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George Lucas's Sequel Trilogy — Page 5

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My thoughts exactly. It’s not Filoni regarding it as fanfiction, it’s Lucas.

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Anyone else remember when Labyrinth of Evil came out right before the final episodes of the Tartakovsky clone wars and we basically got to see the EU contradict itself in real time?

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Fang Zei said:

Anyone else remember when Labyrinth of Evil came out right before the final episodes of the Tartakovsky clone wars and we basically got to see the EU contradict itself in real time?

I don’t see the problem.

But we can’t turn back. Fear is their greatest defense. I doubt if the actual security there is any greater than it was on Aquilae or Sullust. And what there is is most likely directed towards a large-scale assault.

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Fang Zei said:

Anyone else remember when Labyrinth of Evil came out right before the final episodes of the Tartakovsky clone wars and we basically got to see the EU contradict itself in real time?

How so? I never read Labyrinth of Evil.

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I read this article a while ago. It has information that is already brought in this thread, but complement it a bit more:

George Lucas’ Episode VII

Everything we know about George’s vision for the seventh Star Wars movie.

by Andrew G.
Jan 1, 2018 · 15 min read

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Death Star Underwater Trench concept art by Doug Chiang and Ian McCaig. From February 2013.

In late August 2012 Star Wars fans from all around the world gathered in Orlando, Florida for the sixth official Star Wars convention, Celebration VI. The lineup was strong despite the live action movies, always the brightest and biggest stars in the franchise’s galaxy, coming to na end seven years earlier. Though he was not scheduled to attend, series creator George Lucas was there. Publicly, he was just there to make a surprise appearance during the panel for the animated The Clone Wars TV show. But privately he was there to talk to original trilogy stars Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher. They were brought to a conference room away from the convention floor where George broke the news: he was working a new Star Wars trilogy and wanted them to reprise their iconic roles.

My wife casually said, “What if he wants to do a new Star Wars movie?” and I just laughed at her. — Mark Hamill

George’s motivations were not purely creative. He’d decided to sell his prized company Lucasfilm and wanted a sweetener to entice prospective buyers. And there was nothing in the industry more desirable than a new live-action Star Wars movie. After coming up with some ideas for this new sequel trilogy, Lucas tapped Oscar-winning screenwriter Michael Arndt to begin working on a script for Episode VII, brought on Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi writer Lawrence Kasdan and producer/writer Simon Kinberg as consultants, and contacted Hamill, Fisher, and Harrison Ford to gauge their interest. Even Ford, long known to have na uneasy relationship with the role of Han Solo, agreed to return.

As the summer of 2012 began to turn to fall, the Disney/Lucasfilm buyout negotiations entered their final stretches. Once the broad outlines of a deal were agreed upon, Lucas relented to letting a few Disney executives see the treatments for the new trilogy that he had been working on with Arndt with help from Kinberg, and Kasdan. Disney CEO Bob Iger, Walt Disney Studios Chairman Alan Horn, and Executive Vice President Alan Braverman were the selected few, with Lucas even having them sign NDAs to protect his story. “We thought from a storytelling perspective they had a lot of potential,” said Iger. On September 6th, 2012, new Lucasfilm co-chairperson Kathleen Kennedy addressed the assembled divisions of the company to announce her intention to produce more Star Wars films. On October 30th, the sale of Lucasfilm was announced to the public, along with the news of a new Star Wars trilogy.

On December 18th, 2015 Star Wars Episode VII — The Force Awakens opened to glowing reviews and massive box office returns. After the initial high wore off, people began wondering what George’s plan for the movie had been, since both he and director J.J. Abrams had sad his outlines were abandoned. Through various interviews and the Art of books, details have slipped out. The following is everything currently known about George Lucas’ plan for Star Wars Episode VII, circa 2012.

“We’re making seven, eight, and nine.”

When George decided to make a new trilogy, he moved quickly. He reached out to old friend and all-star film producer Kathleen Kennedy sometime in the first half of 2012, hoping to bring her on as co-chair of Lucasfilm. The two then approached screenwriter Michael Arndt about writing the entire trilogy around May. After working on The Hunger Games, he wanted to avoid big Hollywood blockbusters for a while but the allure of a young woman becoming a Jedi was enough to get him to sign on. When Kennedy was officially announced on June 1st, many saw it as a signal that the company was getting back into the movie-making business. But the cinematic Star Wars universe was thought dead, so most speculation was about Indiana Jones 5. Later that same month, members of Lucasfilm’s story team learned the news. Lawrence Kasdan and Simon Kinberg were brought on as consultants by October. Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher were told at Celebration VI in August, and Harrison Ford was likely called and informed at roughly the same time. Lucasfilm as a whole was then made aware in September. Sometime around the finalizing of the sale Michael Arndt turned in a 40 to 50-page treatment. Vulture said it was a treatment of Episode VII while Deadline claimed it was of the entire trilogy. In a conference call on the day of the sale announcement, Disney CEO Bob Iger referenced a “pretty extensive and detailed treatment for what would be the next three movies, the trilogy.” Then the sale to Disney happened in October and the world was told. And things really got going.

