George has had many visions, re-wrote history, lied, deceived, attempted to change the audience’s memories of the films for his many changing visions in the case of the OT.
He had the chance to make his Sequel Trilogy for many years, and chose not to, until his latest vision for the ST came to him circa 2012, with Leia now retconned to be made the Chosen One, not Anakin. No wonder the company he sold Star Wars to passed on it.
I won’t get into the first bit as I don’t want to have another argument.
However with the second part I find context matters again. He started working on it in circa 2011 before Disney came into the picture. He always said before selling that the Sequels weren’t ever as fleshed out. It makes sense they’d need some work with what he already had originally. He had the same approach with the Prequels but more to work with when doing them as he had already developed it a great deal. There’s no retcon with Leia being made the “Chosen One”. He didn’t necessarily mean it literally per say but merely it seems to be an extension of the Mortis story arc in The Clone Wars series. He was merely recontextualising the story and adding new meanings to things we knew partial information to. A story grows and evolves. This is natural.
Greetings all! It’s been awhile. Further details of George’s Sequels leaked from the upcoming book “The Star Wars Archives: 1999-2005”.
Here George gives a greater context to the story of the trilogy he wanted to tell beyond what we’ve heard with regards to the Whills, Luke being in exile to find his spark again in Episode VII, and the son of Han and Leia falling to the Dark Side.
THE CHOSEN ONE
…
George Lucas: "Darth Maul trained a girl, Darth Talon, who was in the comic books as his apprentice. She was the new Darth Vader, and most of the action was with her. So these were the two main villains of the trilogy. Maul eventually becomes the godfather of crime in the universe because, as the Empire falls, he takes over.
The movies are about how Leia—I mean, who else is going to be the leader?—is trying to build the Republic. They still have the apparatus of the Republic but they have to get it under control from the gangsters. That was the main story.
It starts out a few years after Return of the Jedi and we establish pretty quickly that there’s this underworld, there are these offshoot stormtroopers who started their own planets, and that Luke is trying to restart the Jedi. He puts the word out, so out of 100,000 Jedi, maybe 50 or 100 are left. The Jedi have to grow again from scratch, so Luke has to find two- and three-year-olds, and train them. It’ll be 20 years before you have a new generation of Jedi.
By the end of the trilogy Luke would have rebuilt much of the Jedi, and we would have the renewal of the New Republic, with Leia, Senator Organa, becoming the Supreme Chancellor in charge of everything. So she ended up being the Chosen One."
Seem pretty literal, and from George’s own mouth.
I dont’t find it as literal as it may seem. I own the book the quote comes from. Different things mean different things just as it does within the book or a story. Context changes within different parts of the story being added to. Sometimes you have to dig deeper than only taking what is given to you at face value. The cake beneath the surface. He thought through his decisions and why he’d do them. He acted on intuition and knew what he felt was best for serving the stories he wanted to tell. He has a different approach to changing things than how fans take them to mean.
Again, the quotes above seems pretty literal, and are from George’s own mouth.
George is on record as retconning Leia to be the “Chosen One” in his 2012 ST treatments. That is just a simple fact.
I’ll take the facts at hand over someone’s highly personal interpretation of “context” on this.
If you want to believe otherwise that is up to you.
As someone on here once posted, and probably something to remember: “facts don’t cease to exist because they are ignored”.
Well said, Ken-Obi.
For the criticisms I have with Disney’s Star Wars, their movies have mostly looked great. Much better than the MCU films, which are somehow constantly drab despite the colourful things happening on screen.
They certainly are. Rogue One too, and apart from the brightness issues of Solo, it looked great as well.