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George Lucas's Sequel Trilogy — Page 7

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If you look at just the text (the films), and don’t take into account any outside material or interviews with the filmmakers, you could interpret Rey and Ben as the Chosen One. With the whole Dyad thing being “two that are One”.

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I don’t support neither the George Lucas hate, nor the unconditional worshipping of the man. I have a much more balanced idea about him: I think he’s a genius and I love all 6 films he created, for better or for worse (Indeed, I almost always defend him about the story choices he made in the Prequels). But I think sometimes he made mistakes, and I don’t like some of his ideas (the Whills for example). I also think he should have paid more attention to the continuity and respected the authors of books and comics more, because what he helped to do together with Dave Filoni in TCW was a disaster in terms of continuity. I have no problem in saying that if his Sequel Trilogy had materialized then I probably would have hated it, despite I love both the Prequels and the Originals. But as I said in one of my previous posts, I highly doubt that he would ever get to create a Sequel Trilogy, since he constantly repeated for years that he would never do it, and that the Saga would have only 6 films.
In summary, it can be said that I don’t look at who is the author of a particular work, I judge that work exclusively according to my personal tastes, regardless of who its author is. If Jesus Christ had come to Earth and created The Rise of Skywalker, I’d have hated the film anyway. The same applies to George.

«This is where the fun begins!»
(Anakin Skywalker)

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Lol, love the idea of Christ as filmmaker. He would have a perfect vision, but he would be surrounded by Yes men and his work would be misinterpreted by generations to come.

SparkySywer is right though about Lucas’ statements on his sequel trilogy being contradictory. I recall even a single quote by him being somewhat contradictory.

Don’t have the quote on hand, but he basically says that there would be “no stormtroopers” in his sequels, but during that same answer he talks about how the stormtroopers would be like the Muhadjideen fighters, who wouldn’t give up and find their own little corners of the galaxy to bide their time in.

Also, I do think there is a bit of irony in how fiercely people will defend the idea of the Saga being the story of Anakin, and be offended by the idea that the ST undermines Anakin’s position as the Chosen One, when George himself said he was going to make Leia the Chosen One in his Sequel Trilogy. We treat his work as religious text when he’s making it up on the fly.

But I do think the fact that other people are expanding on his work does make it more like the mythologies that George likes Star Wars being compared to.

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RogueLeader said:

SparkySywer is right though about Lucas’ statements on his sequel trilogy being contradictory. I recall even a single quote by him being somewhat contradictory.

Don’t have the quote on hand, but he basically says that there would be “no stormtroopers” in his sequels, but during that same answer he talks about how the stormtroopers would be like the Muhadjideen fighters, who wouldn’t give up and find their own little corners of the galaxy to bide their time in.

You are whooshing us, aren’t you? 😃 The quotes are in the OP of this thread:
 

George Lucas: That’s why they kept missing. Then after the Rebels won, there were no more stormtroopers in my version of the third trilogy.

and then:

George Lucas: Episode VII, VIII, and IX would take ideas from what happened after the Iraq War. “Okay, you fought the war, you killed everybody, now what are you going to do?” Rebuilding afterwards is harder than starting a rebellion or fighting the war. When you win the war and you disband the opposing army, what do they do? The stormtroopers would be like Saddam Hussein’s Ba’athist fighters that joined ISIS and kept on fighting. The stormtroopers refuse to give up when the Republic win. They want to be stormtroopers forever, so they go to a far corner of the galaxy, start their own country and their own rebellion.

and then:

George Lucas: It starts out a few years after Return of the Jedi and we establish pretty quickly that there’s this underworld, there are these offshoot stormtroopers who started their own planets.
 

Or is it another different quote from Lucas you are looking for? It would not be surprising if there was more!

“The other Sequels were the result of an over-anxious press. The original intention was to make three [films], and that was really the end of it. It was not until 10 years after the first [film] that I thought of doing a back story.” - George Lucas, speaking at the Premiere of ROTS in 2005

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Hahaha, yeah total whoosh. 😂 I knew I read it on the threads somewhere recently, of course it was the OP. My bad.

To give George the benefit of the doubt, I’m assuming he meant that either A) his ST stormtroopers would look quite different from OT stormtroopers and/or B) the stormtroopers wouldn’t be the primary enemy grunts of the ST.

