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George Lucas's Terrible Idea for Star Wars Episodes 7-9 (indiewire.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the meet-the-midi-chlorians dept.

In an interview with James Cameron, George Lucas reveals what he'd planed for the final three Star Wars films: "[The next three 'Star Wars' films] were going to get into a microbiotic world," he told Cameron. "There's this world of creatures that operate differently than we do. I call them the Whills. And the Whills are the ones who actually control the universe. They feed off the Force...." In terms of his storytelling, Lucas regarded individuals as "vehicles for the Whills to travel around in... And the conduit is the midi-chlorians. The midi-chlorians are the ones that communicate with the Whills. The Whills, in a general sense, they are the Force."

Lucas is confident that had he kept his company, the Whills-focused films "would have been done. Of course, a lot of the fans would have hated it, just like they did 'Phantom Menace' and everything, but at least the whole story from beginning to end would be told."
Lucas acknowledges in the interview that "Everybody hated it in 'Phantom Menace' [when] we started talking about midi-chlorians," prompting one Ars Technica editor to add "Because it was a really dumb idea." He speculates that if the final three Star Wars movies followed Lucas's original plan, "Imagine, if you can, our heroes shrinking down like the Fantastic Voyage to go meet some midi-chlorians."

Knowing Lucas's plans for the franchise "should make every Star Wars fan send a note of gratitude to whoever at Disney decided to buy the franchise and take it away and out from under Lucas' control."

10 of 312 comments (clear)

  1. Hmmm... by MightyMartian · · Score: 4, Interesting

    To be sure, it's a pretty stupid idea. But one can almost understand where he was coming from. Anything else, including the Extended Universe, would just have been variations on the pre-existing themes. New dark lord and/or war lord rises, picks up where Palpatine and Vader left off, and a ragtag band of rebels goes to war again.

    You know, just like what's actually happening in the main Episode films.

    --
    The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    1. Re:Hmmm... by alvinrod · · Score: 4, Interesting

      When you've got an entire universe where plenty of stuff has happened a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away I think it would have been better to tell an entirely new and different story within that universe largely disconnected from the original trilogy. Part of the problem with the prequel trilogy and the sequel trilogy is that they're too beholden to a story created in the original trilogy that didn't need to imagine what exactly had occurred before or what would happen after it ended.

      When writing the original Star Wars do you suppose Lucas had any real idea what the Clone Wars were other than something that sounded cool and to establish a relationship between Ben and Luke's father? Do you suppose when everyone was celebrating on Endor (or it's moon if you want to be that pedantic) that Lucas had given any thought as to the ramifications of what had just occurred to the political situation in the galaxy and what it might mean going forward? Of course he didn't, because those things were unimportant to the story being told.

      However, if some time later you decide to make sequels or prequels to that story, you're beholden to offhand remarks or comments that weren't well fleshed out because you didn't sit down to write or plan out those in advance of your initial story. Tell new stories in that universe that have nothing to do with the characters or events in the original and you might be able to get something narratively satisfying. You can still drop a few references in as subtle winks to the audience if you want, but you won't be so restricted.

      Look at Tolkien's work for an example of stories spanning ages and only being connected by tiny threads. You can certainly find them between the Silmarillion and Lord of the Rings, but they're largely unconcerned with one and other and enjoyment of one doesn't depend on having read the other. I suspect that this is the same reason that the Hobbit movies weren't good (apart from trying to make them tonally something that the story wasn't) as they tried to tie it to Lord of the Rings more than it needed to be.

    2. Re:Hmmm... by AmiMoJo · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I like the concept behind the preqels and sequels, even if they were not always executed very well.

      We see the fall of the Jedi order, the flaws in it laid bare. Then the rebels fight back and eventually defeat the empire, but with no Jedi to maintain order and only evil force users the First Order rises out of the ashes.

      Now it looks like they are going to conclude with how the rebellion and the good guys can survive in a post-Jedi universe, where the Force is unbound by the old religious dogma. Obviously there will be a showdown between Ray and Kylo Ren, echoing Return of the Jedi but surely with a different outcome.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  2. Call me crazy... by Drakster · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Call me crazy, but I have a (morbid?) fascination of giving George Lucas a budget, isolating him from the fan community and press, and simply leaving him to his own devices to produce the Star Wars movies he visions.

    Judging by the changes he's made to them already, I wouldn't expect them to be good, but nonetheless, it would certainly be interesting to see.

  3. Tangaroa's Star Wars Ideas by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Interesting

    Some guy no one has heard of also has terrible ideas for Star Wars 7-9!

    An alternate Star Wars 7 plot
    Ideas for Episodes 8&9 after seeing Episode 7
    Could the Phantom Menace be Fixed?
    And, um, Frog Wars.

    Read and enjoy. Or don't.

  4. Re: Reality surpassed sci-fi long ago! by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Science Fiction was badly damaged by the space cowboy shit that Lucas and his gang brought. The new wave SF of the 70s was awesome: Ellison, Pohl, Ballard, Sturgeon, LeGuin, etc.

    The Star Wars crap sucked the oxygen out of the SF subculture. It took decades to recover (Meiville, Vandermeer, etc.)

  5. why ? by Tom · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Knowing Lucas's plans for the franchise "should make every Star Wars fan send a note of gratitude to whoever at Disney decided to buy the franchise and take it away and out from under Lucas' control."

    Why?

    Granted, his last works don't exactly give me much confidence, but those movies they made instead, let's just cut the crap and agree that they were bad. Really, really bad. They were so bad that the one thing they were good at was being material for CinemaSins.

    Most movie outlines, when given in elevator-pitch format, sounds either silly or trivial.

    Probably, Lucas' change there would have ruined it, especially as it came from nowhere (watched in chronological order, these midi-chlorians are mentioned what, twice, then not spoken about for 5 or so movies, then suddenly they are at the center of the story?).

    But what they did with the movies instead definitely ruined it. The last one especially was cringe-worthy.

    But both of these competing concepts are a great example of how Hollywood works: Milk everything to the max, and make sure that the discussion about it never ends. When people stop talking about your shit between franchise releases, stir up some controversy to keep the juice flowing.

    --
    Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
  6. Re:I wish Star Wars ended after original trilogy by grep+-v+'.*'+* · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What are you talking about? It did.

    Just like there was only a singnle Matrix and Men in Black movie. Anybody who says differently is just a evil heretic trying to deceive you and needs to drink much more than they already have.

    --
    If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
  7. Re:Bullshit. Disney is just as horrible. by AmiMoJo · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The point of that scene was that if everyone dies saving the others then you end up with no one left. The heroic suicide attack is heroic but not a winning strategy.

    As for light speed ramming, keep in mind that was the biggest ship the rebels ever had. If anything didn't make sense it was the space bombers, but it's Star Wars so scientific accuracy isn't really a thing in that universe.

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  8. Re:At least it wasn't 'social justice' by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I dunno - It really is a different tack, with Disney expounding on Lando's pansexuality. i mean, whatever two consenting adults do is cool, but I really can't get into a character that wants too have sex with my little girl or my mailbox or my lawnmower.
    Disney trying to branch off into where characters want to stick their pecker or fig is an annoying and irrelevant side trip that wrecks their story line. ...
    Apparently Solo wasn't actually too bad

    You admit to not seeing Solo, so I'll educate rather than berate: At no point in the movie does Lando even seem to be pansexual. His malfunctioning copilot droid thinks Lando loves "her", but that's it.