In December of 2012, production designers Doug Chiang and Rick Carter and ILM Creative Director David Nakabayashi met to pick artists for the “dream team” for Episode VII. The day after the meeting, Rick Carter met with George Lucas at Skywalker Ranch. The design team had its first meeting on January 9th, 2013. In attendance were writer Michael Arndt and director J.J. Abrams, though the latter would not be officially announced as attached to the project until the 25th and due to post-production on Star Trek Into Darkness would only attend weekly teleconferences with the team until May when he joined full time. The design team, or “Visualists” as Rick Carter would call them, would meet with George Lucas on January 16th at Skywalker Ranch, where he would be shown art of Luke Skywalker, the Jedi Temple he had exiled himself to, and the training of Kira. This appears to be his last involvement with the film.

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Kira Training by Karl Lindberg. From January 2013.

Early outlines for the movie centered around the characters Sam and Kira. Arndt described them, respectively, as “pure charisma” and a “loner, hothead, gear-headed, badass.” [1] While it’s been widely reported that Lucasfilm told Vanity Fair the leads of George’s outline were “teenagers,” George himself implied they were in their 20s, which fits the early concept art better. He also said the story was about the grandchildren of Anakin Skywalker.

The original saga was about the father, the children, and the grandchildren. I mean, that’s not a secret, anyway, it’s even in the novels and everything. And then the children were in their 20s and everything and so it wasn’t [The] Phantom Menace again. — George Lucas

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Kira and Sam from January 2013. By Ian McCaig, Doug Chiang, Karl Lindberg, and Erik Tiemens
That’s the only released concept art of Sam from early 2013. Kira would morph fairly seamlessly into Rey while Sam would go through numerous changes before settling into Finn.

From the very beginning we sort of settled on very quickly that we wanted the girl, Rey, to be a scavenger. We always wanted her to be the ultimate outsider and the ultimate disenfranchised person, because that person has the longest journey… And then we were struggling to figure out who the male lead was going to be. I remember we talked about pirates and merchant marines and all this stuff. — Michael Arndt

According to original screenwriter Michael Arndt, his first attempts, even when he was still working with George, ran into a Luke Skywalker shaped stumbling block:

Early on I tried to write versions of the story where [Rey] is at home, her home is destroyed, and then she goes on the road and meets Luke. And then she goes and kicks the bad guy’s ass. It just never worked and I struggled with this. This was back in 2012. It just felt like every time Luke came in and entered the movie, he just took it over. Suddenly you didn’t care about your main character anymore because, ‘Oh f–k, Luke Skywalker’s here. I want to see what he’s going to do.

Some of the very first concept art done for the movie was that of a remote Jedi Temple where Luke Skywalker was hiding out. George approved at least one such piece:

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Concept art of a Jedi temple by James Clyne that was given a “Fabulouso!” stamp by George Lucas.

We now know of at least one other concept piece that George approved, this painting of Luke by Christian Alzmann:

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Concept painting of Luke Skywalker by Christian Alzmann from January 2013.

From Alzmann’s Instagram post of the image:
My first image I made for Star Wars: The Force Awakens. This was January of 2013. Luke was being described as a Col. Kurtz type hiding from the world in a cave. I couldn’t believe I was getting to make this image and I got a George “Fabulouso” on it to boot.

Phil Szostak, author of The Art of The Force Awakens and The Art of The Last Jedi, revealed that the Luke Skywalker seen in The Last Jedi had his genesis in ideas from late 2012.

So, the late-2012 idea of a Luke Skywalker haunted by the betrayal of one of his students, in self-imposed exile & spiritually in “a dark place”, not only precedes Rian Johnson’s involvement in Star Wars but J.J. Abrams’, as well.

Again it’s mentioned that Marlon Brando as Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now was na inspiration for this take on the character. Doug Chiang created a concept piece of Luke’s X-Wing submerged in the waters of the planet he was exiled on in February 2013.

