logo Sign In

Post #1270801

Author
DominicCobb
Parent topic
Proof of Lucas’ revisionism in Rinzler’s making-of book?
Link to post in topic
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/1270801/action/topic#1270801
Date created
22-Feb-2019, 7:49 PM

RogueLeader said:

I know Lucas’ own revisionism has been discussed ad nauseam here on this site, and it definitely deserves the debate because despite it feeling like most Star Wars fans know Lucas is a little guilty of this, I also believe that Lucas has sort of “won” in some regard to that. It’s hard to explain, but if you were to develop some kind of test that was able to determine how “aware” someone was of Lucas’ revisionism, I believe most fans would score lower than you might think.

And for me, I guess that leads to the question of how it affects the fanbase’s everyday perception of the franchise, overall? I don’t know if this exactly fits, but one think I have noticed is how on a lot of sites it feels like the discussion regarding the prequels has really changed in the past ten years. I am a Prequel kid myself, but I seem to recall a lot of talk about George ruining the franchise, but nowadays you often hear defenses of the Prequels as George’s “vision”, and how it was all planned out by him (fans nowadays seem to have an obsession with the idea “overarching” plans), but if you read The Secret History of Star Wars, it paints a very different picture. Usually George Lucas and his vision become weapons to use against the Sequel Trilogy.

Ironically the fact that Lucas was making it all up as he went along is actually something that comes across very clearly in Rinzler’s books (which do not feel scrubbed by Lucas at all, in fact I don’t remember any mention of midichlorians - something in a later edition?).

One thing that I think helped Lucas stoke confusion and make his revisionist claims so plausible is how frequently he would reuse old concepts of his that never made it through (i.e. the Ewoks battling stormtroopers is an evolution of an idea he had for the climax of his first Star Wars draft, which aids his claim that he wrote the whole OT in one go and then split it up into three parts). But these days, all the info is there for you to see where he’s lying and where he’s not. Rinzler has no qualms breaking down what was added when and in which draft.

Anyway your point about the fanbase’s misconceptions here are painfully spot on.

I think a major difference is obviously that now that Lucas is gone, you can really look back at his tenure in a historical sense, but the Sequel Trilogy development is still an ongoing thing. Eventually I hope that they will release a book that gives us more information about the making of process. Interestingly enough, J.W. Rinzler was still with Lucasfilm when the acquisition happened up until TFA was released, and was actually documenting it for another eventual book, but it seemed like Lucasfilm wasn’t ready for that, since they halted the development. Rinzler was even going to start a blog on his own called “The Rise and Fall of Star Wars”, but it appeared he may have been asked to not continue that.

On one hand, I sorted of don’t blame Lucasfilm for not wanting to reveal too much of the behind the scenes information before the Sequel Trilogy is complete, to avoid spoiling anything for subsequent films. On the other hand, I will be a little disappointed if we never get anything like that. And even if we did, it kind of makes you wonder how much will be “redacted”, per se. While Rinzler himself seems a little salty about the changing of the guard, we also know we was himself responsible for helping George’s revisionism. Eventually, I would like to see a spiritual sequel to The Secret History of Star Wars that covers the development of the Sequel Trilogy following the Disney acquisition, written by a third party, such as unaffiliated fans.

As disappointed as I am that we haven’t gotten “Making of” books for each Disney film, I realize that even if we did, they wouldn’t be anything like the ones we have for the OT. Even putting aside all the things they wouldn’t want to talk about for fear of spoiling, and also putting aside some things like discussing Harrison’s injury which could potentially run up against the legal department, there is a level of frankness to Rinzler’s OT books that you simply would never get from a book discussing a recent production - not from LFL, not from Disney, not from literally anyone. It’s only when you have decades in between that you can be privileged to hear official accounts of such things with that level of honesty. So it’s a give and take. I’d prefer something rather than nothing, but ultimately I do understand that even if we got something it wouldn’t be everything we’d want.