A Question:

[anakin n padme 4eva]

one question...did lucas film the OT w/ the prequels in mind?

[LordTyranus]

I believe he always wanted to tell the backstory of Anakin and Obi-Wan so I guess the answer to your question is yes.

[catwmnjedi]

I agree. I know some people on other threads have claimed Lucas didn't know the story line from one movie to the next, but I think he knew the life of Anakin already and that Anakin WAS Darth Vader, right from the start.

I watched the A&E Biography special on GL, and it mentioned that he had the basic saga of Star Wars in his head since college, when he started drawing early concepts of stormtroopers and droids. He mentioned that his saga was an epic like "War and Peace" and he knew that to make a movie out of it, he'd have to choose only a chunk of the story to make. He chose the events of ANH hoping to make sequels, but not sure if it would come to fruition. The reason he went back to make the prequels is that the life of Anakin Skywalker was part of his original story and he felt it was a story that needed to be told to bring the saga together.

I'm quite sure not all the details were worked out until he started making each film, for example, he mentions that Jabba-the-Hutt was originally going to be a furry character like Chewie, but he changed him to a slug when they started into ROTJ.

I've always been curious about Luke and Leia though.. were they always planned to be brother and sister, or did Lucas change that for ESB to resolve the potential conflict with both Luke and Han liking Leia? Anyone know?

[Obi-Wan]

Lucas was planning to have Luke and Leia fall in love and get married. But that changed in ESB. He made them brother and sister and made Leia fall in love with Han. Harrison Ford also wanted Han to die in Return Of The Jedi. (I think that was the movie he wanted to die in.) So Lucas made him live and made Leia and Han like each other.

[Justin]

Lucas didn't have the idea of Vader being Luke's father until they were working on ESB, and he didn't have the idea that Luke and Leia would be siblings until ROTJ.

I'm sure he had a lot of ideas for what came before the Classic Trilogy, but he changed his mind about a lot of things as he went along.

I think he definitely had some things planned out for prequels while he was working on the Classic Trilogy, particularly during and after he made ESB.

[Rebel Astromech Droid]

Lucas wrote the whole thing start to finish but then decided just focus on the middle section of it. He said that in an interview I believe.

[Justin]

He says a lot of things.

[Mann]

Give it up Justin, you have argued this subject to dath, adn we've heard from Lucas himself the conflicting story. I think you need to think that that there is a possibilty that you may be wrong.

[Justin]

Maybe you should consider the possibility that YOU'RE wrong as well. *There's too much evidence to suggest that he hadn't made everything up at once, and Gary Kurtz (who had way more to do with Star Wars than he's given credit for) has said that things were changed along the way.

That's the way the creative process works; you make new ideas and discard old ones all the time.

Just because Lucas says something doesn't necessarily mean it's true. You just want to believe that he's perfect in every way.

And also, it's not fair for you to tell me or anybody else on here to give up on anything they say just because you don't agree with it.

[LordTyranus]

Originally posted by Obi-Wan@Aug. 06 2002 - 14:14
Lucas was planning to have Luke and Leia fall in love and get married. But that changed in ESB. He made them brother and sister and made Leia fall in love with Han. Harrison Ford also wanted Han to die in Return Of The Jedi. (I think that was the movie he wanted to die in.) So Lucas made him live and made Leia and Han like each other.
Yes Harrison Ford was adament that Han should die in ROTJ, he had grown very tired of the role and wanted to make sure he wouldn't be in any more sequels, Lucas promised him that ROTJ was the last adventure for Han so Ford agreed and Han didn't die, I saw this whole story recently on an interview with Harrison Ford.

[Justin]

By the way, Mann, you should look at your posts before you post them; you keep spelling things wrong. It makes you look kind of stupid.

[Rinc]

Originally posted by Justin@Aug. 06 2002 - 19:27
and he didn't have the idea that Luke and Leia would be siblings until ROTJ.
Then how come Luke called to her on Bespin? How come Yoda mentioned "there is another"?

Also look at the carbon freezing scene when Han is about to be put into it. Chewie starts going mad and Han is trying to stop him. At this point Leia and Vader stand there looking at each other and it seems as if Leia can feel something.

Also in ANH doesn't Vader say "her resistence to the mind probe is considerable." Or something like that. Isn't that a sign that the force is strong with her.

[Justin]

Originally, when Yoda said "There is another" he was talking about Luke's sister who was being trained on another planet somewhere, and Episodes VII-IX were going to be about LUke finding her.

Lucas just decided to change it when they made ROTJ.

The reason Luke can call to Leia is because they had a special bond, not necessarily a brother-sister thing, and Leia's resistance to the mind probe was just showing that Leia has a strong will.

It's interesting how it all comes together, but it wasn't originally planned that way.

