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So... your opinion of how much Lucas really had planned out?

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Well, here's something htat'll probably bring up some interesting discussion.
Lucas has changed his story on Star Wars several times. Whether it was one trilogy (to rule them all?), a three-trilogy mega-movie series, or the saga of Anakin Skywalker, the man has left many fans clueless; those who aren't, are angry or have just stopped caring.

I think that by the time he finished the original Star Wars, he at least wanted to keep going and had some idea of ESB. I also think that, even from the beginning, Darth was going to be Luke's father. I mean, his name's kindof a clue - I believe it means "Dark Father" in some language. But, Leia being Luke's sister? That was definitely a tack-on at the last minute to try and add some suspense and surprise. Splinter of the Mind's Eye proved it to me.

So, what do you think? How had he originally planned it out?

A Goon in a Gaggle of 'em

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According to the old interviews, he had the whole OT planned out as one film,
realized it was too much for one movie so made SW out of the first third of the story.
I guess I believe that much.

Obviously, the Leia/Luke relationship wasn't fully planned out yet. Like most things,
a lot got changed during the process.

But, I definitely don't buy that the ultimate goal was make Anakin Skywalker's story
the focus of the entire saga. The OT is the story of Luke Skywalker, and it always
was, prior to 1999.

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After giving it a little more thought, I think that he only had a general idea and not the whole saga; because remember, there were some drafts of ROTJ where Coruscant is where the final battle took place. And then the whole Wookiee vs. Ewok thing.

I guess this leads to something more... do you hate Lucas for what he's "done" to the series?

A Goon in a Gaggle of 'em

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While we're on the subject of the number of episodes, there's something I'd like to say.

The prequels are still just prequels at the end of the day. Even in '04 they still referred to the OT as "the trilogy," and something tells me they're going to release them all individually next time around with the option of getting it all in one big expensive set (ala Alien and Superman).

They're are some curiosities:

If he split one long story into three movies, why did he decide (early as May, 1980) that the prequels also warranted as many?

If he was in fact going to do 7 8 and 9, why was he starting in the middle?

Then there's Lucas' throw away line at the very beginning of the audio commentary for Revenge of the Sith about how everything in Star Wars is done in the style of a Saturday matinee serial which was told in 12 parts. Does the "12" have any special significance? In other words, does that mean we'll see episodes VII-XV someday? Or is he just saying that so we'll know how the old serials were usually in 12 parts sort of like how there are multiple Star Wars movies and each movie itself is serialized through the wipes? It's funny, I remember considering counting the number of wipes in that movie to see if it added up to 12, but then I got lazy / started skipping around and fast forwarding.

Here's the thing: I'm theoretically fine with Lucas' insistence of ROTJ being the end of the story, but only so long as the prequels are still just prequels. When Lucas said on the featurette that "when you watch IV, V and VI, he's still the chosen one" and they showed all that OT footage of Vader, I dunno, it all just seemed so out of place. Recently I saw an add for the movies showing on spiketv and they had I-II-III-IV-V-VI just like cinemax did. Again, out of place. Also, it makes me nostalgic as hell for when they would show the O-OT on USA back in the day.

Getting back to the question at hand, it does seem like Lucas used the prequels as on opportunity to do things he didn't in the OT. Episode III is full of that: battle over Coruscant, Wookiees, etc.

Ugh, I've gotta write my thoughts down as bullet points before I go on and type all this stuff. Now I'm forgetting whatever else it was that I was going to say.

