George worked much the same way. He didn’t have the sister thing worked out yet when Yoda spoke of another in Empire. Did Irvin Kershner have to know if Vader really was Luke’s father or not to make that scene work?
I think someone at Lucasfilm will be guiding things. People are not just going to make up whatever they want.
That is true, but also remember that Star Wars was intended to be a stand alone film. A big difference here is this was known to be a trilogy from the get go. So the possibility that they put a bunch of mysteries in the first act that they don’t have any clue what the answers to them are and are then are handing it off to someone else is concerning. I am hoping that is not the case and they have something fleshed out.
This is where I’m fuzzy on the details, but didn’t Lucas already have the drafts for three movies ready before STAR WARS landed in theaters? He let FOX showoff the first Star Wars, but Lucas wanted to run with his other two scripts as an independent studio. From what I infer, if Star Wars flopped at the box office, then there wouldn’t be sequels, however, if it did succeed, it gave Lucas the green light to go on with two more movies with full rights.
This is something I’ve never really sure about when people say STAR WARS was meant to be a stand alone movie.
Well, they may have been planning sequels, but the movie was written in a way where it stands on its own. Compare the ending of ANH to the ending of TFA.