Another late 2012/early 2013 idea appears to be Mono Lake in California as inspiration for the planet that would become Jakku. The planet being strewn with junk comes from Michael Arndt at the very first meeting of the design team on January 9th, so it may have originated from the Lucas/Arndt days.

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Junk Castle Landscape concept art from February 2013 (left) by Erik Tiemens. Photograph of Mono Lake in California (right).

While not much about Han Solo or Leia Organa’s roles in George and Michael’s treatment is known, there are several pieces of concept art from early 2013 of the Millennium Falcon on or above the planet of Felucia, which was briefly glimpsed during the Order 66 Jedi purge montage in Star Wars Episode III — Revenge of the Sith. During an art review meeting in February 2013 glimpsed in the official behind the scenes documentary included with the home release, an entire art board can be seen devoted to the planet. Text in The Art of The Last Jedi implies that Han would have shown up later in The Force Awakens than he does now. Additionally, Harrison Ford told GQ that as he remembers it, his first call with George Lucas about Episode VII included the detail that Han would die.

Ford’s least expected late-career reprise was his return to the world of Star Wars. “I was surprised,” he concedes. The first call came from George Lucas. “It was proposed that I might make another appearance as Han Solo. And I think it was mentioned, even in the first call, that he would not survive. That’s something I’d been arguing for for some period of time” — Ford had unsuccessfully lobbied for Solo to die in Return of the Jedi in 1983 — “so I said okay.”

In a Q&A with Entertainment Weekly writer Anthony Breznican done shortly after the release of The Force Awakens, original writer Michael Arndt implied that his early ideas had Han surviving Episode VII:

I had thought that the Han story and the Leia story was just about them coming back together. At the end of the movie they would have reconciled and they would have gotten over their differences and you’d be like “okay, well, bad stuff has happened but at least they’re back together again.”

A character similar to Darth Talon, a red-skinned Twi’lek from the Star Wars Legacy comic series known for seducing one of Luke Skywalker’s descendants to the dark side, makes a curious amount of appearances in early concept art. Interestingly enough, George Lucas was known to be fond of the design, asking game development studio Red Fly to include her in their Darth Maul game just before the time he likely started thinking about a sequel trilogy.

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Concept art of the Darth Talon like character by Ian McCaig from January 2013.

The art above is accompanied by the caption “The tattoos are a lot simpler. They follow a rhythm and they flow. And that’s the evil thing puppeteering her from behind.” The character also seems to appear in a series of storyboards titled Seduction from February 2013, the earliest known storyboards from the movie.

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“Seduction” storyboards by Ian McCaig from February 2013.
She also pops up on the very edge of a piece just titled “Bar” by Christian Alzmann from the same month.

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“Bar” concept art from February 2013 by Christian Alzmann. Note the red-skinned Twi’lek on the far left.

Originally, R2-D2 and C-3PO showed up together, but Lawrence Kasdan told Michael Arndt to split them up.

Around the release of Empire Strikes Back, George mentioned that the sequel trilogy would be “much more ethereal.” In the companion book to the AMC TV series James Cameron’s Story of Science Fiction, there’s a conversation between Cameron and Lucas where the latter reveals that the Whills would have had a role in his sequel trilogy.
[The next three Star Wars films] were going to get into a microbiotic world. But there’s this world of creatures that operate differently than we do. I call them the Whills. And the Whills are the ones who actually control the universe. They feed off the Force.
Back in the day, I used to say ultimately what this means is we’re just cars, vehicles, for the Whills to travel around in…. We’re vessels for them. And the conduit is the midi-chlorians. The midi-chlorians are the ones that communicate with the Whills. The Whills, in a general sense, they are the Force.
All the way back to — with the Jedi and the Force and everything — the whole concept of how things happen was laid out completely from [the beginning] to the end. But I never got to finish. I never got to tell people about it.

If I’d held onto the company I could have done it, and then it would have been done. Of course, a lot of the fans would have hated it, just like they did Phantom Menace and everything, but at least the whole story from beginning to end would be told.
While mentions of the Whills first came up all the way back during the early drafts of the very first movie, some of which were said to come from the “Journal of the Whills,” who or what they are has never really been defined in any canon media.

According to Mark Hamill, George’s overall plan for the sequel trilogy had Luke training his sister Leia in Episode IX before dying at the end of the film, though it’s unclear if Mark was referring to Lucas’ plans at the time of the sale to Disney or if this was from the numerous ideas he’d shared with the actor in the 80s.

Na interview with J.J Abrams from Entertainment Weekly published shortly after the release of The Force Awakens mentioned some previous ideas for the movie:
Some of the early MacGuffins of the movie — the thing that drives a movie’s plot — were a search for Darth Vader’s remains, or a quest to the underwater wreckage of the second Death Star to recover a key piece of history about sacred Jedi sites in the galaxy.