I have to say I did like this description of these stormtroopers. Imagine some remnant faction using stormtrooper that is basically pieced together over the years. Couldn’t been pretty smart a merchandising and costuming perspective. Think of how devoted the 501st are. Imagine if they introduced these “rebel” stormtroopers that uses bits and pieces from different kits, worn out and dirty, personalized. Could’ve been a cool contrast to how they were presented in the OT. You see the evolution of the stormtrooper between the PT and OT, and then we could’ve seen their regression between the OT and ST. The aesthetic potential is one thing edits can’t fix unfortunately.

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Also, I do think there is a bit of irony in how fiercely people will defend the idea of the Saga being the story of Anakin, and be offended by the idea that the ST undermines Anakin’s position as the Chosen One, when George himself said he was going to make Leia the Chosen One in his Sequel Trilogy. We treat his work as religious text when he’s making it up on the fly.

I’m actually the most consistent person on this topic, just read what I wrote in my previous posts. To me, Anakin is the protagonist of the Saga and is the Chosen One. Anyone who contradicts this truth is wrong, even if it’s Lucas himself who does so. But I don’t think he would have done that, because if you read carefully what he said, you’ll understand that he didn’t wanted to make Leia the Chosen One in a literal sense, but in a more metaphorical sense. So, tecnically Anakin Is the Chosen One anyways.

«This is where the fun begins!»
(Anakin Skywalker)

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Anakin only destroys the Sith on an absolute technicality.

I feel like that’s the entire point. The Jedi misinterpreted the Prophecy. This is a common mythological trope.

Anyway, Chosen Ones and prophecies are dumb and Anakin isn’t the OT’s protagonist, but that’s just my two cents. You guys can believe whatever you want.

Concerning the stormtrooper thing, I think Lucas just meant the Empire in general would keep fighting, and the bad guys would be the successors to the stormtroopers. He didn’t literally mean stormtroopers. Lucas often makes silly little mistakes in SW terminology.

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Anakin Starkiller said:

Anakin only destroys the Sith on an absolute technicality.

I feel like that’s the entire point. The Jedi misinterpreted the Prophecy.

If what you mean by this is that Anakin’s not supposed to be the Chosen One in a very literal sense, you’re wrong, at least according to George Lucas. He describes Anakin as a very straightforward Chosen One who does defeat the Sith and bring balance to the Force in RotJ, at least until he changed his mind and decided Leia was the Chosen One, except not because he never ended up making that ST.

Anyway, Chosen Ones and prophecies are dumb and Anakin isn’t the OT’s protagonist, but that’s just my two cents.

What could’ve been pretty interesting, IMO, is if Anakin was more of a deconstruction of the Chosen One trope contained entirely within the prequels. The obvious way would be if Anakin does bring balance, it’s just that “balance” is not necessarily what the Jedi expected, like if it turns out the Jedi were the cause of the imbalance and he brings balance to the Force by toppling them.

Reading R + L ≠ J theories

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Lucas said “balance” was removing the Sith.

Many other fans, writers and directors have decided to ignore that.

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I do think “balance” was the wrong choice of words by Lucas, since it implies an equal duality of some kind. That’s what misled a lot of people, most likely.

But we can’t turn back. Fear is their greatest defense. I doubt if the actual security there is any greater than it was on Aquilae or Sullust. And what there is is most likely directed towards a large-scale assault.

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I think choosing to create a Sequel Trilogy kind of raises the question of what needs to be resolved that wasn’t resolved in the Original Trilogy. The OT only resolves the ideas of “balance” and the Chosen One retroactively, since those ideas didn’t exist in the OT.

Regardless of those issues, the Sequel Trilogy we got sort of had the right ingredients for an interesting question to resolve. Obviously one plot point could’ve/should’ve been focused on challenges of running a government after a revolution. But as far as the force side goes, I think you could have still had a Solo child fall to the dark side, and Luke go into exile searching for answers. Maybe Luke could discover how the Sith actually were an offshoot of the Jedi, and now he is seeing history repeat itself with his fallen student. The same mistake is being made, but how can he prevent balance being lost? And this could bring up now Luke’s new Jedi order would be different from the old. Anyway, a lot of interesting ideas that could’ve been played with.

