Slashdot Mirror
Disney Turned Down George Lucas's Star Wars Scripts
ageoffri writes: When Star Wars fans learned that George Lucas was making the prequels, most were filled with excitement and anticipation. When Episodes 1-3 were actually released, many found them unsatisfying, and became disillusioned with Lucas's writing. Now, it appears Disney felt the same way. Though they bought Lucasfilm and began production on Episode 7, they weren't interested in using the scripts Lucas had already worked on. In an interview, he said, "The ones that I sold to Disney, they came up to the decision that they didn't really want to do those. So they made up their own. So it's not the ones that I originally wrote [on screen in Star Wars: The Force Awakens]." After what happened with the prequels, that may be for the best — but others may worry about Episode 7's plot being entirely in the hands of Disney and JJ Abrams.
As long as the plot's NOT in Lucas's hands, I'm happy.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Since there's less canon to violate than Trek, and it's not a reboot... maybe?
Pretending this is my office full of bitter coworkers..
Good on Disney. Lucas may be ok at imagining a story but he sucks at things like writing dialogue. That they dumped his scripts gives me hope these movies may be decent.
My guess is he brought back Jar Jar Binks, as a Jedi. He was in exile, just like Obi-Wan. Every scene will be like the one where he got the droids stuck on his foot, and accidentally killed enemies. Only this time, it will be with a light saber and mad acrobatics.
How could they possibly do worse than Lucas?
> When Episodes 1-3 were actually released, many found them unsatisfying
Riiiight, unsatisfying. That's exactly the right description to use.
I recently watched THX 1138. It is a good reminder of how brilliant he was. Years ahead, great vision, but as the years passed he started losing his edge, more and more. From the Director's Cut of THX that is evident from several unneded CGI scenes that distract from the otherwise great film. The prequels and special editions show the same thing even more prominently. And let's not even talk about Indiana Jones 4 (what, there are only 3 Indiana Jones movies? Ok, I feel you). So we should be grateful when he is not writing scripts nowadays... Now, J.J. on the other hand is being made fun of for his "flares" etc, but he actually made us Trekkers be the cool kids for once! Yes, it was not "Star Trek" in the traditional sense, however it was highly enjoyable action sci-fi. Given that Star Wars was in any case not "cerebral" to start with, he should be even more at home working on it.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
After seeing a truly execrable trailer for "Strange Magic" (an upcoming animated movie, with the story provided by Lucas), I don't think there's anything JJ Abrams could possibly do worse than George Lucas.
Better than 5+ minute drawn-out JarJar scenes.
While I'm happy to see that Lucas wouldn't be directing the new movies and think Jar-Jar Binks must die - I'm disappointed that they completely ignored his scripts.
Like him or love him he still kept a good eye on the overall mythos of the Star Wars universe. While JJ Abrams can certainly do sci-fi action I highly HIGHLY doubt his sci-fi story telling skills which, while interesting, never seem to actually have a point (cloverfield, 8mm, ST:2009... LOST!)
I think Rebels is a decent entry for Star Wars, I don't think it's surpassed Clone Wars but with Lucas setting the bar so low with the Holiday Special it's hard to go wrong. Disney has shown with Marvel that they can do good stories too.
But this isn't Lucas' story - So bringing back the original cast plus Hollywood's current penchant for rehashing old plots that worked AND JJ's blatant cribbing of Wrath of Khan into STID doesn't give me warm fuzzy feelings.
I'd like to be pleasantly surprised...
Couple things for the naysayers to consider though, and why I believe Episode 7 will be good (but not near the hype):
- Abrams himself said he is a much bigger fan of Star Wars than Star Trek. You can see that in the Trek films. They are far more "space action" akin to W than Trek.
- Disney is the big mouse and certainly has and can screw with production they have really let the Marvel folks run their own system and it's working to great effect. The hot thing for studios these days is a more hands off approach and that's good for everyone.
- Kathleen Kennedy is running SW and shes been around for the golden years for Lucas and Spielburg. Disney will let her and Abrams run the show.
- Dear god the script. Both ST reboots were penned by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman. They are responsible for quite a bit of the new hollywood schlock (Look at their IMDB's). Hell you could make a case that Abrams direction is what made the new Treks at least somewhat enjoyable and not just Transformers in space (and Into Darkness came close). Lawrence Kasdan who wrote TESB is involved. Basically everyone who's had their hands on the SW script has far more talent then those two.