That mention of na underwater Death Star, in particular, is interesting, as Doug Chiang created a painting (at the very top of this article) showing just that in February 2013, shortly after George left the project. The caption for that piece:
So when the adventure’s over, Kira finds a hidden map inside the Emperor’s tower of the second Death Star. And the map tells you where the Jedi are and where Luke is hiding — Ian McCaig.

Two more Death Star concept pieces were created in April. Ryan Church made one called Underwater Emperor Room.

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Underwater Emperor Room by Ryan Church. From April 2013.
The caption for this piece:
Rick (Carter, Co-Production Designer) said ‘What if the Emperor’s chamber has crash-landed after the second Death Star explosion?’ That doesn’t make any sense, but that’s when Rick knows he has something. He’ll say, ‘Exactly!’

And Doug Chiang drew one called Falcon Underwater:

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Falcon Underwater by Doug Chiang. From April 2013.

And the caption for this piece:
Part of the journey of the story is that they take the Falcon, go underwater, and find the Emperor’s tower [laughs]. The Falcon is watertight because it’s airtight, so it can go underwater, right?
After those two pieces were done in April, The Art of The Last Jedi described the story thusly in May, with quotes from Doug Chiang:
“After Return of the Jedi, when the Empire fell, Luke went through a period of turmoil. He decides to reform the Jedi, Luke being the last. So he creates his own Jedi academy and recruits people.” One of Luke’s pupils was the character then known as the “Jedi Killer.” “Ultimately, he turns against Luke. There’s a big fight, and the Jedi Killer is wounded and cast aside. There’s this big through-line of the Jedi Killer wanting revenge on Luke. And that’s partly why he takes on this persona of Darth Vader: to haunt Luke.”
Some of this appears to have survived into the final film, as the map R2-D2 has in the movie that helps lead to the first Jedi Temple came from when he was hooked into the first Death Star in A New Hope.
Interestingly, the first teaser trailer for Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker ends on the remains of one of the Death Stars sitting in a body of water. So it appears this idea has finally found its way to the screen. Right after that shot, the voice of Emperor Palpatine can be heard cackling. This wouldn’t be noteworthy here, except Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy told MTV News that some of the ideas they are using now were around since the development of The Force Awakens.

That goes back to when we were talking about The Force Awakens and, you know, just the whole blueprint of where we’ve ended up now has kind of been in the works since then. — Kathleen Kennedy
She doesn’t say when, exactly, during the development of Episode VII it came up, but her mention of “the whole blueprint of where we’ve ended up now” sounds kind of like it could go back to the George Lucas days. He did turn over outlines for VII, VIII, and IX.
In na interview with Den of Geek about his role in Knightfall, the History Channel’s fictional series about the Knights Templar, Mark Hamill seems to say that he was told his role in the sequel trilogy would be bigger than what it has been.

That’s what I was hoping when I came back: no cameos and a run-of-the-trilogy contract. Did I get any of those things? Because as far as I’m concerned, the end of VII is really the beginning of VIII. I got one movie! They totally hornswoggled (tricked) me.
In 2016, the novel Star Wars: Bloodline was released. It focused on Princess Leia as a Senator six years before the events of The Force Awakens. In it, the Republic Senate is split between the Populists and Centrists. Leia is a Populist and forms a friendship with a Centrist, Ransolm Casterfo. Casterfo gets manipulated into revealing Leia’s true parentage. Around the release of the book, Pablo Hidalgo revealed that Casterfo was “ a character that existed, in various forms, in the earliest versions of the TFA story.”

Updates
(1/3/2018)
Just days after posting this, Lucasfilm Story Group member Pablo Hidalgo tweeted out some information about the early versions of Episode VII (Skyler is another name for the Sam/Finn character).

Skyler and Kira (and Kira wasn’t the first proposed name either; she had at least two others) became, after a fashion, Finn and Rey. The Jedi Killer morphed from Talon corrupting the son to becoming the son. Uber became Snoke. The starting point shifted. Yadda yada yada.

The son falling to the dark side was always in the mix. The movies just ended up having it already an established fact. Skyler was the son in some versions. And as for how all that was gonna go down, that ain’t my story to tell. And in 2016, he confirmed that Thea (Kira/Rey), Skyler, Darth Talon, and the planet of Felucia were in George’s plans.

https://medium.com/@Oozer3993/george-lucas-episode-vii-c272563cc3ba

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Fascinating. Pretty much what my understanding has been.