I'll end with this:

I think it would be cool to one day see further episodes made, just as long as they aren't directed by Lucas (which they wouldn't be anyway, he's already said he's done with it). I'm intrigued by what could or could not be done regarding further episodes. I'm also intrigued as to the various reports over the years of how many more movies there could've been (five whole trilogies if you look at A New Hope as chapter 1 of a 12 part saga) and what they would've dealt with (stuff that got condensed into ROTJ).
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Well...

http://secrethistoryofstarwars.com

But thats if you want the long answer.
The short answer is that pretty much most of it was made up. In 1977 Lucas held that sequels were possible, and had a trilogy by contract, but he didn't have much in the way beyond the obvious--ie that Luke continues to train as a Jedi, Leia has the romance with Luke and Han, the rebels continue their fight, and the climax is Luke and Darth having a lightsaber battle. He didn't know if he would ever film these two sequels, and might not have even wanted to anyway, so he had Alan Dean Foster writing them as novels. When the film was released and became the biggest movie of all time Lucas realised he could turn it into a franchise that could be a huge cash machine that could finance his dream--Skywalker Ranch. So the Star Wars franchise was going to be like James Bond where there was a new film every year or two that would keep the facility in business, the series was infinite because you could write an adventure about anything in the galaxy. As he started work on ESB in late 1977 he settled on a figure--12 films, which would bring him into the year 2001 by the time they were done. 12 because thats the tradition of the classic serials--Flash Gordon, Phantom Empire, Fighting Devil Dogs, they are all 12 chapters long.

In 1978 Lucas wrote a second draft of ESB himself where he decided that Vader was actually Luke's father. This draft was still titled as Episode II, but when he came back a few months later with Lawrence Kasdan to write the final drafts he had decided that the new backstory involving Anakin's fall to evil would make a good series itself--which is why these drafts are no longer Episode II but Episode V. He reveals a few months later that there are in fact 9 episodes--a prequel trilogy, the current trilogy and then a sequel trilogy. They are 3 seperate series with different styles and tones and themes and characters, but chronologically connected if you viewed them in episodic order. My explanation is that actor availability forced Lucas to commit to a trilogy structure--he had Hamill and Fisher under contract for 3 films but thats it, and they probably wouldn't want to do more, and Harrison Ford had to be seriously persuaded to do a third film let along four or five. So this trilogy structure would be structural basis for any other spin-off series--he settled on one taking place before and one taking place after. But then after ESB was filmed he realised how unpleasant making these films are, they were destroying his personal life, so he decided to be done with Star Wars (the Ranch was about to be done construction anyway) and adopted a daughter, but even by then it was too late as he got a divorce by the time ROTJ was released. Close to half of Lucasfilm was split in the divorce, so he was in some difficult financial times in the 80's.

In the early 1990's Star Wars became immensely popular again, and Lucasfilm was suddenly making a comeback with all the Lucasarts games, EU novels and Dark Horse comics. Seeing that there was a massive audience for Star Wars again, he realised that now he could get back his loses--he had always been genuinely interested in the prequel trilogy, unlike the sequel trilogy which was mainly a response to success, and with the CG revolution of 1992 and 1993 he now seriously had the option of doing the films and getting, in his mind, financially free. Since he had been wanting to get back to directing anyway, he decided he would finally make the films, and then became interested in using the prequels to sort of change the way the viewer looked at the OT. He also decided somewhere along the post-1993 road that the series could be re-interpreted to be about Vader, beginning with his discover and ending with his death.
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Lucas had the Original SW planned out as one movie, and I feel he had 'ideas' for sequels, but nothing in stone. I believe he wrote the Original SW, and all of the other cool ideas he couldn't fit in a 2 hour movie, he put in his little binder: maybe they get caught in a space slug which people think we'll be an asteroid, maybe someone will be frozen in carbonite, but won't be dead, maybe we can have this huge land battle on this forest planet, etc.

Did he have backstory notes when writing SW in 1975? Probably had that Darth Vader/ObiWan fought and Vader fell into Lava, probably had the Empire taking over the galaxy, and The Emperor ends up ruling. Again, just basic notes to write the first movie.