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From a narrative perspective, Lucas introduced the Midichlorians and Darth Plagueis in chapter six. Meaning chapters seven to nine would cover this material.

For all intents, the sequels exist as sequels to the OT giving little to no relevance to the PT’s new material.

Even if George’s mini-universe idea sucked, it still would’ve flowed with the worldbuilding.

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Lucas said “balance” was removing the Sith.

It is 90% of the time, and then that other 10% it’s the Mortis arc of TCW where balance is pretty explicitly an equal amount of Light and Dark.

thebluefrog said:

From a narrative perspective, Lucas introduced the Midichlorians and Darth Plagueis in chapter six.

No, he introduced midi-chlorians in chapter four.

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Anakin Starkiller said:

Lucas said “balance” was removing the Sith.

It is 90% of the time, and then that other 10% it’s the Mortis arc of TCW where balance is pretty explicitly an equal amount of Light and Dark.

thebluefrog said:

From a narrative perspective, Lucas introduced the Midichlorians and Darth Plagueis in chapter six.

No, he introduced midi-chlorians in chapter four.

AND Plagueis, dude. AND. The Midis may have existed in four, but six was when they became relevant to the narrative. As an example, Stannis was mentioned several times in Thrones book one, but his relevant influence to the current narrative started in book two.

In ROTS, by specifically introducing an entirely new character and his Midi-abilities, Lucas was laying down narrative threads for his microscopic plot in the next chapters.

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thebluefrog said:

In ROTS, by specifically introducing an entirely new character and his Midi-abilities, Lucas was laying down narrative threads for his microscopic plot in the next chapters.

uh , yeah , I call BS on this , he didn’t have anything layed down for after ROTS … …In a 2008 interview in Total Film, Lucas more categorically ruled out anybody else ever making the sequel trilogy - or other future Star Wars features. Asked if he was happy for new Star Wars tales to be told after he was gone, Lucas replied:

“I’ve left pretty explicit instructions for there not to be any more features. There will definitely be no Episodes VII–IX. That’s because there isn’t any story. I mean, I never thought of anything. And now there have been novels about the events after Episode VI, which isn’t at all what I would have done with it. The Star Wars story is really the tragedy of Darth Vader. That is the story. Once Vader dies, he doesn’t come back to life, the Emperor doesn’t get cloned and Luke doesn’t get married…”[38]​

Speaking after Disney’s 2012 acquisition of Lucasfilm, Lucas (sitting alongside new Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy), said, “I always said I wasn’t going to do any more, and that’s true, because I’m not going to do any more. But that doesn’t mean I’m unwilling to turn it over to Kathy to do more.” but , then again , he did have vague idea of the sequels back in 1983 , but no real plot fleshed out , just this vague statement “The main theme of the trilogy would be moral and philosophical problems, such as the necessity for moral choices and the wisdom needed to distinguish right from wrong, justice, confrontation, and passing on what you have learned” I highly recommend the George Lucas time travelling revisionist thread elsewhere on these forums for more info

https://screamsinthevoid.deviantart.com/

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Anakin Starkiller said:

Lucas said “balance” was removing the Sith.

It is 90% of the time, and then that other 10% it’s the Mortis arc of TCW where balance is pretty explicitly an equal amount of Light and Dark.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ It’s George Lucas

Reading R + L ≠ J theories

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It used to incense me the lie that it was always the Saga of Darth Vader. It was Luke’s story, Star Wars from the adventures of Luke Skywalker. But now i think Star Wars has to evolve beyond Luke, and his story. Being stuck in the past is stuck in the past. That doesn’t mean i think Disney treated the characters with reverence from the original trilogy. And now they are running on nostalgia and have gotten the wrong message. Instead of evolving Star Wars they’ve regressed it. Its the biggest problem with episode 9, they needed to be bold and do something that didn’t waste Rian’s reset of the Star Wars universe. And i’m not sure what Lucas plans were, midichlorians and mortis leave me cold. They and Darth Maul don’t excite me in the least.

Basically Disney Star Wars is a waste of time, unless they somehow fix things with episode 10 and Rey returning. i’m glad my nieces and nephews enjoy it, but they aren’t big Star Wars fans its just another thing like Disney Marvel to them.