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Fang Zei said:

Anyone else remember when Labyrinth of Evil came out right before the final episodes of the Tartakovsky clone wars and we basically got to see the EU contradict itself in real time?

See this is why Doctor Who doesn’t do canon.

Do you guys think Lucas had any intention of ever making a Sequel trilogy between 1983 and 2010?

It seems to me like it was something he abandoned with RotJ and only started exploring the concept in the lead-up to the buyout thinking if they were gonna do it anyway might as well do it right. I mean, this article makes it clear he hired someone else to write, something he never did on the Prequels (besides a bit of help from Jonathan Hale on AotC, which I somehow doubt helped much). Also worth noting that his Sequels seamlessly evolved into the ones we got through a standard pre-production process.

So yeah, in summary, I don’t think there ever really was a “George Lucas Sequel Trilogy” so much as there was George Lucas as a creative consultant during the pre-production for TFA.

That article’s great, btw. Very comprehensive.

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Anakin Starkiller said:

Fang Zei said:

Anyone else remember when Labyrinth of Evil came out right before the final episodes of the Tartakovsky clone wars and we basically got to see the EU contradict itself in real time?

See this is why Doctor Who doesn’t do canon.

Do you guys think Lucas had any intention of ever making a Sequel trilogy between 1983 and 2010?

It seems to me like it was something he abandoned with RotJ and only started exploring the concept in the lead-up to the buyout thinking if they were gonna do it anyway might as well do it right. I mean, this article makes it clear he hired someone else to write, something he never did on the Prequels (besides a bit of help from Jonathan Hale on AotC, which I somehow doubt helped much). Also worth noting that his Sequels seamlessly evolved into the ones we got through a standard pre-production process.

So yeah, in summary, I don’t think there ever really was a “George Lucas Sequel Trilogy” so much as there was George Lucas as a creative consultant during the pre-production for TFA.

That article’s great, btw. Very comprehensive.

I think Lucas was thinking of the Sequel Trilogy between 1983 and 1999. Sometime between 1999 and 2005 he shelved it and only brought it out again about the time he started thinking of selling Lucasfilm. and while I do like the story setup he had in mind, his idea of Whills and Midichlorians was pretty dumb. That isn’t what Star Wars is about. It is about the people. The Force works better as a mystery. Though I do like his explanation as a quasi-science idea behind it, he created a modern sci-fi myth and you don’t explain too much in a myth.

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Idk, to me the Whills and Midichlorians feel like they’re deepening the mystery more than answering it, if that makes sense. It feels like diving headfirst into the Star Wars Silmarillion. I like deeplore like that. And we have no idea in what manner it would’ve been integrated. I highly doubt the entire trilogy would’ve been Finn, Rey, and Luke Osmosis Jonesing through Poe’s body as Luke plays Miss Frizzle and explains what a midichlorian is. They would’ve come up once or twice but there’d still be the shooty shooty bang bang as the main attraction.

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If George wrote his own Silmarillion he would probably have Tatooine be the first world that was created by Space God.

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Nah. Star Wars doesn’t have the same Christian undertones as LotR. The Force is modelled more off Eastern traditions.

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George Lucas: When writing the movies, I tried to make sure that aliens and droids got killed, but not people.

Paul Duncan: A lot of stormtroopers died.

George Lucas: That’s right, but you didn’t know they were people. We did kill three humans and that was unfortunate. I was always bothered by it.

Paul Duncan: When was that?

George Lucas: On the Death Star, when Han and Luke go into the prison with Chewie to rescue Leia, they shoot three Imperial guys. The guards drew their guns and fired first, but it’s still a shame.

Paul Duncan: Really?

George Lucas: Yeah, we very consciously didn’t kill very many humans in those movies.

Sorry for going a little off topic, but George Lucas’ quotes in the OP reek of him spouting revisionist rubbish yet again! Unless there is yet another Special Edition coming out sometime soon where no humans die in the Original Trilogy?
 

George Lucas: “We did kill three humans and that was unfortunate. I was always bothered by it.”

So it was four human Imperials that were killed on-screen in Detention Block AA-23!:

 

Not forgetting:

 
There are probably more on-screen human fatalities in the Battle Of Yavin, these are just gifs I quickly found.
There are also probably more ‘people’ dying on-screen just in 1977’s Star Wars too, let alone Empire and Jedi.

George Lucas: Yeah, we very consciously didn’t kill very many humans in those movies.

Sure George. Sure.

