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Why did he have to go to Midichlorians instead of the Force being religious?
Is it possible he became anti-religious in the 20 years between the first and second set of movies and wanted to have a microbial version? Or were magical Mitochondria always his vision of the force? -
Why did he make Greedo shoot first?
Did he think it made Han Solo evil? -
Why did he add Jaba the Hutt to Ep. 4 ?
Did he think people were too dumb and couldn’t figure out that Han Solo had issues? -
Why is the arena battle so awful and fake looking in Clone Wars?
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Is the sound messed up for everyone in Ep. 4? Some speech is clear and loud, while some is muffly - often in the same scene.
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Was the Empire in the original trilogy supposed to be the Soviet Union or England cira 1775?
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Why did Lucas feel he had to explain everything in excrutiating detail in the prequel movies? Did he think everyone became super stupid and had to be hand-held through everything or did he just want to make sure no one could possibly have the wrong idea on anything?
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Did Lucas have all details for Episodes 1-3 -already mapped out when he made Episode IV? or did he evolve or make up story elements and background information along the way?
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Now that Disney owns the property, can they change anything they want? Like change how the force works? Or remake ep 1-3 like Hollywood has done to movies like Spiderman and Hulk?
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How hurt do you all think Lucas was for the thrashing fans gave the prequels? Personally, even if I had a lot of money, I’d have been devastated. Episode 2 was especially horrible to me and it seemed like lessons were not learned too well. But was that because the first 2 prequels were basically made together?
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Did the arena light-saber fight scene seem horribly contrived and ridiculous to everyone else?
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Do stormtroopers, or clone troops - have hopes and dreams like normal people?
Dude, you never read his original draft to Star Wars. He’s always been batshit stupid. What saved him was he other people bailed him out, including his amazing editor-wife who basically turned the original movie from shit to what it is.
But then he got filthy rich and powerful, and he basically fired everyone who said no to him (and he also divorced that wife). On the prequels, you can just see everyone at LucasFilm fawning over everything he does. The dude announces he he’s finished a first draft and all the sycophants cheer him, and they go film it. There’s no feedback telling him, “George, this is a shitty idea.”
Sigh, yeah, this just makes me sad.
1). midichlorians were are terrible sci-fi idea (everything must be explained) intruding into space opera which follows rules closer to a fantasy series (you can have whatever magic you want but be consistent). To me, it’s proof of bad screenwriting rather than a philosophical change from Lucas.
I highly recommend that you read The Making Of Star Wars. It follows Lucas’ many evolutions of the story, and identifies story elements that are “locked in” with each iteration of the script. From my reading of the book, it appears that the Jedi (originally the Jedi Bendu, ugh) have always been the equivalent of an order of warrior monks, able to do what they do through a zen Buddhist whatever higher degree of attunement with the universe.
As far as religion goes, remember that Lucas also made Anakin’ origin feature a virgin birth. So, that’s going on too. Seems like a muddle rather than a decisive move.
2). Greedo shooting first is the same PC crap that had Spielberg changing handguns into walkie-talkies in E.T. Good guys must be all good, even the scoundrel.
3). Jabba had scenes shot in the original filming of SW, but as a humanoid. You can see the footage with Han and the CG worm version of Jabba in the special edition, including a really unconvincing bit where Han steps on Jabba’s tail and has to have his screen image boosted up and down.
4-5, got nothing for ya.
6). Probably not allegorical, Lucas was heavily influenced by Japanese film makers at the time, including taking a number of plot elements from The Hidden Fortress.
7). Lucas insisted on writing thre screenplays himself. He’s not actually that good a screenwriter.
8). Not everything, but the book I mentioned above shows that a lot of the elements in place. But the rumor I heard when I was a kid that he had nine books written is not true.
9). I think the ownership is complete. They are far more likely to move forward than look back by my reckoning, though. That said, the prequel haters (I’m not really one) have a point, it got changed from Luke’s story to Anakin’s journey.
10). I think he got a lot more wounded by having his special editions criticized. But Han shot first dammit.
11, nothing for ya, I liked the prequels OK production-wise
12). My understanding is that the clones are not given anything close to Jango’s original awareness. The only full exception was Boba with exceptions made for Commanders and special forces units. Yes I know this is a horribly nerdy thing to know anything about.
Oh yeah, the bullshit detector got turned off and thrown away. But by then, I’d already wrapped my childhood around SW.
- The Empire is, of course, a pastiche of The Big Bad Guys from every little good guys vs. the big bad guys movie ever made. So yeah, there’s a little Soviets and British Empire c. 1775 in there, along with things like the Spanish Empire of The Sea Hawk. Lucas being the age he is, though, the Empire is largely based on movie Nazis. Movie Nazis were the mass media bad guys of Lucas’s youth. For example, the climactic attack on the Death Star was famously inspired by the 1955 British WW2 movie, The Dam Busters. (And the final scene is a quote of Triumph of the Will - though showing the rebels in the same formations as the Nazis of the famous propaganda film. Ah, for the days when Lucas still had an active sense of irony!)
