Well, I’m perfectly aware that Star Wars has not always been Anakin’s Saga since '77, but I actively support the retcon, and I think that the Hexology, as a whole, can be described as Anakin’s Saga, even if Star Wars has not always been so from the beginning.
I mean no disrespect but it only become retconned to be Anakin’s Saga around '99, or maybe '05 when ROTS was released and this new Saga was completed.
I was only mentioning it as some fans online claim “it was always Anakin’s Saga” elsewhere online which is both annoying and untrue.
To be fair I think it could be said it goes back even further than that in a way. George told Jim Bloom of ILM during stages of post production of Empire, “The first trilogy is about the young Ben Kenobi and the early life of Luke’s father when Luke is a little boy.”.
Of course we never got to see Luke as a little boy but the story grew and evolved. However the key I think is that he said the first trilogy would focus on Anakin and Obi-Wan. This ended up being true. He talked about this in another quote that the Prequels were meant to give Anakin’s side of the story since the Original Trilogy is more relying information from a certain point of view of those that knew him. The Prequels in a general sense when he puts it that way contextualised and added new meaning to what certain things meant in the Original Trilogy. That was all intentional come time of the Prequels. They were meant to change our views on certain things. Marcia Lucas also said in Jonathan Rinzler’s book for Howard Kazanjian that George was really struggling with writing The Empire Strikes Back and once when Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck visited they joked about what if Darth Vader was Luke’s father. It isn’t out of the realm of possibility George was already thinking it either with some of the early concepts for A New Hope. However it is interesting to see how the story grew and evolved. I understand why some wouldn’t like the directions the story took but it took the natural progression I think George wanted it to for better or worse depending on who you ask. It is his story after all up until Disney came into the picture and decided to not use his Sequel Trilogy treatments. The context is different from retconing like the cat and mouse game played with Rey’s Parentage.
It’s also curious the original concept for A New Hope had a prophecy called the Son of Suns. So he was toying with idea of a prophecy in the early concepts too.
Well, I’m perfectly aware that Star Wars has not always been Anakin’s Saga since '77, but I actively support the retcon, and I think that the Hexology, as a whole, can be described as Anakin’s Saga, even if Star Wars has not always been so from the beginning. I think that Star Wars intended as “Anakin’s Saga” is perfect, and that no other changes should be made to the ultimate meaning of the Saga, as Disney tried to do. They tried to change the meaning of Star Wars from “Anakin’s Saga” to “The Skywalker Saga”, and that’s something I don’t approve.
George and those closest to him like Rick McCallum also called it the “Skywalker Saga” or at least the story of a family and I think personally the next natural step for the Sequels to explore is the realm beyond the material world as George intended. You see Anakin’s fall, redemption, and ultimately afterlife. It seems to me the story was always progressing towards eclipsing the entire universe in things George and Mark Hamill have both said. Yet it is also rooted in the idea of exploring all three phases of one’s life but also have the family angle at the same time. It’s still Anakin’s story as the “Ultimate Father” as George called him when discussing things with Bill Moyers but it is just as much about his family starting with the mother he left behind. The feminine is just as important to the story as the masculine. This comes full circle in his Sequels with a Mother and Daughter to contrast where the story began with a Mother and Son.