I love George for creating all this, but how can we believe the things he says given his long history of being loose with facts and the truth, and also making many false claims and retcons.
If he published or released every note, written down idea, scrawls or scripts for the Sequels over the decades, even when he was claiming “there is no VI, VIII & IX. There never has been.”, would anyone believe them without fact-checking or cross-referencing beforehand? Not many would, I think.

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Johann-500 said:

George Lucas: When writing the movies, I tried to make sure that aliens and droids got killed, but not people.

Paul Duncan: A lot of stormtroopers died.

George Lucas: That’s right, but you didn’t know they were people. We did kill three humans and that was unfortunate. I was always bothered by it.

Paul Duncan: When was that?

George Lucas: On the Death Star, when Han and Luke go into the prison with Chewie to rescue Leia, they shoot three Imperial guys. The guards drew their guns and fired first, but it’s still a shame.

Paul Duncan: Really?

George Lucas: Yeah, we very consciously didn’t kill very many humans in those movies.

Sorry for going a little off topic, but George Lucas’ quotes in the OP reek of him spouting revisionist rubbish yet again! Unless there is yet another Special Edition coming out sometime soon where no humans die in the Original Trilogy?
 

George Lucas: “We did kill three humans and that was unfortunate. I was always bothered by it.”

So it was four human Imperials that were killed on-screen in Detention Block AA-23!:

 

Not forgetting:

 
There are probably more on-screen human fatalities in the Battle Of Yavin, these are just gifs I quickly found.
There are also probably more ‘people’ dying on-screen just in 1977’s Star Wars too, let alone Empire and Jedi.

George Lucas: Yeah, we very consciously didn’t kill very many humans in those movies.

Sure George. Sure.

I love George for creating all this, but how can we believe the things he says given his long history of being loose with facts and the truth, and also making many false claims and retcons.
If he published or released every note, written down idea, scrawls or scripts for the Sequels over the decades, even when he was claiming “there is no VI, VIII & IX. There never has been.”, would anyone believe them without fact-checking or cross-referencing beforehand? Not many would, I think.

He meant human heroes killing many human villains. They very purposely didn’t do it much after A New Hope. It became mainly faceless and non human characters in the later films.

Anakin Starkiller said:

Nah. Star Wars doesn’t have the same Christian undertones as LotR. The Force is modelled more off Eastern traditions.

There’s a lot and more of a Western tradition than you’d think.

The Mortis Gods = Holy Trinity.
Anakin’s Birth = Virgin Mary.
Anakin and Padme Sharing Fruit = Adam and Eve.
Anakin and Luke = Sins and Temptations of the Father and Son.

Etc. Etc.

“Heroes come in all sizes, and you don’t have to be a giant hero. You can be a very small hero. It’s just as important to understand that accepting self-responsibility for the things you do, having good manners, caring about other people - these are heroic acts. Everybody has the choice of being a hero or not being a hero every day of their lives.” - George Lucas

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Strongly disagree.

The Mortis Gods have very different relationships to one another than the Christian Trinity. The only commonality is that there are three of them.

Virgin births are common in religion/mythology and by no means exclusive to the Virgin Mary.

I don’t think to explain why Padme’s CGI pair isn’t symbolic.

Temptation to commit evil is not a purely Christian idea. It’s too basic. It crops up everywhere.

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Anakin Starkiller said:

Virgin births are common in religion/mythology and by no means exclusive to the Virgin Mary.

You can’t deny the obvious Christian symbolism of the savior being born of a virgin birth.

Reading R + L ≠ J theories

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Stardust1138 said:

He meant human heroes killing many human villains. They very purposely didn’t do it much after A New Hope. It became mainly faceless and non human characters in the later films.

No, he didn’t. As I quoted George again in my post:

George Lucas: Yeah, we very consciously didn’t kill very many humans in those movies.

The facts in the “movies” (plural) themselves prove they also did do this after Star Wars (1977).

George forgets the title of his films are “Star Wars”, and also the more bloodshed content in them.
He wants to play down some of the violence in them as he aged, had a family, and maybe wants to leave a moral legacy behind.
Looking for justifications for his retcons and false claims is not new to him.

I will not derail your thread further as this is about the many differing and changing incarnations of his Sequel Trilogy, including the times George said they did not exist and never existed, other than his previous vague claims and ideas.

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Johann-500 said:

Stardust1138 said:

He meant human heroes killing many human villains. They very purposely didn’t do it much after A New Hope. It became mainly faceless and non human characters in the later films.

No, he didn’t. As I quoted George again in my post:

George Lucas: Yeah, we very consciously didn’t kill very many humans in those movies.

