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The Secret History of Star Wars
lennier writes "How exactly did George Lucas develop the script for the first Star Wars? Why were the prequels so uneven when the originals were so good? Did he really have a masterplan for six, nine, or even twelve episodes, and why did the official Lucasfilm position keep changing? And just how big an influence were the films of Akira Kurosawa on the whole saga? Michael Kaminski's The Secret History of Star Wars, Third Edition is a free, thoroughly unauthorized, e-book that brings together a huge amount of literary detective work to sort fact from legend and reveal how the story really evolved. Download it or have your nerd credentials revoked."
I saw the original Star Wars at the theater when I was six. I saw the next two, Empire and Return, on the big screen when they appeared as well. Seeing these majestic space operas as a child had a profound impact on me. These movies set the stage, along with other contemporary "childrens" novels and sci-fi of the late-70s/early 80's, of a life-long love of science fiction and fantasy fictions. More importantly, this gestalt provided a novel framework for a belief in a limitless future, a need to challenge authority and an implicit belief in the use of technology to create a better future. (Not to sound too grandiose.)
/Can't say the same for the prequels though...
Seeing Star Wars as a child has had a lifelong effect upon me and my worldview.
I enjoyed the original and Empire (though Empire felt like it had been cut short). I didn't think much of Ewok-ladden strikes back. The prequels got progressively worse. I was downright disappointed at how lousy the story was given that with the potential it had it should have been powerful and epic. I've even read a couple of novels.
What I don't get is the obsession with how ti was made. Clearly for the first couple of films the right people were in the right place at the right time. I don't think it was all Lucas by any stretch of the imagination and it's only those 2 films that I'd call good at all, so this idea of Lucas as genius with grand plans and grand vision just doesn't appeal to me. In fact unless you're in the movie business I fail to see how it can hold more than a passing interest. I'd rather watch paint dry than read this ebook cover to cover. I just don't care. I accept that Lucas is a hack who had a miracle year (or two).
Likewise with the actors. I don't mind Harrison Ford (even if he's getting worse not better as he gets older...Airforce One? What was he thinking!?) but Mark Hammil and Carrie Fisher weren't exactly any good.
As for continuity? Please! One minute Luke and Leia are about to get hot and heavy, and the next we're told they're brother and sister. Vader as Luke's father was unlikely though plausible, that is until the pathetic explanation that was Episode 3.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
why on earth jar-jar was allowed more than 3 seconds of screen time?
No, I still haven't gotten over the wanton abuse of my childhood memories.
"Operating systems suck: you're better off using only the BIOS" --trainsaw.com
I always really enjoyed this aspect of the original trilogy, the following of the two droids, though I never knew where the inspiration had come from. And, when the new movies were announced, I was really hoping that Lucas would do the same. He didn't need a new character for that since C3PO and R2D2 are in them as well. Plus, it would have added some uniformity to the style if all six movies had been done in such a manner.
which brings me to a final thought: movie magic isn't easy. i think a lot of fanboys need to cut lucas a break. he gave us star wars. did you forget that? ok, he fumbled with the final 3 movies. but holding him in scorn for that, whileI certainly don't hate Lucas for that. In the same vein, people seem to heap an awful lot of scorn on Mel Brooks because some of his newer movies don't have quite the same magic as Blazing Saddles or Young Frankenstein; as though he should keep up with the masterpieces or quit the business altogether.
Part of Lucas' problem, though, is that the fame and fortune seem to have gone to his head. I recall reading that, initially, Lucas was planning to direct the first movie and then have others direct the next two, just as he had done with the originals. Why did he scrap that idea? It seems like a winning formula for the originals.
And I still have a hard time with Jar-Jar and the kid who played Anakin. Especially the kid. Just superbly terrible acting. Luke was whiny, yeah, but Anakin was dreadful. Surely there must have been people working on the movie and for Lucas who pointed this out to him.
But, overall, I still enjoy the movies... the original trilogy more than the new ones, though. And a lot of people will be enjoying them for decades to come. That's not a bad achievement.