I don’t really have a Star Wars, the EU and the unaltered originals were my Star Wars. and a potential Lucas sequel that respected the originals and didn’t make the same prequel bs would have been great.

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JadedSkywalker said:

It used to incense me the lie that it was always the Saga of Darth Vader. It was Luke’s story, Star Wars from the adventures of Luke Skywalker. But now i think Star Wars has to evolve beyond Luke, and his story. Being stuck in the past is stuck in the past. That doesn’t mean i think Disney treated the characters with reverence from the original trilogy. And now they are running on nostalgia and have gotten the wrong message. Instead of evolving Star Wars they’ve regressed it. Its the biggest problem with episode 9, they needed to be bold and do something that didn’t waste Rian’s reset of the Star Wars universe. And i’m not sure what Lucas plans were, midichlorians and mortis leave me cold. They and Darth Maul don’t excite me in the least.

Basically Disney Star Wars is a waste of time, unless they somehow fix things with episode 10 and Rey returning. i’m glad my nieces and nephews enjoy it, but they aren’t big Star Wars fans its just another thing like Disney Marvel to them.

I don’t really have a Star Wars, the EU and the unaltered originals were my Star Wars. and a potential Lucas sequel that respected the originals and didn’t make the same prequel bs would have been great.

Have you not enjoyed the tv series so far, or looking forward to the series and films to come?

Saga-wise, George was always full of shit, and it shows, even in his unused Sequel ideas. Incoherent stories, discrepancies, retcons, and some lazy storytelling throughout the PT & his ST. Probably not much to do there other than enjoy the Original Trilogy and the EU. Maybe find some fan edits for the PT & ST to your liking?

But I am hopeful on the tv and new film front. Mandalorian, Bad Batch and Visions are all thumbsup, BOBF mixed (but decent enough overall). Andor should bring us something different. Rogue Squadron something familiar from the EU, with its own style. I hope so, anyway.

“The other Sequels were the result of an over-anxious press. The original intention was to make three [films], and that was really the end of it. It was not until 10 years after the first [film] that I thought of doing a back story.” - George Lucas, speaking at the Premiere of ROTS in 2005

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As far as I’m concerned, Lucas started messing up from the beginning. The leaked script drafts from the OT show that he is correct, he did have a story and he cut it up for ANH. He abandoned some concepts he came back to later. He like some things he was cutting and changed the story. And then once he had his story for the first film roughed out, he spent a lot of time editing it and refining it. He killed off Ben for dramatic effect.

So when it came time to make a sequel, he had to go back to the drawing board. The entire Hoth sequence was added. Ben training Luke in ANH was expanded and Ben was replaced with Yoda. In some ways Hoth is the planet side battle that was cut from the original Death Star Battle. He brought back the city in the clouds but had to change what it was. That had become the section on the Death Star in the ANH. So it went from Imperial facility to a mining facility. He created the entire Vader’s hunt as a post Death Star reaction. And of course Vader being Luke’s father. So most of TESB is created to bridge to the finale with little pieces from the original story.

Then in the development of ROTJ, Lucas brought back his original concept for the final battle. The combined battle was mostly restored. But because he’d pulled Chewie out and made him tech savy, Wookies became Ewoks and shrunk, with no less ferocity in action, though a lot less in appearance. But that didn’t make a full movie. So the rest is the continuation of Han’s capture and Jabba the Hutt and then Luke facing Vader and the Emperor.

From the drafts of the scripts, the concept art, and more, We can see that Lucas likes to change things. Consistency in story is not as important to him as dramatic impact and story. That really becomes clear with the Prequels. Sure he said he created the back story while he was working on the OT, but all he had was a few details. In order to make the PT, he had to flesh it out and see what worked with the story. Sure some things don’t line up perfectly with the OT, but things don’t line up in the OT much better.

So when it comes to the ST, Lucas was in a bad place after ROTS. All the bad fan reaction led him to call the saga closed. Plus, my understanding of his early ideas for the ST were basically, wouldn’t it be neat to have these stars come back to reprise their roles and pass on the torch to a new generation. And I don’t think there is a diehard fan out there who isn’t aware that Harrison wanted Solo to die in ROTJ. What else Lucas was thinking post ROTJ is a mystery.

