of_Kaiburr_and_Whills said:
Of course the movie certainly does leave the door open for sequels, which is clearly the intent given the 12-film saga idea and Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, but the original film itself does not necessitate a follow up.
What we’re all intuiting is that Star Wars is a tribute to sci-fi adventure serials (among other things), so even as a standalone movie it’s still trying to feel like it’s setting up the status quo for a series of episodic tales starring this ensemble of characters (that we will more than likely never see). The downfall of the Empire and Luke’s rise as a Jedi knight are inevitable, but it still implies that until then these folks are gonna go on a series of fabulous adventures. It’s built into the “happily ever after.”
It’s important to remember the first Star Wars was a postmodern film, the central gag being “we don’t make movies like this anymore, but LOL what if we did?!” All these somewhat dangly threads are all part of the joke. Darth Vader riding off in his TIE fighter is like Dr. Claw shaking his fist proclaiming “I’ll get you next time, Gadget! Next time!” We don’t actually need to see any more because we already have seen it pretty much: even if they continue from each other, we know they’re all going to follow this same formula just like the serials of old. (It’s actually quite a bit like how Spaceballs tells us about its non-existant sequel “Spaceballs II: The Search For More Money”).
It’s not until Empire that the series becomes earnest (that it fully reconstructs the space opera rather than simply celebrate it is Empire’s great triumph, though I’ll wager it’s exactly what Lucas doesn’t like about it going by his “they made it too good” remark).
Channel72 said:
The earliest known drafts of Star Wars, which are significantly different from the 1977 film, still follow the same basic story structure and end with all major plot threads resolved.
I’m sure you already know this, but I thought I’d just clarify a bit for posterity’s sake (like I did in the “Random Musings about the Empire Draft” thread), a couple drafts in Lucas took the story and “broke it in half” and the next few drafts were pretty obviously two-parters (I think it’s often assumed it eventually became thirds, hence the trilogy, but I’m not actually sure if that’s so during the scripting phase). Finally Lucas decided to “steal” the ending of the second part and used it for the first part (the battle with the Death Star), essentially reverting it to standalone status but leaving at least a whole extra movie’s worth of material floating out there.