Fartkraum

 

We should thank the Gods of science fiction every night for prying Star Wars out of Lucas' buttery fingers, never in history has a director pulled a 180 on their previous achievements like Lucas did with the prequels.

Many of us have been traumatized by Lucas' Empire's reign, some of us have been lost and others went in denial of the prequel stink and lost themselves in the process. We as Star Wars fans have been bruised and beaten since 1999, a generation of children were corrupted by the prequels and never gained sight of what Star Wars really was..

We thought Lucas was the chosen one.. Before the dark times.. Before the Empire.. But we were wrong.

Now it is up to the last of their kind, J.J. Abrams.. to rescue a generation of children lost during the last stretch of Lucas' reign. J.J. can remind us what made Star Wars great, and shift attention away from Jar Jar, the CGI troopers, Sonic The Hedgehog Yoda, Fathead Palpatine, the awkward Anakin force ghost, poor writing and acting, lackluster cinematography, unrealistic choreography, illogical design choices and clunky pacing, and worst of all... The droid factory scene.

The dark times are coming to an end, it is a great time to be a Star Wars fan.

 

I think Lawrence Kasdan will do with The Force Awakens what he wanted to do with Jedi. I can't wait for the Saber battles; They have been described as more powerful but not as flashy as the prequels. There is no way George had any true intention of really directing The Force Awakens. George is above all else a wonderful business man and approaching Disney to buy his legacy is not something you would just decide to do one morning. Given the fact that Disney has always done business with Lucasfilm (ie, Disneyland) it would not surprise me if George had this all planned out since the 80's. As a matter of fact I would go as far to say that he was just waiting for Michael Eisner to be replaced before making the final deal. I'm sure George has always considered selling to Disney an option throughout his career.

 

I love George, but I'm glad to see the new generation taking the realms of his franchise, it is time. Hope he can enjoy and be proud of the movies that JJ and Rian Johnson and others will deliver.

 

I think we are in uncharted waters with Lucas having zero input in TFA, so no one really knows how this movie will turn out?

In saying that, how much story did Lucas really have for the ST? The PT is a different animal because that is all backstory to the OT so I'm sure Lucas kicked around loads of ideas when he conceiving the characters & story for years.

The ST is a brand new story (after Vader/The Emperor died) so I honestly don't think he had that much of a detailed story to begin with. JJ & Kasdan could come up with a cool story and I still think it can be just as SW-ish as something Lucas wrote.

 

The one thing I hope that Disney does not divert from previous SW movies is having a 'macro' theme for each trilogy. I am not a big fan of the PT, but they do have a theme. As Rees Yees said it was more about execution by Lucas, but he was trying to say something in each trilogy, and that's why SW appeals to me more then most blockbusters.

I guess my biggest fear from Disney & JJ is they make a SW movie that has the action, the light sabers, the space battles, but there is no over arching theme when it is all said and done and the movies end up hollow.

 

So these films are officially fanfiction...

 

I hope it doesn't go in that direction.