Elrond, Duke of URL
"This is the most fun I've had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"-Sam&Max
You know, I'm not a huge fan of the film, but an initial skim through the e-book and I do think I'll read it. It seems to be pretty well written, in a bloggish way. I'm all for learning more about things.
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
Well.. perhaps because the robots didn't *bumble*
I suppose you could argue that C-3PO did some bumbling, but it was pretty quick and typically involved disassembly on his part rather than just getting hit on the noggin and mugging the camera.
And anyway, goldenrod was only even there to give a exposition for the mute clown*, R-2D2. *almost harlequin, if you read too much into it (you can map almost anything onto commedia dell'arte if you're not careful)
I think you're right though. In the prime-three, he polished some rocks and got diamonds. In the "first" three, he went looking for diamonds and found glass.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
I think the Jedi as religion was a bit of a joke (similar to a protest vote) done for censuses. I'm not sure if people really and truly consider it as a religion.
When I was 8, Star Wars came out. I went crazy for it just like most of my friends. We really wanted to see it and queued up for hours in the rain when it finally came to our cinemas. We bought the toys, played at Star Wars in the playground, and lived and breathed it.
But finally, after a few years, we just grew up a bit more and got into other things like other movies, girls, books, drinking, working, etc. My younger brother was mad keen on the return of the jedi a few years later; for him, it was his formative film, but since then, he also has grown up and sold off his toys.
We both have soft spots for our formative films and have happy memories of watching them and playing them, but to revere them as one of the biggest global cultural events is a little bit silly. It really is just entertainment with a bit of pseudo-religious babble mixed in there. People might recognise the Darth Vader sound, but it doesn't run their lives. They don't do things like quake in terror and get shocked like I a saw a elderly French woman do when she suddenly saw a dummy dressed in an SS uniform during an exhibition once.
In all of my travels, Star Wars has changed the world only for a small handful for people. For most, it really is just a movie and nothing else.
bang goes my karma... again...
Please forgive this from a mere low 6 digit...
Who are you? I am the new Number 2.
Who is Number 1? You are Number 6.
I am not a number, I am a free man!
And not really in the same league, but I don't think anyone would call Serenity worse than Firefly.
Chronicles of Riddick -- it's not as if Pitch Black was a particularly good or well-known movie. It wasn't even promoted as a sequel that way. Not saying Riddick was great, but it was better than Pitch Black. But that defies stereotypes anyway -- there was a kind of ok anime, but the best was the videogame.
One more, while I'm at it: Star Trek. Even numbered movies vs odd. Matrix I actually didn't think the sequels were that bad. In particular, I think what was probably needed was some serious budget cuts and an editor -- the version we saw in the theaters resembles a "Director's Cut".
Trim down the absurdly long action scenes, trim down the rambling dialog, and they could actually be good. Want to see the original be bad? Play the Path of Neo videogame.
Then again, the biggest problem is that it's exactly the same story they told with the original -- The One slowly wakes up, discovers a bigger world, gains new powers, and in the last few minutes of the movie, he has an epiphany and simply solves the problem, Deus Ex Machina style. (The Machine swarm consciousness is even credited as Deus Ex Machina.)
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Its because George Lucas wrote the first movie as a man full of angst. Obviously the eyes he used to see the world was tainted by experience with working with kids on the street. Han-Solo, the shoot first ask questions later, Darth killing enemies and allies alike, torture, the destruction of an entire planet, (and then all of the poor subcontractors working on the Death Star.)
Then he made the last 3 movies a happy man without a care in the world. He did it for the fans. He had no fire burning in his heart when he did it and it shows.
I found Episode III very reminiscent of Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai" (by the same Japanese director that made The Hidden Fortress.)
Both movies feature a chivalrous order that has outlived its time, and is defeated by opponents more willing to apply ruthless methods. In Seven Samurai, none of the Samurai die by the sword -- all are shot. In Revenge of the Sith, the same happens to the Jedi: they are defeated not by the Sith as dark counterparts of the Jedi, but are shot down mercilessly.
