The most basic Star Wars question...

I showed them to my kids in 1-6 order, figuring it would be easier for her to follow the story of Anakin. In between 2-3, I showed the Clone Wars animated DVD's that perfectly bridge the gap between the two live action films.

Derek

 

Indeed, the evidence overwhelmingly supports the idea that making Vader into Luke's father was an idea conceived between the first two films, NOT something Lucas had planned all along. Anyone who doubts this needs to read Secret History.

Perhaps the biggest mistake Lucas made (creatively, anyway) was deciding the sequels had to be part of a massive saga. The first film, as I noted, was self-contained and told a complete story. In the fall of 1977 when I first read about sequels, I expected that they would be more of the same... individual stories of the continuing adventures of Luke, Leia, and Han. I thought it would be like the James Bond films... same characters, different stories. But I get the impression Lucas aspired to be known for more than making the greatest popcorn movie of all time, and perhaps that was what drove him to try to turn Star Wars into the Godfather. To me it's analogous to taking Dr. No and trying to stretch it into five more films.

 

The popularity of the prequels among young boys is a mystery to me, though I can attest to it also from observing my daughter's male classmates. If the prequels were just filled with mindless action I could sort of understand it, but between the action scenes they are so mind-numbingly tedious and the plots are so incomprehensible. I don't see how six-year-old boys can sit through The Phantom Menace and stay awake.

I would think showing them in "chronological" order of storyline would make the inconsistencies between Star Wars and the other films (and between Empire, ROTJ and the prequels for that matter) even more glaring. And as noted, it would remove much of the drama from the three earlier-produced films.

 

Empire Strikes Back is a clumsy film? It's the best of the bunch, in my opinion.

The prequels are OK on their own. Yes, there are some serious issues. They lack more lifelike acting and dialog. And they lack some good directing. Lucas wore too many hats. Now, if they had made the prequels way back when...let's say 86/89/92, they may have been more interesting. The first three movies are far more organic. The CGI strips a lot of the life away from the prequels.

 

No, according to the shooting script and the Secret History book referenced earlier, the line that David Prowse said on the set was, "Obi-Wan murdered your father." They did this in order to throw off all the rumor-mongers who were reporting to the fan mags at the time.

Later on, James Earl Jones looped the line and replaced it with what finally wound up in the film. I think one of the Star Wars specials even has the rough production track of David Prowse saying the other line in his thick Scottish brogue.

The upcoming book The Making of The Empire Strike Back will undoubtedly go into this in great detail (due out this October).

Yes, I agree. It's an eye-opening experience to see this research and realize how convoluted the whole Star Wars universe is.

I don't think he had a lot of choice -- one, because of the massive amount of money involved, two, because of audience demand, and three, because Lucas felt he had more story to tell.

The problem he had was trying to shoehorn the back half of the story into the first half, which was really messy and complicated. Just the whole issue of combining Luke's father with Darth Vader was a major, last-minute change; I'm not sure if even Leigh Brackett (who wrote the original Empire screenplay) was aware of it when she did her first draft. But in hindsight, it's the only way they could have gone, even though it negates a lot of stuff from the first film.

The book also goes into the the three as-yet unmade films: Episodes 7, 8, and 9, which details the downfall of Skywalker as ruler, his offspring, and more conflicts. Lucas basically gave up, saying, "I'm too old to be able to commit another 10 years of my life to telling those stories." I'm surprised he doesn't just hire other people to do it and just supervise it, but then again, he's much too hands-on a guy to do that these days.

 

I don't understand how that would make tying the sequels into one big "saga" a necessity. Audience demand could have been met just as well by a series of sequels that were unrelated adventures of the main cast, a la James Bond or Indiana Jones. Remember that Splinter in the Mind's Eye was originally written as a potential sequel, and that's exactly what it is. A series of sequels like that would probably have made just as much money, and potentially could have gone on longer than just the three initial sequels.

Almost certainly she wasn't. In the screenplay she wrote, Luke meets the spirit of his father along with Ben on Dagobah. Needless to say, his father is not Darth Vader in that script. For anyone who's interested, her script just hit the internets a few weeks ago and can be downloaded here.

I still don't understand why you think it's "the only way." There are dozens of directions they could have taken the story.

 

Dr No, No, No, No, No, No!

 

4,5,6.

The prequels are a waste of your kid's childhood, they will actually hurt their development.

 

Have you read The Secret History of Star Wars? Do that, and I think you'll agree.

 

I read a .pdf rough draft of Secret History that used to be up on his website a few years ago, before the book was published. I know it was expanded and modified after that, but I don't recall anything that supported what you are getting at (that making a saga was the only possible way to go). I recall coming away with the impression it was more the direction Lucas wanted to go, to be seen as a serious artiste rather than "just" a craftsman of entertaining films. Can you elucidate on what makes you think "saga" was the only way to go?

