Author: Damien

Some Luke Details

Back in 2018, Star Wars: The Force Awakens concept artist Christian Alzmann posted a concept image of Luke Skywalker he had created while working with George Lucas:

This depiction of Luke (both physically and his character description) is similar to his appearance in The Last Jedi, which is possibly more evidence of The Last Jedi using many of Lucas’s Episode VII ideas.

The artist says he got a ‘George “Fabuloso”‘, which was Lucas’s literal stamp of approval of the image, hinting that this would have been Luke’s look if Lucas had made his sequel trilogy.

Lucas mentions a ‘Microbiotic world’ for his nixed sequel plans

In the companion book for James Cameron’s Story of Science Fiction TV series, George Lucas mentions a tidbit about his plans for the sequel trilogy. This was tweeted out (with a photo of the text in question) by Twitter user and illustrator Livio Ramondelli (https://twitter.com/LivioRamondelli/status/1006384885668253696).

Here is what Lucas says in the book:

[The next three Star Wars films] were going to get into a microbiotic world. But 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.

– George Lucas

It’s unclear from the short quote whether Lucas means that the Whills themselves are ‘microbiotic’, or something else. If the Whills are part of the microbiotic world, they may be related to – or may even be – midichlorians. In The Phantom Menace and Revenge of the Sith, the midichlorians are depicted as microscopic beings that communicate the will of the Force, and can even ‘create life’.

Many Star Wars fans have heard of the Whills. A lot of material mentions the Whills, and the movies themselves are – according to Lucas in various sources – history as recorded and told by the mysterious Whills.

The later part of the quote implies that the Whills are godlike, and perhaps it is their voices that are heard when one hears the will of the Force.

Lucas goes on to predict that some fans would have hated it:

If I’d held onto the company I could have done it, and then it 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.

– George Lucas

 

 

Lucas Planned to Kill Luke in Episode IX

Speaking to IGN, Mark Hamill mentioned that George Lucas initially planned to kill Luke Skywalker in Episode IX:

“I happen to know that George [Lucas] didn’t kill Luke until the end of [Episode] 9, after he trained Leia. Which is another thread that was never played upon [in The Last Jedi].” (http://au.ign.com/articles/2018/03/26/mark-hamill-reveals-ending-to-george-lucas-star-wars-episode-9)

Hamill doesn’t explicitly state that this information relates to Lucas’s treatments for the sequel trilogy (he could be referring to the various versions of events Lucas had envisioned since the very start of the saga), but most likely it is referring to the story Lucas was working on shortly before selling Lucasfilm.

This would be another element from Lucas’s story that has made it into The Last Jedi, (albeit a film earlier than planned). It’s hard to tell from quoted text, but Hamill again gives the impression that the events of the new trilogy don’t sit well with him.

Hamill again mentions the training of Leia, which may imply that this was a pretty big aspect of Lucas’s plans. The Last Jedi ends with a young Jedi-to-be carrying the flame of Luke’s story. It’s possible that Lucas’s story has a similar scene with Leia being the one to continue the Skywalker legacy at the end of Episode IX.

Hamill also says:

“George had an overall arc – if he didn’t have all the details, he had sort of an overall feel for where the [sequel trilogy was] going…”

This implies that Lucas’s story may have been sparse on details, but with the overall arc pretty much sorted out.

Pablo Hidalgo Reveals Lucas Story Details

Pablo Hidalgo, member of the Lucasfilm Story Group, and longtime Lucasfilm employee and author, has revealed some details about George Lucas’s sequel trilogy ideas via Twitter.

Naboo News have screengrabs of the tweets in question in their article (https://naboonews.wordpress.com/2018/01/04/george-lucas-wanted-darth-talon-to-corrupt-han-and-leias-son-in-episode-vii/), but here are the important details:

Han and Leia’s Son

It seems that the son of Han and Leia turning to darkness was in Lucas’s story, but with a few big differences to what ended up on screen. In Lucas’s story, the character turns to evil during the course of Episode VII rather than this occurring off screen before the start of The Force Awakens.

Han and Leia’s son (Ben / Kylo Ren in the finished film) was to be corrupted by a Sith Lady called Darth Talon. If that name sounds familiar, she was a character created for the Star Wars: Legacy comics. Here is concept art from The Art of Star Wars: The Force Awakens showing Darth Talon how she might have appeared in the film:

talon_tfa1

“The son falling to the dark side was always in the mix. The movies just ended up having it already an established fact.” – @pablohidalgo

Different Starting Point

As mentioned elsewhere on this blog, Lucas’s Episode VII ideas form a large part of The Last Jedi. Hidalgo says: “In a very general sense, the original idea of [Episode] 7 started midway through what we now know as [Episode] 8.”

What’s in a Name?

Hidalgo mentions that Kira was not the first name proposed for the character who became Ray (there were at least two other names), and also mentions the name Skyler as an early Finn moniker. What do you get if you add a few letters to Skyler? Skywalker! According to Hidalgo:

“Skyler was the son in some versions. And as for how all that was gonna go down, that ain’t my story to tell.” – @pablohidalgo

A character called Uber became Snoke.

