The Secret History of Star Wars 569
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."
A child of Star Wars (Score:5, Interesting)
Seeing Star Wars as a child has had a lifelong effect upon me and my worldview.
Cult of Lucas. I don't get it. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Cult of Lucas. I don't get it. (Score:5, Interesting)
No. The next minute, THEY are told they are brother and sister. Big difference.
But does it explain... (Score:2, Interesting)
No, I still haven't gotten over the wanton abuse of my childhood memories.
Re:A child of Star Wars (Score:4, Interesting)
The subsequent films almost never mattered. It was the initial blast that forever sealed Star Wars as one of my top two favorite films.
Re:i recently saw "the hidden fortress" (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
I 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.
Re:nerd credentials? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:i recently saw "the hidden fortress" (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Does anybody really care? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:nerd credentials? (Score:5, Interesting)
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!
Re:"Prequels" not good? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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.)
Re:i recently saw "the hidden fortress" (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
"Seven Samurai" references too? (Score:3, Interesting)
I found Episode III very reminiscent of Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai" [wikipedia.org] (by the same Japanese director that made The Hidden Fortress [wikipedia.org].)
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.
Re:nerd credentials? (Score:2, Interesting)
i'm sick of geeky in the intellectual way being instantly substituted with nerdy in the comic book way.
btw: star wars blows.
Re:Star Wars; breakable like Firefly (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Cult of Lucas. I don't get it. (Score:4, Interesting)
It's just a usenet post in book form (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:s/Jar Jar/C3PO (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:i recently saw "the hidden fortress" (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:nerd credentials? (Score:2, Interesting)
http://ask.slashdot.org/~DireWolf [slashdot.org]
#9626.
He's the guy I created first, before I came back a few months later.
Re:nerd credentials? (Score:2, Interesting)
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 [slashdot.org]
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!
Euurgh (Score:1, Interesting)
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.
Re:Hooray for cos-play Star Wars (Score:3, Interesting)
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!
Star Wars is a blatent rip-off of King Arthur (Score:3, Interesting)
The King Arthur Myths are based off the Bible but rewritten for the middle ages.
Re:nerd credentials? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:The Marx Brother Syndrome (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Other mythologies (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Oh please (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:s/Jar Jar/C3PO (Score:3, Interesting)
Jar-jar, otoh, was a semi-retarded meat popsicle.
Basic formatting (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:i recently saw "the hidden fortress" (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Lucas was like Roddenberry, great ideas, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
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.