[Mann]

Justin,

thanx for the posts to everyone who types fast and just doesn't catch their mistakes. We are so sorry that you are just a nit-picking person and must correct spelling and grammar for everyone. What do you do all day man? Post something with relevence, not about others spelling errors. Oh, and don't call other members stupid either, especially look stupid when you haven't met me before. You should be saying seem stupid. But don't try and pick a fight, you tend to piss people off.

anyway...Gary Kurtz did nothing for RotJ. He was a producer for the first two films, but for RotJ he wasn't there, or for the Prequel trilogy. Let Lucas, the guy who thought it all up, decide if he thought up the whole thing at the beginning. Ever read his biography made in like 1982? IT says how much planning he did. Every writer makes Rewrites and revisions on scripts that are original. Kurtz probably tweaked it becasue he was paying for it. The writers of the scripts have more of a development of the story.

Lawerence Kazdan obviously was responsible for something in the story line, look at the rest of his films that are superb (minus Wyatt Earp). And Lucas can decide whether he wants to change the story to fit with the others, it's his choice becasue it isn't set in stone.

[Justin]

Mann, I said it makes you look stupid if you don't correct your mistakes. I didn't say you were stupid.

And it's kind of hard for Lucas to decide if he made everything up; he either did or he didn't.

It would be like me saying I decided that I really rented Back to the Future last week instead of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

[sbaxter]

Lucas has said in recent interviews that he had the story in outline form when he started. I believe that, but I highly suspect that many things have changed as the story has evolved.

Assuming you like what has come to this point, it would be rather foolish of Lucas to force himself to go only by what he had on paper at the NH was made. This is a story in the process of being made. As stories are written (and we can consider the movies each to be a part of the written story), they evolve. Anything Lucas might have written or dreamed of prior to the stories appearing on the big screen is just a draft -- important to the creative process, but not the finished work. Many writers have only a vague idea of where a story will end when they begin. Most change things when they think of something better.

Why does it seem so important to some people that Lucas had the entire story finished back in 1975 or whatever? I'm not trying to be snotty; I really want to know why some people feel that way.

>That's the way the creative process works; you make new ideas and discard old ones all the time.

Absolutely. You got it.

Qapla'

SSB

[Justin]

Wow, sbaxter and I actually agree on something, lol.

[RollaFett]

I agree with the sentiment that through the years, GL has not known where this story was headed all the time. It's obvious when you really think about what we have been presented with so far. That said, I also believe that he did have some sort of rough backstory. Has anyone ever read the Annotated screenplays? If not, you should consider picking up a copy. It's an excellent read and gives a lot of insight on the early directions of the SW saga.

[Justin]

I definitely think Lucas had some kind of backstory when he started making the Star Wars films, but his ideas changed along the way.

[Pepper]

I totally agree with Justin. *Lucas did have a rough idea of what happened in the years before ANH, but for ESB and ROTJ I think he made up a lot of it as he went. * *Vader being Luke's dad wasn't for-sure until they started filming ESB, for example. *As GollaFett said, a lot can be learned from reading "The Annotated Screenplays". *The prologue in the ANH novelisation gives the basic story for the prequels, so there's your concrete evidence that there was some story already in place for the prequel time period, but many of the details and much of what we've seen in TPM and AOTC were made up in recent years.

Speaking of the "Annotated Screenplays", I read that shortly after TPM was released, and I noticed that there were several ideas in TPM that were discarded from Original Trilogy. *There was a character that was never used in the OT called Mace Windy (not Windu). *The Gungans, if I remember correctly (Golla may be able to correct me) were an idea, even if they weren't yet called "Gungans". *Obi-Wan's master, though nameless, was also an idea. *Point being that yes Lucas did have some prequel triology ideas before making those films, but I don't believe he had a whole lot other than various vague ideas (such as the above-mentioned) and a few certainties, such as Vader being a failed apprentice of Obi-Wan, and Palpatine being the Supreme Chancellor of the Old Republic before becoming emperor. *I believe the clone troopers becoming stormtroopers was there all along too, at least since the late Seventies before ESB was made.

As far as what Lucas says/has said, well, some is good and some isn't. *I think he tries to smooth things over as the years go by, trying to make the whole six Episode story appear to smoothly blend together, which it more or less does anyway, and so he'll tell half-truths and "alternate memories" on what really happened way back when SW was in its early stages. *How does one tell what's true and what's not? *Well the only way I can think of is to know what was said back then (in the late Seventies), what was said in the Eighties, and what was said in the Nineties and right now. *Things HAVE changed, even some of what Lucas has said. *Just keep in mind that Lucas has to spend a lot of time writing the prequel screenplays before they're filmed, which tells you that not all of what we're seeing existed before now.

[RollaFett]

Well put Pepper and Justin.

I haven't read the Annotated Screenplays in a few years, so I wouldn't be able to correct you on anything, Pepper. style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wink.gif But that does sound familar. I alwys liked the idea of Mace Windy being 'reintroduced', if you will, as Mace Windu. It's funny that even Sam Jackson knew of that. I remember reading a quote a few years ago in which he says something to the effect of, "It's so cool just being in a Star Wars movie, but to know that my character was actually the first character created all those years ago is really cool."