And lastly my biggest hope is that this is a movie being made by a generation that grew up on SW. They had to eat what Lucas was giving them like the rest of us and should want to start anew. Every fan has thought "if i made a SW sequel..." and now some of those folks are getting to, with some help from those that helped in the beginning.
Could it all go south? Very much so, but I am keeping restrained excitement.
There are no prequels, and this follow on trilogy won't exist either.
Just like the matrix sequels don't exist...
I have no idea whether Guinness was an asshole or not, but he was a very good actor, certainly the best one on the set of Episode IV. I recently rewatched his brilliant take as George Smiley in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and was reminded of just how good he was. That's not even mentioning his extraordinary work with David Lean in Bridge Over The River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago. A personal favorite is the original The Ladykillers.
So far as I understand it, while Guinness disliked the dialogue (who can blame him, a lot of it was pretty bad), he was grateful for the money it gave him.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Disney Turned Down George Lucas's Star Wars Scripts
NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
Look where all this talking got us, baby.
If the Disney versions sell tickets, they will conclude they made the right choice. If they flop, then they'll probably return to Lucas's stories. As much as fans complain about Lucas's past plots, they still pay to watch. Fans like complaining; it means they are engaged and care. Talking about 100 ways to kill Jar Jar creates a common bond.
Table-ized A.I.
But then you have to just remember how awful JJ's Star Trek movies were.
Some people have this opinion, but I think if you took a survey, most would agree with the statement that Episode 1-3 was much worse than The ST reboot. I'll take whatever JJ has in store after more of Lucas's awful writing.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
You just don't "get" Jar Jar. The Force channels power through his clumsiness. His "accidents" are guided and/or re-shaped by The Force. It's not like Scooby Doo's F-ups where shear luck catches the bad guy; Jar Jar is divinely-guided chaos.
It's mutation-based evolution cross-bred with Intelligent Design (Catholic model?) It's a contrast to The Force channeled through skill, planning, and discipline of the other characters. He's a rare character pattern in film.
Maybe he gives hope to those of us sorely lacking Jedi qualities? :-)
Table-ized A.I.
I don't understand. A hundred comments and you're the only one I see who even mentions, let's alone puts due faith in co-writer Lawrence Kasdan.
Kasdan co-wrote "The Empire Strikes Back", co-wrote a movie called "Raiders of the Lost Ark", and wrote other, ehem, minor movies like "The Big Chill", and "The Bodyguard" and "Silverado".
He's co-writing this thing.
-------------------
This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
The "we were kids when we saw episodes 1-3" argument is perfectly valid. However I think it would be fair to say that from episodes 1-3 to 4-6 the target age group dropped from age 15'ish to age 10'ish. I think that is a legitimate complaint. Although I will entertain the thought that the change began in 3 with the ewoks.
Reasons to throw out Lucas scripts:
There's really nothing they can do to make it worse than anything Lucas has done, except more Jar Jar and ewoks.
Many of my problems with Into Darkness had to do with problems with the film itself, rather than as a Star Trek fan. Now, I've still got problems with it as a Star Trek film, but more on the level that they poorly copied something existing instead of coming up with something new. I think that the elements that they copied didn't work because they were trying to force many of them in for the purpose of making references rather than to make the film work. Even then, that's not really a problem because I'm a fan, it's a problem because of lack of originality, something not unique to Trek.
My main problems, though, were that they decided to fill the film with too much deus ex machina. It's like they wrote themselves into corners, and then decided to just do crazy stuff to resolve it that didn't make much sense, or that seem like they didn't think through the plot consequences. Like the whole "Did they just cure death with the magic blood? So death isn't a problem going forward?" issue.
That's not bad Trek, that's bad film-making.
It's been an alternate parallel universe ever since Tasha Yar went back in time with the Enterprise C, ended up being captured by Romulans, and had a half-Romular daughter who went on have her own warbird in the fleet; the ship was supposed to be destroyed with all hands and it was definitely not. Hell, it's been an alternate timeline since Kirk went back to San Francisco if you want to get technical. Which means it's actually been an alternate timeline since the eighties. And that's not even counting the stable time loop involving the 19th century and whatnot.
The Trek timeline is a convoluted knot. Why should the latest movies be any different in that respect?