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.

Comments

Good news

[slapout]

As long as the plot's NOT in Lucas's hands, I'm happy.

Re:Good news

[Dan East]

His plots aren't all that bad. His screenplay (especially dialog) is weak, and his directing is of a very specific style that only works with certain kinds of actors. It is both those things that hurt the prequels.

As far as directing, Lucas is a hands-off director. He doesn't give the actors feedback or direction - he expects them to bring the characters to life and flush out the nuances on his own. So what he'd do is shoot a scene over and over, even though the actors thought they got it perfectly right, until some nuance or personality came out that seemed more natural and unique. He always said he did his directing in the editing room - but to do that he needed a big pool of material to work with to pull the good stuff out of. With Hamill, Fisher and Ford, they had the talent, energy and personality to simply bring the characters to life. Do you think we liked Han Solo so well because Lucas directed Ford to be that exact character? Or Princess Leia being such a strong female lead and showing playful disdain in the harsh tone of her voice towards Solo? Lucus just stepped back and let them create.

That directorial style worked well in American Graffiti too. Like the liquor store scene. The robber leaves the store and throws the bottle of liquor to Terry. They shot it over and over, and every time he caught it perfectly. Until finally, he turned around too late and just barely caught it with the tips of his fingers. That was what Lucas was waiting for, and that's what made it in the movie. At the very beginning, where Terry runs his Vespa over the curb and hit the wall - total accident, but Lucas kept the cameras rolling and that made it into the movie.

So when it comes to most kids, like Jake Lloyd, they NEED coaching and prompting and directed. I strongly believe that Jake Lloyd was awful in Phantom Menace because of Lucas' directing style. When I watch him in other movies, like Jingle All the Way, I'm reminded that he was pretty talented for his age - Lucas just didn't bring that out because he just sits back and watches with no obvious emotion or constructive feedback.

Re:Good news

[JeffAtl]

George, no amount of astroturfing is going to convince anyone that the prequels were good or even tolerable. You should have at least hired someone who knew who to write passable dialog.

You were good when you first started off, but now you've been blinded by your own success.

Re:Good news

[Firethorn]

I think that Lucas's plots aren't bad. I think the problem became one of what many extremely successful writers and directors suffer from - lack of effective editorial control.

Robert Jordan's books declined when he switched to having his wife be his primary editor - she just wasn't mean enough, if that makes sense. During the prequels Lucas ended up with a bunch of yes-men that agreed with every inane idea he had. Without that he'd have a better product.

Re:Good news

[sexconker]

The first Transformers movie sucked badly. Really badly.

The Transformers: The Movie is fucking awesome. It has a great story, an amazing soundtrack, and the most amazing voice cast of any movie ever:

Peter Cullen
Frank Welker
Judd Nelson
Kasey Kasem
Eric Idle
Scatman Crothers
Lionel Stander
Leonard Nimoy
Robert Stack
Orson Welles

And you get to top that list off with a song by Weird Al Yankovic.

Re:Good news

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you saying that kids are NOT interested in the drama of unjust taxation of trade routes?

Re:Good news

[luis_a_espinal]

I agree. IMO the complaints about the prequels were fueled primarily by nostalgia about the original movies, remembering the delight of seeing them as a child.

Bro. Phantom Menace. Jar Jar Binks. Droids controlled from a single point of failure (even my non-technically inclined friends were like "wtf is that?"). You can't explain the hate of that away just by mere childhood nostalgia. That crap was awful in an absolute sense.

I rewatched the original trilogy as an adult and wasn't nearly so enchanted.

And neither was I (sans RoTJ).

That shouldn't be surprising. These are all children's movies; we grew up. Lucas' movies didn't change so much as we did.

Sorry, no. Phantom Menace can't be explained away. The Clone Wars and Revenge of the Sith were watchable as they portrayed Anakin's fall (sans the lingering doopey-doopey romance between emo-Anakin and hot-Amigdala and a whole bunch of other crap.)

But Phanton Menace was some utter crap that stained the other two, and Jar Jar Binks is like the dog turd that stains the sole of your shoe that doesn't come out no matter how much you scrape it on the grass.

You can't explain the utter fail of that to mere childhood nostalgia. You are crazy.

Yay!!

[Lunix Nutcase]

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.

Re:Yay!!

[Grishnakh]

What are you talking about? Shatner never directed a Star Trek movie. Although I have sometimes wondered why the Star Trek franchise went straight from Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home to Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. I guess someone at Paramount forgot how to count. But that's OK, IV and VI were both good movies.

Lucas has lost it.

[Ecuador]

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.

Re:He's baaaaaack!

[Minwee]

I thought everybody knew that Palpatine was just the fall guy and Darth-Darth Binks was the real power behind the Empire.

I am say, 68% excited

[jacks smirking reven]

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.

Re:Your scripts were terrible

[MightyMartian]

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.