Star Wars is essentially a giant homage/pastiche of hundreds of movies, with central characters, images, and scenes ripped straight out of classic movies like Casablanca, The Searchers, and The Wizard of Oz. For some reason the modern Interwebs mostly fixates on only two of these many, many references, namely The Hidden Fortress and The Dam Busters, which is a bit odd.
(My theory is that when the original Star Wars movies came out, every film buff thought it was obvious that Han Solo was a Rick Blaine-like character, and that the Jabba of RotJ was a Sidney Greenstreet homage. So no one bothered to point out that those things were inspired by Casablanca, while the obscurer Fortress and Dam Busters references were deemed worthy of notice. Modern-day fans, by contrast, were raised on Star Wars, and can’t see the references the previous generation thought were obvious - when someone says, “Name a famous movie character who pretends hard to be cynical and jaded but proves to be an idealistic hero in the final reel,” they answer “Han Solo” and don’t even think of answering “Rick Blaine.” Meanwhile, the cites for Hidden Fortress and Dam Busters are listed in their Star Wars reference books.)
I like this theory a lot, especially since I’m old enough to be part of that “Casablanca is so obvious we won’t even mention it” generation.
Wow, thanks for such great answers. I have never seen Casablanca, Dam Busters, nor Hidden Fortress. If I see those now will it ruin some of my mystique of the original Star Wars trilogy? I so love them (except the re-edits of course) I’m not sure how it would affect my future viewings.
This thread got me in the mood to watch A New Hope, which I hadn’t for ages. We got these “Despecialized” versions that are HD versions without the Special Edition crap. It really twinges those childhood feelings that made me love it so, yet fills me with sadness as to most of the movies that followed.
Boggle.
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- Not only fake and contrived but stupid too. The Jedi show-up, get themselves surrounded, then get massacred down to handful of survivors. Worst. battle plan.ever. There was a damned good reason they were so easily fooled and dismantled by one creepy dude with a boner for an ex-Queen : All of the Jedi in the prequels weak, stupid, and idiotic. Plus they like to whine a lot.
I just saw Casablanca for the first time a couple of years ago. Completely fell in love with it, of course.
The site needs a Star Wars subforum.
-Tom
And a like button, shaped like the death star.
If you read The Making of Star Wars, the plot points of a defeated general and a princess (Hidden Fortress) are in the script early on, although the rescue bit is a late addition that has nothing to do with the Kurosawa film. The Dam Busters featured an airplane run down a narrow canyon to hit a small target, and Lucas cut footage together from WWII movies to illustrate to ILM what he wanted from the final battle. So, not seeing how we get to “odd.”
But then, Casablanca was about living under occupation, not rescuing a princess. Pastiches are like that.
I think George Lucas one said in an interview that everyone’s love for Han Solo caught him by surprise. He didn’t get that people would actively root for a person that was a giant moral grey area. So I wouldn’t be surprised that when he got to redo the movies, he decided that since everyone loved Solo, he would make him more in line with what a hero “should be.” That meant Han had to shoot in self defense and thereby instantly neuter his entire character.
It’s not that I don’t think these are interesting questions, I think that a lot of them can be handled with the unfortunate response of “George Lucas has no idea what he’s doing on multiple levels.” He had a vision of something at a time when movies were at a turning point. I don’t think he would have succeeded had he come a little earlier or a little later in cinematic history. He had people, like the aforementioned ex-wife, that really knew what they were doing as storytellers and they saved him from himself on that first outing. He then focused on ILM while the grown ups made Empire Strikes Back, easily the best of the whole franchise so far. He had to step in a lot on Jedi because his director was a total substance abuser, but I feel like a good screenwriter had at least shaped the whole thing.
Star Wars is one step away from being a total pile of dogshit. The writing is bad, the acting is often bad, the pacing isn’t good… all vintage Lucas. The next two step everything up significantly and while we can thank George for the big picture that got this ball rolling, him stepping back a bit was for the best.
Really curious to see what a mostly-Lucas free Star Wars is like with the next one. JJ Abrams comes with his own cheese and he has a little too much love for Spielberg for my taste, but I think he’s demonstrated time and again that he at least knows what he’s doing overall.
I wondered what the Dam Busters reference was, now I get it. I have seen that several times.
Was there also some kind of kerfluffle in George Lucas not wanting to use… Union people, or was it SAG members, or something? Was that a reason he did a lot of filming in England? It seems like I remember. Harrison Ford having some kind of long-standing disagreement with Lucas or maybe that is something else?
I don’t remember that being brought up, although I imagine shooting in England was cheaper.
I have seen the 2-hour making of Star Wars program and I can’t remember anything like that mentioned in it.
2 words that answer any “When was the last time lucas was good?” questions…
Lawrence Kasdan.
Wrote ESB, ROTJ and Raiders of The Lost Ark
He is co-writing the next episode with JJ.