The facts in the “movies” (plural) themselves prove they also did do this after Star Wars (1977).

George forgets the title of his films are “Star Wars”, and also the more bloodshed content in them.
He wants to play down some of the violence in them as he aged, had a family, and maybe wants to leave a moral legacy behind.
Looking for justifications for his retcons and false claims is not new to him.

I will not derail your thread further as this is about the many differing and changing incarnations of his Sequel Trilogy, including the times George said they did not exist and never existed, other than his previous vague claims and ideas.

“When writing the movies, I tried to make sure that aliens and droids got killed, but not people.”

I think he implied as much. The only human hero to human villain killing after A New Hope were Anakin/Darth Vader and Luke versus Palpatine where Palpatine dies, Mace Windu versus Jango Fett where Jango dies, Anakin and Obi-Wan versus Count Dooku where Dooku dies, and with villain killing - Mace Windu versus Palpatine where Mace dies.

The violence in his films was always done consciously and its purpose within the narrative always came first. It was never done in a way where violence took precedence in a senseless way of being violent for the sake of it. That’s what he’s trying to say I think. He thought very much of the psychological effects his films would have on children especially. He very purposely held back on letting things stray too far into senseless.

Anyways, you’re right. No need to stop the thread from continuing as George’s Sequel Trilogy.

I’m very curious as to how Darth Maul would be portrayed as the “Godfather of Crime”. It sounds like such an interesting hook with the fall of the Hutts and Empire. It only makes sense that someone would try exploiting it to gain control over the Republic which is still very much rebuilding. I’m curious how he’d go about trying to exploit it and everything. We know bits and pieces but not enough to know anything definitive.

What does everyone have in mind for what this would look like?

“Heroes come in all sizes, and you don’t have to be a giant hero. You can be a very small hero. It’s just as important to understand that accepting self-responsibility for the things you do, having good manners, caring about other people - these are heroic acts. Everybody has the choice of being a hero or not being a hero every day of their lives.” - George Lucas

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Stardust1138 said:

Johann-500 said:

Stardust1138 said:

He meant human heroes killing many human villains. They very purposely didn’t do it much after A New Hope. It became mainly faceless and non human characters in the later films.

No, he didn’t. As I quoted George again in my post:

George Lucas: Yeah, we very consciously didn’t kill very many humans in those movies.

The facts in the “movies” (plural) themselves prove they also did do this after Star Wars (1977).

George forgets the title of his films are “Star Wars”, and also the more bloodshed content in them.
He wants to play down some of the violence in them as he aged, had a family, and maybe wants to leave a moral legacy behind.
Looking for justifications for his retcons and false claims is not new to him.

I will not derail your thread further as this is about the many differing and changing incarnations of his Sequel Trilogy, including the times George said they did not exist and never existed, other than his previous vague claims and ideas.

“When writing the movies, I tried to make sure that aliens and droids got killed, but not people.”

I think he implied as much. The only human hero to human villain killing after A New Hope were Anakin/Darth Vader and Luke versus Palpatine where Palpatine dies, Mace Windu versus Jango Fett where Jango dies, Anakin and Obi-Wan versus Count Dooku where Dooku dies, and with villain killing - Mace Windu versus Palpatine where Mace dies.

No, George didn’t imply that at all. He clearly states:-

George Lucas: Yeah, we very consciously didn’t kill very many humans in those movies.

The way George says it in the at interview is that it is okay to kill aliens or clones, as they are not people. Which is not great either.

Edit: I see NeverarGreat already talked about it earlier in the thread:-

NeverarGreat said:

This is so strange to me. Are aliens and clones not people to George? Besides, what about everyone Luke blew up with the Death Star? I guess as long as we don’t see their faces, their death doesn’t count. And what about the good dozen Rebels gunned down by Stormtroopers in the first scene, or Captain Antilles who had his neck crushed, or crispy Owen and Beru…

Like, I don’t want to say this flippantly, but this seems like an artist in willful denial of the content of his art.

I agree. To the point of it being sad when George continually attempts to do this type of thing.

Johann is correct - if George released everything he has put down on paper about the Sequels since the 1970s it would need to be fact checked or cross referenced to be believed (and also checked for retcons as well).

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When it comes to the heroes killing people, I think George is correct. It comes down to the 6 humans killed on the Death Star. 2 in the command center and 4 in the detention center. Other than that it was all stormtroopers. Now, the bad guys killed a lot of people, but they are bad guys. I think what he meant was the good guys shouldn’t kill people. But when you think about it, all those stormtroopers were people. And the people in the ships and the people in the Death Star… but they are faceless. And they were all working to kill more faceless good guys. Basically the Empire made the first move by destroying Alderaan and the billions of people there, so even after all those Star Destroyers and two Death Stars, the Empire has still killed billions more than the good guys did.