Given the strong influence Kurosawa had on Lucus, I think one would find many similar themes echoed throughout all six episodes of Star Wars.
ok. so where do the people who don't give a fuck about comic books, star wars/trek and anime fit in to all of this? frankly, it's one of the things that pisses me off about so-called geek culture. i like the sciences, i like technology. i'm a 30-something that anytime i mention anything along those lines along with my occupation as a systems administrator and i get these fucking freaks who come out of the woodwork and want to start talking to me about family guy or someshit. wtf?
i'm sick of geeky in the intellectual way being instantly substituted with nerdy in the comic book way.
btw: star wars blows.
That was part of the charm of the original trilogy, and something that largely seemed to be absent from the prequels - Lucas' idea of the 'used future'. Ships were ruddy and worn. Decks were scratched. Hulls were scored with carbon from blasters and battle. Even uniforms were marked up.
This was a very new thing for space films - this was no Flash Gordon show.
Still, when you look at the remake of Episode IV, check out the stormtroopers who were added in on Tatooine. They really lose that 'used' feel. Now check out Episode I. When did we ever see a glossy mirror-like spaceship in the original trilogy? Everything looks contrived - even the planet of Naboo looks far too pristine to be a credible part of the Star Wars universe.
The characters are the same way. Where are the grungy smugglers and seedy characters which gave Star Wars its intrigue and appeal? Sure, there were some obvious attempts, but they just didn't come close.
But having said all that, I agree with you. Firefly was a noble attempt to bring back some of that rustic grubby swashbuckling fun that made Star Wars so fascinating.
There are two types of people in the world; those who believe there are two types of people, and those who don't.
I haven't read the whole thing. But so far it doesn't really seem to have many qualities of a real 'book'. It feels more like a really long usenet post that was broken up into chapters and then converted into PDF. Reading the foreword and introduction makes me realize what professional editors get paid for. Obviously no editing was performed on this 'book' because it's far too verbose and also has simple grammatical errors that any editor or proofreader would have found.
Not to say that it's not worth reading, or that the author shouldn't be commended for his efforts. I'm just saying that it doesn't quite live up to the hype of being called a 'book', which makes it sound like quite a bit more than it really is.
It's not a book, it's a usenet post (or 'blog post' for the youngsters around here) in book form.
Maybe Lucas should have included Jay and Silent Bob into the prequels....
Oh yeah yeah Episode III was better. But only after all the die hard fans told him that that after episode I was akin to watching care bears and II was more like Dawsons Creek he tried to make it as pointlessly violent as he could. Like personally wiping out all the baby jedi.
Also its fucking stupid. I mean seriously the transition from anikin from emo teenager to psycopathic child murderer was way to fast for me. I mean at the end after Padme died, i could see that as a turning point into darth, but him killing kids didnt make sense as early in the movie as he did.
In conclusion the clone wars animated series was far cooler and star wars'y than any of the new George movies.
I wish I could remember this account's password:
http://ask.slashdot.org/~DireWolf
#9626.
He's the guy I created first, before I came back a few months later.
Hmm,
I seem to recall a post where some one was saying that a colleague of his left his UID when he left the job.
Yes... It was a poll about ID theft.
He also mentioned that he used it occasionally. I wonder if I can dig the link out.
Yes here we are: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=528614&cid=23133862
So if that's you 787, welcome back, but if you are in fact Rob Kaper (5960), shame on you, abusing someone else's power like that to get modded up!
I can live with the fanboyish hyperbole, but when a book lists an urban myth as fact in its introduction, it's in trouble.
In fact, it fails doubly for prohibiting copying text in the pdf, so I can't even cite it here. It uncritically states that pranksters who filled in 'Jedi' on the 2001 UK census led to its official recognition here. Nonsense.
If that's the quality of research that went into this book, best give it a miss.