Did he have anything planned out? NO WAY!!!! I will be honest, it doesn't bother me that he didn't, heck I love ESB, but that movie was probably written in the context AFTER 1977. I just get annoyed that Lucas won't admit that he didn't, as I would love to see a documentary about Lucas stating when they decided to make Vader/Luke's father into one person, maybe it hit him 3 in the morning in 1978, "Hey Marcia, I got it!!!! Darth Vader is Lukes father!!!!!"
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bkev said:

After giving it a little more thought, I think that he only had a general idea and not the whole saga; because remember, there were some drafts of ROTJ where Coruscant is where the final battle took place. And then the whole Wookiee vs. Ewok thing.

I guess this leads to something more... do you hate Lucas for what he's "done" to the series?

What ended up as the ewok battle in ROTJ came from an idea about a Wookie battle,
right? And he made Chewie Han's co-pilot because he didn't know if he was ever
going to make another film to show the Wookie planet, so he put Chewie in there just
in case.

As far as hating Lucas for what he's done to the series, I don't "hate" him, but I am
royally pissed at him. The Prequels sort of sully the whole franchise- to the extent
that they are able to. They're not taken as seriously and they're not as loved as
the OT, so I guess they can only damage the legacy of the OT so much.

I'm far more upset about the Special Edition vs OOT situation, because I can
ignore the prequels, but it's hard to ignore the SEs since the OOT hasn't been
given a proper release.

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Mielr said:

As far as hating Lucas for what he's done to the series, I don't "hate" him, but I am royally pissed at him. The Prequels sort of sully the whole franchise- to the extent that they are able to. They're not taken as seriously and they're not as loved as the OT, so I guess they can only damage the legacy of the OT so much.

I'm far more upset about the Special Edition vs OOT situation, because I can
ignore the prequels, but it's hard to ignore the SEs since the OOT hasn't been
given a proper release.


and that's the funny part, I didn't have all that much of a problem with Star Wars in general until May of '06.

Seriously, even back in summer of '05 when my friend and I showed the OT to a friend of ours who'd never seen it before. I brought my silver box over to his place, we watched and it was awesome. awesome.

This is where I point to as evidence that Lucas has not 'ruined' the OT. It would take a whole lot more than that to ruin it.

Zombie, it sucks to read that and think of what might have been. On the other hand, it's interesting as hell to see how things worked and played themselves out. Seeing as how Lucas did end up coming back and doing the prequels, I certainly wouldn't mind seeing another Star Wars trilogy every couple of decades. I can't see Lucas being against this (at least in principle) and unless he writes it into his will there won't be anything he'll be able to do about it anyway. Heck, maybe he could even pitch a story for it and let other people write the screenplay. He has had some sort of involvement with the course of the EU. Maybe he would only end up insisting that Episodes VII and onward couldn't be made because of how he's re-worked them into the post-Jedi EU, but even then it would be cool for him to come up with a story within the midst of that (maybe that huge 100 year gap in the legacy era?) for 7, 8 and 9. After all, Lucas has always been working in the cinematic medium first and foremost.
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Lucas had only this planned out:

http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f20/stonetriple/Star_Wars-one-sheet_L-01.jpg

All the universe-shrinking, story-shrinking plot twists (Father Vader, sister Leia, etc) were invented later, on the fly.

Lucas can't seem to grasp the fact that many of us were there in the 70s. We remember what he said, we remember what was written, we remember what we saw.

http://secrethistoryofstarwars.com – Give it a read George. Maybe it will jog your memory.
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I believe he made most of it up as he went along. Reading the early drafts of Star Wars makes me realize that GL didn't know what he wanted until the first film was complete. And after that...he just made things up as he went along. Just like now.

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I'm finding it funny that a simple, benign inquiry has been turned into such a distrustful thing thanks to Lucas' insecurity. He should just be more honest, like CO said, since I'd actually appreciate his invention process.

"Now all Lucas has to do is make a cgi version of himself.  It will be better than the original and fit his original vision." - skyjedi2005

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Just the first one- then the money made the next five, not saying that ESB and maybe ROTJ was any bad