 

Show them where the characters REALLY come from...

 

I never heard of this book until this thread, but I'm gonna get it now!

 

This question came up recently, and I said 1-6, just because the movies do end up being Anakin's story, even if it wasn't originally/shouldn't have been that way. I remember that we fired up Ep 4 the next day after the original midnight showing of Ep 3, and were awed at how the whole things connected (continuity flaws aside).

However, I like the 4-5, 1-3, 6 order as well. It's an interesting solution to not having the context if you start with the first three but giving away the "ending" if you start with 4-6.

 

My daughter "met" Darth Vader and some Stormtroopers at the Topeka zoo and was scared by this big guy dressed all in black, but in the end wanted to invite him to our house. She's almost 4.
She's never seen anything Star Wars and I'm patiently waiting until the "right" age - what would you all suggest? 5?

Anyway, I only have the SEs of the original films with the LD master transfers as bonuses, so those are what she will see. None of the new films will ever cross my threshhold and she will never see the SEs of the originals on my watch, either.

 

Production order -- the whole series is too depressing when viewed 1-6.

 

There are good and valid points here. I certainly agree that Star Wars is a great stand alone film.

However, I see Star Wars as being focused on one story, and with the Empire Strikes Back, our perspective is zoomed out so that we see all of the context of what was happening in Star Wars. I love that aspect of it, going back and rewatching Star Wars with a new set of eyes.

Does anyone here know of somebody who has only seen The Empire Strikes Back, and none of the other films? I wonder how that one would be viewed as a stand alone movie.

 

Empire doesn't just expand the context, it radically changes the context of what was happening in Star Wars. As a fan of Star Wars as it was, that really annoyed me. I'm not a fan of the "everything you knew was a lie" plot twist cliche.

 

I cannot put so much emphasis on the plot when it comes to Star Wars. Of course it's important (as we've seen in the new films which were a disaster plot wise), but Star Wars is not the Buddenbrooks. I too didn't like the "I'm your father / you're my sister" twists, but Empire is much more. It has a great look, it has the battle of Hoth, Yoda, the asteroid field, Bespin and some of the most beautiful pieces of music John Williams has ever written.

 

Yarr, when I was a kid I was swept up in it and was bothered by nothing. Still to this day.

 

I can agree here. It's kind of like The Hobbit compared to the entire Lord of the Rings. (The prequels are kind of The Silmarilion, a non narrative incoherent mess of story fragments and no characters).

 

Agreed. People think there was some huge ugly change between 1983 and 199.

There wasn't, save for the directing of V and VI.

 

He had more story to tell. Do you need a bigger reason than that? If you go back and read the earliest drafts of Star Wars, you'll see that there was tons of plot details and characters they had to omit due to time. That dictated a sequel right there.

I loved Empire when it came out, despite its unconventional structure and how it basically feels like Act 2 of a 3-act play. I think a lot of fans were upset by that, but I immediately understood: "ah, this is where everything looks bleak and tragic, setting up a triumphant finale for the last film." I realized that Episodes 4 and 6 were just bookends for Empire, and it made sense that way. If anything, Episode 6 is flawed by the relative lack of tragedy -- both Harrison Ford and Billy Dee Williams argued separately to have heroic deaths in the film, which Lucas nixed -- and a lot of forced elements, like the Ewoks.

Make no mistake, Star Wars is a huge, brawling, epic story, and Lucas has barely scratched the surface of where he could've gone (and maybe yet someday go) with it. I was disappointed with Episodes 1-3, but I think a lot of the problems had to do with the fact that you had a weak central character in Episode 1 (the kid), and a guy who starts off arrogant becomes evil in 2 and 3. No heroes to root for like we did in the latter three films. I believe Secret History makes this very obvious, as did a lot of the reviews that came out during their original theatrical releases. The book also references a lot of stories and characters that were deleted from certain script drafts, and it gives some clues as to what direction the saga could have gone.

What would probably have been a better (but much more difficult) story to tell would have been Episodes 7, 8, & 9. Lucas talked about his plans for those in the late 1970s, and I think those would've been far more interesting, more violent, and more dramatic than what he did with Episodes 1-3. But infinitely harder and less-commercial movies to make.

 

My question is where do you guys think episodes 7-9 wouldve gone? The Empire was finished, both Vader and The Emperor were dead so where wouldve the plot line gone do you think?

Here's something else that has always bugged me. When both Obi Wan and Yoda die they just disappear. How come when Vader dies he doesnt do the same if he was once a Jedi as well?