Actually there has arisen a really strange swinger subculture where you go to the swinger party dressed as star wars characters and then trade significant others. It's a spin-off of furries sexual subculture as well.
If you can imagine it, it has already become a part of a sexual subculture somewhere.
Dont ask me, I keep getting these website links sent to me about this stuff!
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Luke Skywalker is Arthur Pendragon, Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader is Uther Pendragon, Obi Won Kenobi is Merlin, Han Solo is Lancelot, Princess Leia is Queen Guinevere but leaves Luke for Lancelot and Lucas changed her to Luke's sister in the second film for a soap opera effect. The Jedi are the Knights of the Round Table but get formed very early in the story instead of later. Instead of swords they have light sabers.
The King Arthur Myths are based off the Bible but rewritten for the middle ages.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
I find that girls often describe themselves as dorks with increasing frequency and I think it's some sort of attention thing.
I agree wholeheartedly. I came to similar conclusions after watching the Tod Browning/Bela Lugosi Dracula as a teenager. Having read how wonderful it was, I found myself disappointed at how cheesy, predictable and campy it was.
When I sat down and thought about it afterwards, though, I realised that after having seen so many riffs on the film beforehand, especially parodies, not only was almost everything in the film familiar, but it was almost impossible to take it seriously.
I've noticed this more and more as I've grown older, and films I loved in my youth only seem to work as camp to modern eyes after having had their ideas and images recycled endlessly.
"Are you being weird, or sarcastic?" said Emma. I said I didn't know because I get the two feelings mixed up.
You can also find similarities to Irish mythology, with even closer linkages. Lugh, whose name can be translated by some as 'flashing light', is known as a boy hero among other things, who ended up slaying his father.
I believe that Kenneth C. Flint's Sidhe series retells Lugh's story in a way that makes you think that it was based on Star Wars, or vice versa.
Of course, I believe that Lucas was a fan of George Campbell, who wrote a lot about comparative mythologies. Story writers have been ripping off story ideas for thousands of years, translating the stories into terms and situations that their listeners/readers can under stand. Lucas just did it as a space opera, with lots of special effects.
Hmmm.
Star Wars program?
Who knows... perhaps it wouldn't have had the same impact as "High Earth Orbit Satellite Defense Program"
So perhaps... just maybe... Star Wars is partially responsible for the end of the cold war.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I disagree. I found 3PO's voice to be reassuring as a kid actually. His perfect diction and English accent made him seem like a bastion of normalcy at times when things got wild. Offensive sterotype? An English butler? WTF? And he looks cool, he's even got a shiny metal ass ffs! Humanoid enough to garner sympathy when he's dismembered but well done enough mechanically to not forget he's a robot. Clumsy? Yeah, he's a machine with limited articulation. I've never, ever thought he looked 'goofy', as in uncoordinated, though. I'd speculate that if he were biological or a more advanced android he would look like Baryshnikov compared to Jar-Jar when he moved.
Jar-jar, otoh, was a semi-retarded meat popsicle.
"Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world." - Alan Greenspan, 1999
It's kinda hard to take this writing seriously when the author apparently can't even justify the paragraphs properly...
I actually re-watched the "new" trilogy recently, mostly because I wanted to see if Phantom Menace was as bad as:
1) I remembered (the answer is no)
2) Everybody says it was (also no)
With a bit of editing, the movie could have been at least as good as Return of the Jedi. I still have a lot of gripes, though:
1) The "new" trilogy doesn't have a consistent villain, unless you count Palpatine. (Except the naive viewer won't know Palpatine is a villain until the third movie; in the first movie, he's simply the Senator from Naboo.) It was really, really disappointing that Darth Maul was just, bam, dead. Bye-bye Sith. It didn't help that the character was hardly even a character; maybe one speaking line, hired stunt-man instead of an actor, etc. Darth Vader had twenty times more dialog in the A New Hope. (I don't know who invented Grievious, but I really really liked that character in Episode III and I think it would have been great if he was *the* villain throughout the trilogy. He was strong, scary, had killed Jedi before, and was more than a little crazy (smashing out the window and walking along the outside of the ship to escape.) Good combo.)