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Stardust1138 said:

I’m very curious as to how Darth Maul would be portrayed as the “Godfather of Crime”. It sounds like such an interesting hook with the fall of the Hutts and Empire. It only makes sense that someone would try exploiting it to gain control over the Republic which is still very much rebuilding. I’m curious how he’d go about trying to exploit it and everything. We know bits and pieces but not enough to know anything definitive.

What does everyone have in mind for what this would look like?

Boba Fett being a crimelord makes more sense now, lol. The story that at one time, at the filming of Empire, Fett was planned to be the main bad guy for Return Of The Jedi seems cool. With the Emperor planned to be featured in the Sequel Trilogy.

https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Return-Of-The-Jedi-a-general-Random-Thoughts-thread/id/72854/page/11#1462034

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It was never done in a way where violence took precedence in a senseless way of being violent for the sake of it.

Actually, Ponda Baba’s bloody arm was added solely so the film would have a higher age rating of PG instead of G. Of course nowadays even PG is hardly ever used. Like why is TFA PG-13?

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Anakin Starkiller said:

It was never done in a way where violence took precedence in a senseless way of being violent for the sake of it.

Actually, Ponda Baba’s bloody arm was added solely so the film would have a higher age rating of PG instead of G. Of course nowadays even PG is hardly ever used. Like why is TFA PG-13?

I was talking about post A New Hope when he became further aware of the impact the stories would have on children. It was actually Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru’s corpses that pushed the rating from G to PG.

It’s hard and not hard to say why The Force Awakens was rated PG-13 but part of me does wonder if it’s due to the backlash the Prequels got for their childlike tone at times. People would assume more with a PG-13 rating that things would be back to the more gritty tone of the first film, and it does have its share of moments in a way like Chewie’s bowcaster and Finn touching his dead friend when the blood shows on said friend’s helmet. It’s also in a lot of ways just as much social and cultural attitudes change. Take how Temple of Doom brought about PG-13 to begin with.

Riquendes said:

I’m very curious as to how Darth Maul would be portrayed as the “Godfather of Crime”. It sounds like such an interesting hook with the fall of the Hutts and Empire. It only makes sense that someone would try exploiting it to gain control over the Republic which is still very much rebuilding. I’m curious how he’d go about trying to exploit it and everything. We know bits and pieces but not enough to know anything definitive.

What does everyone have in mind for what this would look like?

Boba Fett being a crimelord makes more sense now, lol. The story that at one time, at the filming of Empire, Fett was planned to be the main bad guy for Return Of The Jedi seems cool. With the Emperor planned to be featured in the Sequel Trilogy.

https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Return-Of-The-Jedi-a-general-Random-Thoughts-thread/id/72854/page/11#1462034

lol, touchė. That’s very interesting. It seems like George evolved and developed the story further but with Darth Maul instead of using Boba Fett. He flipped things around a bit. It’s fun discovering things that were early concepts that got used later in different ways. Like the Lurmen were developed for Revenge of the Sith but instead were in The Clone Wars or the countless amount of designs in Rebels inspired by Ralph McQuarrie. Stories grow and evolve as they change.

“Heroes come in all sizes, and you don’t have to be a giant hero. You can be a very small hero. It’s just as important to understand that accepting self-responsibility for the things you do, having good manners, caring about other people - these are heroic acts. Everybody has the choice of being a hero or not being a hero every day of their lives.” - George Lucas

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It’s hard and not hard to say why The Force Awakens was rated PG-13 but part of me does wonder if it’s due to the backlash the Prequels got for their childlike tone at times.

Strong disagree. Besides, 1/3 Prequels was PG-13 and it earned it. It’s painfully obvious to me the PG-13 rating for the Sequels is just the result in the standard creeping upwards. Nowadays everything’s PG-13. Look at any Marvel film (kid friendly stuff) and you’ll see they’re all PG-13.

Like the Lurmen were developed for Revenge of the Sith

I did not know that. How fascinating. That explains why they’re said to be native to Mygeeto. The concept art is a little more like just straight lemurs, though.

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Anakin Starkiller said:

Like why is TFA PG-13?

Don’t the standards for PG-13 now include any curse words? And TFA was the first of the films with actually low-level cursing.

After being beaten and battered by prequel hate, I promise not to be that to the next generation.

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TFA was the first of the films with actually low-level cursing.

I’ll see you in hell.