Well Lucas said for decades that Luke and Leia were always meant to be twins and Vader was always intended to be Luke Skywalker’s father. Is that lying or mythologizing, it’s hard to say. He might have said it so often and so many times since Return of the Jedi wrapped production that he actually believes it.
Its a big turn from not caring about Vader in the Splinter of the Mind’s Eye story conference, to after The Empire Strikes Back rejiggering the entire Saga to be about his downfall and redemption, instead of Star Wars from the Adventures of Luke Skywalker.
I do know Lucas originally thought of Leia ending up with Luke, Luke is more devoted to her he said in the making of Star Wars, and he also said let her run off with the Wookiee at one point. In the Splinter conference. Does that sound like he thought Leia was of cosmic importance or Anakin’s daughter. Or how about wanting to kill Vader off.
The idea that he had all 6 episodes planned out from one big script is laughable.
Even the prequels as we have them have many discontinuities and retcons form the original films. and plot holes. And are not at all the prequels he was going to make or envisioned in the 1980s.
Reading that he saw Yoda as spiritual guru and Yoga master does not scream Lucas wanted a cartoon Yoda jumping around with a lightsaber. I do accept the view now Of his being ashamed of having been in and leading the Clone Wars. And why he thinks wars not make one great. Its the only way I can forgive those awful scenes in the prequels, if I make up a headcanon. Like I like the idea of Palpatine using a lightsaber as mockery of the Jedi religion and their traditions, but I also doubt Lucas ever intended him to have one at all.
Leia remembering her mom and her dying right after Leia was born makes no sense. Her mom should have survived into her early childhood on Alderaan. And where was the great starpilot or good friend, Anakin was none of those things in the prequel. He wasn’t a cunning warrior. The dude lost every lightsaber fight he ever was in, except the one where he murdered Dooku. Oh, I get people will say the Clone Wars cartoon the Filoni one, filled in some of these things. But you shouldn’t need outside media.
The Padme dying of a broken heart giving birth to the twins, as suited Vader is born on an operating table is powerful, but it broke the OT canon of Leia remembering her mom as a child. I only sort of can forgive it because it creates a poetic scene and has visual symmetry, but Lucas should have adhered to the OT. Like Vader creating Threepio may be interesting because he becomes more machine than man, but that was not originally Threepio’s backstory.
I do like the idea of Anakin being the author of his own pain and the iron mask of Vader being his prison or punishment, because he had a vision of the future and by trying to change Padme’s fate he ensured it. I like the idea of Palpatine being this very evil character, Anakin makes a devil’s bargain. I think the scene in the Opera house is fantastic. It might be the only mention of Midichlorians I don’t really mind, since Sidious could have been lying.
I do wonder if George’s sequels would have been better simply for acknowledging the prequels exist, and therefore a coherent work if you will. A prequel 2.0. Since he had no desire to redo the original trilogy. And Disney’s trilogy was rebels VS empire again. I’m not sure if I wanted to see Hayden as Anakin’s ghost, If that concept was a part of Lucas sequel. On one hand I think Hayden and Mark having a scene together would be cool. On the other hand Luke only knows Sebastian Shaw Anakin. So, I can see why Rian chose to use Yoda.
- Lucas has never said that Luke and Leia were always meant to be twins, all he said is that he “came up” with the idea of Luke and Leia being twins in March/April 1975. So Lucas could’ve just meant that he came up with the idea in March/April 1975, scrapped it by August 1975, and then brought it back by ESB or ROTJ. Since the roles of Luke, Leia, and Luke’s sibling were already being switched around a lot in 1975 I think that’s certainly plausible.
- Actually, the idea of Star Wars being Vader’s story wasn’t thought of till 1998 as Lucas confirmed himself
- I’ve seen little to no genuine evidence that Lucas’s claim of Vader always being Luke’s father is a lie
- Splinter was always a backup sequel in case ANH failed and wasn’t the sequel Lucas wanted to make, Foster confirmed this.
- Plenty of Lucas’s confirmed 1980s plans for the prequels have similarities to what we got
- Whether Yoda could fight with a lightsaber was changed constantly by Lucas during the OT’s development, not the PT’s. In ESB conferences and notes Lucas brought up the idea of Yoda having a lightsaber with a Kiber Crystal which he uses to show Luke how great a warrior he is, in the rough and revised rough drafts Yoda’s Force ghost helps fight Palpatine, and then in the July 1981 conferences Lucas changed his mind and decided Yoda was a guru who didn’t go out and fight anybody. So if anything the PT’s portrayal of Yoda was actually closer to Lucas’s original plan and the scrapped guru idea was what deviated from it. Yoda himself was never supposed to exist until Lucas decided last minute to kill off Obi-Wan, so that’s probably why Lucas kept changing his mind about Yoda’s lore.
- While Padme dying in childbirth indeed wasn’t planned during ROTJ, Rick McCallum did say Lucas had a new explanation on how Leia remembered her mother in mind for his Underworld series.
- While you’re correct Vader wasn’t always planned to be Threepio’s creator, Lucas always planned Threepio to be reassembled by a young boy working for a junk dealer and he always intended Anakin to be a slave when he was a kid, so it makes sense to combine those characters cause of how similar they are. It also is poetic since Anakin puts in Threepio’s eye in TPM and it gets pulled out in ROTJ, and Lucas also planned C3PO and R2D2 to be the narrators of the story and be in all nine films since the 80s.
- Yeah Lucas planned Palpatine to be lying about Plagueis’s ability to save death, but not anything else in the Plagueis story.
- What’s the issue with the other mentions of midi-chlorians?
- Luke already canonically saw the Hayden ghost in ROTJ, as the special editions are still the official canon