2) The raceway announcer. The pod racers *were* a good action sequence, if only Lucas had cut or replaced that two-headed announcer guy from it. He wasn't funny, he contributed nothing to the plot (except explaining some things about the race that could easily have been better done by Wato, Amidala, C3PO, or anybody really. Even Jar-Jar was watching.)
3) Mitichlorians. Everybody's talked about this, but if your movie has magic (and, yes, the Force is magic), MAKE IT BE MAGIC! Don't try to explain it with science, or just looks stupid. (Take your que from, say Star Trek with never attempted to explain exactly how their artificial gravity actually worked; it would be a stupid explanation because it can't possibly work, and we all know that.)
4) The scene where Anakin blows up the ONE ship with the droid safety trigger with a lucky shot. I was actually ok with him fumbling into the battle, as long as you assume R2 was doing most of the actual driving (the movie never makes it clear how much R2 was doing and how much Anakin was), but:
A) How did he get through the shield when all the other Naboo fighters couldn't dent it? IIRC, they never answered this, he just somehow magically was through. They even put in a line of dialog from the Naboo pilots saying "how'd he do that?" Cripes, Lucas, don't point out to the audience that it doesn't make sense!
B) Why is the main power generator for a battleship IN THE DOCKING BAY? That one makes my head hurt. Even for a ship that never, ever would be attacked it makes no sense; a bad landing could blow the whole ship up.
5) It would have been nice if one of these movies explained some things. How come Gungans have no representation in the Senate? (At least, not until the second movie when Jar-Jar joins.) Are droids slaves? Some appear to be free-willed, at least. Where does R2 keep the 24 new gadgets he seems to have every movie, and who refills his rocket-fuel?
The good things:
The special effects were good, and I mean really convincingly good.
Except for a couple cheesy moments, the action sequences, also, were good.
The art design was simply brilliant. I loved everything about the Gungan army and the droid army.
This post is way too long, but the short story is that the movie is not nearly as bad as people say it was. "Not meeting expectations" is not the same thing as "crappy movie." Additionally, with only a small amount of editing (the points I mentioned above), it could have been made much, much better.
Comment of the year
The root of my big disappointment with the prequels is that there is actually a great story there, but Lucas sadly couldn't figure out a way to tell it coherently. It was a hard story to pull off, admittedly. On the other hand, looking at a broken story is often more inspiring than seeing a perfect one: it gives you that 'hey, I could do this better!' feeling which is often the key to creating a new work.
One of the things I would do if I were trying to tell the prequel arc would be to give the Sith a motivation, made their evil seductive. Sidious and Vader should not be merely trying to hate and destroy, they should have a grand vision for a better galaxy which they are willing to sacrifice everything they love for. Anakin's 'I must turn to the dark side to save Padme' moment just didn't ring true to me; love doesn't work like that. His speech in Episode II about needing to rule the galaxy for its own good was better. That should have been developed further and made the dramatic spine of the trilogy.
What we needed to see, and didn't get, was a plausible arc about how a crusading individual, while motivated from the best of intentions, can lose sight of their destiny even as they think they're fulfilling it. The Vader we saw at the start of Episode IV should have been someone who still basically believed that the Empire was achieving something important and worthwhile, until he is startled into reevaluating his life by discovering his son; but the Vader we see at the start of Episode III doesn't seem like he could become that person. He's *already* lost and broken, on the verge of suicide; instead, he should have been full of pain but also pride, something to give him a reason to keep blowing up planets for the greater good.
The original trilogy had simple, clear motivations propelling them forward: save the princess, become a Jedi, rescue my friends. Anakin needed a similar simple yet double-edged motivation right from the first movie, constantly challenging him with the Dark Side: 'save others because they need saving' vs 'control others because they need controlling'. And we didn't get that.
But maybe someone will be inspired by a failed trilogy to write that story in a different universe, and do it right.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC