Channel72 said:
fmalover said:
Channel72 said:
Gandalf the Cyan said:
I can give Lucas a bit of slack for the lucklusterness of the PT and ROTJ, since he was ultimately just trying to make pulpy Flash Gordon-esque adventures, not high-art movies. ANH and ESB, however, were so good that they’re generally considered to have entered into the realm of high art. He then fell into a trap where his subsequent films were expected to be masterpieces as well, and I agree that he could have definitely done better on them. But since he really knocked it out of the park on his first 2 SW films, fans’ expectations were higher than his.
I don’t think this opinion is too unpopular, especially around this forum. ESB especially came out amazingly good, but went over budget and probably gave Lucas ulcers from the stress. He probably never intended to make Star Wars that good - but it ended up being that good anyway due to “lightning in a bottle” factors like Kasdan’s script, Kershner’s direction, and the natural chemistry between Hamill, Fisher and Ford.
Why does everyone ignore the fact that TESB was co-written by Leigh Brackett? They always make it seem like Lawrence Kasdan was the sole screenwriter.
Well, I definitely don’t ignore that. In fact, I posted a whole thread about Brackett’s screenplay a while back. But the reality is that close to 0% of Brackett’s draft made it into the final shooting script, so her role is often glossed over for the sake of brevity when discussing the development process of ESB.
In fact, I wouldn’t even necessarily say Brackett “co-wrote” ESB. That implies a collaboration between Brackett and Kasdan. In reality, Brackett independently wrote a completely different take on ESB based on Lucas’ plot outline. Lucas then rewrote the script from scratch apparently. It’s hard to say how many ideas in Lucas’ rewrite originated with Brackett. At face value, the later Kasdan scripts (which were based on Lucas’ rewrite) appear to be completely independent from Brackett.
Personally, I believe that elements of Brackett’s draft influenced the way Kasdan/Lucas thought about the story as they developed it. But that’s just my own speculation. The broad story elements - the plot, the locations, even some specific things like Luke being attacked by a snow monster - originated from Lucas’ plot outline, not Brackett’s draft. So it’s tough to identify specific ideas in the final script that unambiguously originated with Brackett. But going by Kasdan’s fourth draft and the final shooting script, pretty much 0% of Brackett’s original writing or dialogue carried over into later iterations.
So Brackett was credited as a screenwriter as an acknoledgement of her involvement?