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Do the Star Wars movies contain evidence that Lucas makes it up as he goes? — Page 3

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^I don't see how Kurtz's competence as a director has any bearing on his role as a female parental unit.

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DuracellEnergizer said:

^I don't see how Kurtz's competence as a director has any bearing on his role as a female parental unit.

 Are you saying George is the father then? I can name several other people who made Star Wars a good movie ahead of Lucas.

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generalfrevious said:

DuracellEnergizer said:

^I don't see how Kurtz's competence as a director has any bearing on his role as a female parental unit.

 Are you saying George is the father then? I can name several other people who made Star Wars a good movie ahead of Lucas.

 Joke recognition fail?

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No. I think Gary Kurtz is more important to the SW franchise the George Lucas ever could be.

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I'm seriously starting to wonder if generalfrevious belongs to an alien race which finds human humour completely unfathomable. 

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Vulcans?

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Where were you in '77?

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Nice find! I like the bit about Leia running off with Chewie. ;)

I wonder why the two Wookiees eventually were changed to a similar, yet different species.

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Where were you in '77?

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Vader means father in Dutch, so there's basically no chance that part was made up later.

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Alderaan said:

Vader means father in Dutch, so there's basically no chance that part was made up later.

1. Vader is still connected Luke's father in that he killed Luke's father.

2. In The Star Wars, the character called "Darth Vader" inVADEs Aquilae.

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That link is pure platinum. I wish I had that quote from Lucas handy where he reveals that Han was secretly married to a Wookiee but that they'd never reveal that in the films as audiences just weren't ready for that kind of thing. 

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Is Lucas agreeing or disagreeing with Foster's take on Vader's motives and goals?

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That story conference transcript is just...wow.  I'm surprised Star Wars Insider even published it.

Per Lucas, Vader is pretty weak and expendable at the end of a possible sequel with zero ties to Luke.  And Leia is just as expendable and almost a throw away character!  And of course there should be a romance between Leia and Luke.  As for Han, who cares we'll throw him into another story.  The viewpoint of the gallant hero on alien worlds shows that Lucas was thinking more of European comic books like Valerian and Moebius as his influence and not so much space (which is boring per Lucas).

Here's where Lucas went from all this:

1. With Vader as the main bad guy in Empire, he has to choke people all the time to show how awful a person he is, since he just stood around in the first movie and didn't do much, per Lucas.  They have to build him up to be a great villian.  The real slimy bad guy is the emperor who we get a glimpse of in ESB and then in Jedi.  Maybe Lucas always thought Vader was a poor villian during the 77-83 period??!

2. The Wizard of Oz motif was carried over to Jedi when they unmask Vader and Sebastian Shaw looks almost exactly like the Wizard from the 1939 Wizard of Oz (in my humble opinion, it was also my first reaction to his appearance as a kid).

3. Everything else about Empire (and then Jedi) was made up on the fly.  Since Leia was always expendable making her Luke's sister was no big deal.

As the years went on, I think Lucas ended up really liking Vader and probably thought he stole the show (which he pretty much did).  So his next three films ended up being entirely about Vader.

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Speaking of the prequels it is obvious that Jar jar was meant to have a role in the entire trilogy and when the fan did not like him Lucas reduced him to the bare minimum. Then he put Jango Fett because he thought fan boys would be pleased. That almost worked, but not really. Then he dropped the midichlorians idea because fans did not like it either. I think Lucas should have kept Jar Jar and turn him into an interesting character as the trilogy goes. And he should have kept the midichlorians angle too and turn it into a real plot of the story, instead of being afraid to upset fans. Those to me are real hints that Lucas was not driven by his own "vision" of the saga but pretty much tried to please the audience and failed. Because an audience is pleased when something coherent is told, even based on characters or plots that looks odd. If you can take something that an audience don't like at first and turn it into something worthy for the story, then you earn respect from the audience. That is what I thought when I saw The Phantom Menace for the first time. I was not really THAT letdown because I trusted Lucas to go somewhere with those strange charcacters and subplots. But no. He had no real vision.

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I could have sworn Palpatine mentioned midis during the opera scene in ROTS?

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Where were you in '77?

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The evidence keeps piling up:

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SilverWook said:

I could have sworn Palpatine mentioned midis during the opera scene in ROTS?

 

"Darth Plagueis was a Dark Lord of the Sith, so powerful and so wise he could use the Force to influence the midi-chlorians to create life ..."

That's what he says. Not that interesting if you don't make Palpatine tell Anakin that he used this power to create him! It was the "I am your father" of the prequels.  There are earlier drafts of this scene where this side of things was very obvious. But even if Lucas used the early draft, He could have just tell the same thing by saying the Sith used the Force to create life. No need for Midiclhorians, unless maybe the goal is showing the dark side 'scientificaly' using the Force against its more spiritual nature. Maybe... 

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Ah, midi-chlorians ... Just like my sciatica, they keep coming back as an acute chronic pain in my side.

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The Force in the original trilogy is essentially California-style, avocado-flavored magic. Midi-chlorians were clearly Lucas' attempt to bring the Force into the science-fiction fold. It was also a way for him to explain a “virgin birth.”

If midi-chlorians were only a metric by which Force strength is measured, it wouldn't have been an issue. Unfortunately, the explanation of midi-chlorians make the Force lose some of its mystical quality, and the “virgin birth” is not only pulled by the hair in TPM, but doesn't pay off in ROTS in any meaningful way.

The Force could have stayed supernatural and nobody would have minded, and Shmi was a slave, that's all the backstory she needed for having a child and not knowing who the father was. But I think Lucas considers sex to be icky or something, so he managed to come up with a way that she could have a child without spreading her cooties, or whatever it is he thinks women do.

“That’s impossible, even for a computer!”

“You don't do ‘Star Wars’ in Dobly.”

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StarThoughts said:

The Force in the original trilogy is essentially California-style, avocado-flavored magic. Midi-chlorians were clearly Lucas' attempt to bring the Force into the science-fiction fold. It was also a way for him to explain a “virgin birth.”

 

This is the problem with the prequels. A lot of things in life are more interesting when they are implied but not explained in detail. They impart a sense of mystery and wonder. The people Lucas collaborated with in the OT may not have had his sense of vision (they didn't), but they were professionals who understood how to put the best product up on the screen, and they provided checks and balances to all of his flaws.

Fast forward to the prequels and there were no such checks and balances. All of the on-the-nose dialogue and exposition were very plain to see.

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StarThoughts said:

If midi-chlorians were only a metric by which Force strength is measured, it wouldn't have been an issue.

 That pretty much sounds like how they were described:

Qui-Gon Jinn said:

Midi-chlorians are a microcopic lifeform that reside within all living cells and communicates with the Force...Without the midi-chlorians, life could not exist, and we would have no knowledge of the Force. They continually speak to you, telling you the will of the Force.

They're not the Force, they're just what helps us commune with the Force. Which is still incredibly stupid but not as stupid.

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