Originally posted by: Anchorhead
He was. It's been confirmed several times over. He didn't have a story beyond Star Wars. Vader-as-father, Leia-as-sister - none of that was there in his "original vision" and the weakness of story, by inventing them later, is obvious. As I've said before, he took an outer space adventure that was on a grand scale - and reduced it to The Wizard Of Oz. Their being related feels out of place and added on - because it was.
He didn't even know what to do with it after he added it. It's not only cheap - it serves absolutely no purpose in the story. It's a useless, weak story arc that goes nowhere. It's embarrasing enough that he made up stuff up on the fly - turns out he's not even good at it.
In answer to the question - Star Wars for me consists of a single film. An outer space adventure in a galaxy far away - and none of the characters are related to each other. They weren't when I was a kid - they aren't now. It's not even a consideration when I watch Star Wars. I can't pretend or imagine they are because I know they aren't. I know they weren't when the story was first written and I know it was thought up later.
Revisionist history only works on people who weren't there during the actual history.
Originally posted by: MJR80
... it does seem like Lucas was making things up as he went along... He may have felt a burden to conjure another "plot twist" or "surprise"
... it does seem like Lucas was making things up as he went along... He may have felt a burden to conjure another "plot twist" or "surprise"
He was. It's been confirmed several times over. He didn't have a story beyond Star Wars. Vader-as-father, Leia-as-sister - none of that was there in his "original vision" and the weakness of story, by inventing them later, is obvious. As I've said before, he took an outer space adventure that was on a grand scale - and reduced it to The Wizard Of Oz. Their being related feels out of place and added on - because it was.
He didn't even know what to do with it after he added it. It's not only cheap - it serves absolutely no purpose in the story. It's a useless, weak story arc that goes nowhere. It's embarrasing enough that he made up stuff up on the fly - turns out he's not even good at it.
In answer to the question - Star Wars for me consists of a single film. An outer space adventure in a galaxy far away - and none of the characters are related to each other. They weren't when I was a kid - they aren't now. It's not even a consideration when I watch Star Wars. I can't pretend or imagine they are because I know they aren't. I know they weren't when the story was first written and I know it was thought up later.
Revisionist history only works on people who weren't there during the actual history.
Don't ever leave this place Anchorhead!
And yeah, the whole sibling thing makes no sense, and serves absoluetly no story purpose. As i uncovered in my book, the creation of a Leia Skywalker was done in order to hide a plot hole created by Lucas' decision to abandon his Sequel Trilogy--Yoda's reference to "Another" was meant to set up the character for the third trilogy, but now that the third trilogy was no more this became a lingering plot point. Rather than introduce a new character in the already-cluttered story, Lucas chose to turn one of the pre-existing characters into the "Other" and picked Leia. The reason she was turned not only into the "Other" but Luke's sister was to justify her importance--why would Yoda consider her a "last hope" for the galaxy? She's not that much more important than Han or Mon Mothma. So her importance was justified by biologically relating her to the Skywalker family.
It was a stupid thing to do and Lucas would never have purposefully done so but he ended up writing himself into a corner. He even admits on the ROTJ dvd commentary that "it gets hard to swallow."