So when we get to the point where he actually started fleshing out the ideas, there are some things that should have been expected. Han and/or Luke dying should have been expected. R2 and Threepio surviving to the end should have been expected. Some return to conflict and a return of the Dark Side should have been expected. Pulling from the same type of sources that he did the first time around should have been expected. What I’ve seen in negative fan reaction has largely been based on these things that are pretty obvious to expect based on what we knew being disliked. It is called Star Wars so any ST was going to have a war. That in itself means that the glorious new Republic would have an enemy it would have to fight off. That we have planet destroying weapons leads to having a better version of that to imperil the galaxy and the Republic. Luke being in self exile comes from myths.

Now the quality of the writing is very much in the eye of the viewer. My gripes with TFA are all about the writing and how it fails to craft a strong story. I feel it is more about scenes than a complete story. So I can’t say that everyone should like every writing choice made, but I feel very sure that the ST we got is based on Lucas’s treatments. They definitely dumped a lot of what Lucas had, but from our PT experience, I don’t think that part would have gone over well. I think if Lucas would have done it himself that we would be having a very similar discussion. But we would be talking about how HE screwed up the PT. We’d be complaining about who he cast, the wooden dialog and acting, how no one wanted to help him write or direct the stories, etc. I think the only way they could have gotten made with any quality was for him to sell the franchise and turn the reins over.

We would be having the same discussion about what his original intentions were, his original treatments, but then about how HE screwed them up.

I don’t think dreaming that Lucas’s own versions would be any better. And I think it is very fitting for the saga that when you look at credit for each film in chronological order, it goes from Lucas doing this solo (technically he wrote and directed the first 4 movies) to him letting go for the OT and then completely stepping back for the ST.

I am very confident that I like what we got more than I would have liked what Lucas would have done.

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I like 5 Star Wars films, the 5 with V in the titles/numbering. It’s like poetry, yada yada. I am certain I wouldn’t have liked Lucas’ ST any more than Disney’s attempts. He just wasn’t that good a film-maker to me, and was (understandably) too close to the series to let other people execute and build on his ideas. Sucks that Disney had no vision at all, but I also can’t blame them for binning whatever scraps Lucas left behind. Didn’t sound too good to me, and as nice as it might have been to develop Leia further, that ship had long sailed by the time Disney got the rights.

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Killing Obi Wan was the right decision though. For the first time i read the version where he lives and he does nothing of worth after the death star. His death on the death star is critical to give the film emotional weight. Luke loses Ben, and he grows up and joins the rebellion.

The story of the original script after the death star drags. It was absolutely essential to do what they did. The same way cutting all the stuff with Luke and his friends on Tatooine and going straight to the droids was the right choice cinematically as well.

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yotsuya said:

I don’t think dreaming that Lucas’s own versions would be any better. And I think it is very fitting for the saga that when you look at credit for each film in chronological order, it goes from Lucas doing this solo (technically he wrote and directed the first 4 movies) to him letting go for the OT and then completely stepping back for the ST.

I really like your take, yotsuya.

In the past I have always imagined Luke and Anakin/Vader as representing George Lucas. Luke in the OT is the young rebel filmmaker, and the Vader/father dynamic is showing the fear he had of becoming like his father. He never wanted to be a businessman like his father was.

Then Anakin’s transformation into Vader mirrors George becoming the businessman and wanting full control of everything (much like Anakin seeks) that we saw in the build up to and during the production of the prequels. You start seeing George nudge toward this “dark side” when making ROTJ, just like Luke edges closer to the dark side, but Lucas nails the ending much like Luke reaffirms his new status as a Jedi. But in a way, George eventually became something he never wanted to be. He wanted to be an indie filmmaker making art house films but instead was in charge of a vfx house and a merchandise juggernaut, among other things. So Vader’s absence in the Sequel Trilogy reflects George’s absence from those projects too. You could even argue Lucas stepping away from his galaxy is much like Luke stepping away from the galaxy in those movies. The new filmmakers who were fans of the stories of old, like Rey, seek him out, wanting to understand there place in shaping a galaxy without Lucas. And we know both Rian and JJ visited with Lucas and he was able to give some guidance and inspire them, but they still may have not agreed with everything he said and they still made their own decisions too.

Idk. I think these metatextual readings are totally unintentional but it makes me appreciate what we got a little more.