 

It’s Like Poetry; It Rhymes

In behind the scenes footage while making the prequel trilogy, Lucas explained the saga’s structure by comparing it to poetry, stating that each stanza rhymes with the others in certain ways. We can see this visually and thematically in the two trilogies Lucas produced: Anakin and Luke follow similar paths – leaving Tatooine to enter a larger world, not knowing their fathers (or not having a father, as the case may be), learning the ways of the Force, losing a hand in battle, and so on. Lucas went to great lengths to show parallels between the two trilogies’ heroes. Consider these two images from the final episode of each trilogy:

dooku-anakin2

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Anakin fights Count Dooku, while being egged on by Chancellor Palpatine in Revenge of the Sith, and Luke fights Darth Vader, while being egged on by Emperor Palpatine in Return of the Jedi.

There are countless examples of how Lucas deliberately created the prequel trilogy to be the ‘other side of the coin’ compliment to the original trilogy (you can read an extremely thorough analysis of this over at http://www.starwarsringtheory.com/).

What does this tell us about Lucas’s plans for a sequel trilogy? Lucas has always maintained that his ideas revolved around the Skywalker family – specifically the next generation (i.e. Luke and/or Leia’s children). Whatever story involved this new generation of Skywalkers would probably have paralleled Anakin and Luke’s stories in some way, so as to maintain the ‘rhyming’ nature of the saga. With the amount of effort and care Lucas put into making his two trilogies to ‘match up’, it’s not plausible to think he would have simply thrown together a sequel trilogy that didn’t similarly line up with the previous episodes.

If Episodes I-III are about how good people (and governments) turn bad, and Episodes IV-VI are about how a person grows to become a hero and redeem their father and restore peace and freedom, what does that leave for Episodes VII-IX?

Some of Lucas’s comments shed some light:

“The trilogy would deal with the rebuilding of the Republic” (Lucas in 1980, via Wikipedia)

“The main theme of the trilogy would be moral and philosophical problems, such as the necessity for moral choices and the wisdom needed to distinguish right from wrong, justice, confrontation, and passing on what you have learned (Lucas in 1983 and 1989, via Wikipedia)

(https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_sequel_trilogy)

Did Lucas intend to show the next generation of Skywalkers dealing with the choices of Anakin and Luke as they fight to hold together and rebuild the Republic from the ashes of the Empire?

Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi does seem to point in this direction. There is a thread through the film that the galaxy needs to hear Luke Skywalker’s story and learn from it. We see kids at the end of the film sharing Luke’s deeds, as if the stories are rekindling hope, and the kids work on a planet characterised by avarice – a key trait of villains in all of Lucas’s Star Wars episodes. This is perfectly in line with Lucas’s approach to mythic, moralistic storytelling, and is perhaps an element from his original story.

A ‘best guess’ at Lucas’s overall sequel trilogy storyline is that the victory in Return of the Jedi was just the start of healing, and that the struggle of the next generation was to keep the flame of hope burning while other forces work against them, perhaps to rebuild the Empire. Could Luke or Leia’s children be torn between following the footsteps of their grandfather or their father/uncle, perhaps with the two children following different paths? Again, this resembles The Last Jedi, with Kylo Ren – son of Leia – idolising Darth Vader, and Rey – though not a Skywalker in the movie – following Luke’s example.

Though it’s not the final episode of the sequel trilogy, there is a scene in The Last Jedi that closely matches the two images above from Lucas’s films. Rey and Kylo Ren fight in front of Supreme Leader Snoke, who is egging them on from a throne. At the time of writing the film is still in theatres, so stills are not available. Here is an image of Snoke’s throne room to jog your memory:

sw-the-last-jedi-snoke-throne

Guesswork

We can made some educated guesses about the movies by assuming that Lucas would have thematically and visually linked them with the existing trilogies.

There would probably be two levels to the story – the personal and the political, which would parallel each other, just as Anakin’s fall paralleled the fall of the Republic and Luke’s rise precipitated the destruction of the Empire. We can assume some lightsaber battles, perhaps one of a very personal nature in the final episode.

But for now, this is all total conjecture.

 

The Last Jedi Awakens

The recently released The Art of Star Wars: The Last Jedi book reveals some great information about George Lucas’s Episode VII ideas. It turns out that The Last Jedi borrows heavily from Lucas’s ideas that included original plans for The Force Awakens.

Along with concept art from early in development, it is revealed that Lucas’s idea for Episode VII included Luke in self-imposed exile in the remote location of the first Jedi temple. Lucas planned for Luke to regain his broken spirit during the events of the film, and go on to train a new Jedi – Kira (i.e. Rey).

This was apparently pushed aside when Episode VII was made, perhaps because it was not in the familiar Star Wars structure. But the described events clearly were used in the story for Episode VIII.

The Jedi temple looks quite different in the final film compared to the concept art that was (presumably) created for Lucas’s story:

jedi temple

The domed temple calls back designs from the prequel trilogy, while the rocky terrain closely resembles the actual place of Luke’s hideout in The Last Jedi, which perhaps shows that the location was either created or at least approved by Lucas during early preparation. Lucas would often give his concept artists freedom to create weird and wonderful things, and Lucas would choose what matched his own feelings and ideas.

Use the Force, Leia

Mark Hamill is turning out to be the best source of information on Lucas’s proposed sequel trilogy. In an interview where Hamill debunks fan theories about The Last Jedi, he let slip a tidbit about Leia’s part in Lucas’s story:

 “[regarding why Leia] didn’t more fully develop her force sensibilities [in the sequel trilogy/outside the movies]…I think that’s something George Lucas addressed in his original outline for 7, 8, and 9. I was talking to him last week…but they are not following George’s ideas.” – Mark Hammil, Fan Theory Exploder

Hamill looks and sounds dejected when he mentions that Disney are not following George’s ideas. Is this a sign that Hamill thinks Lucas’s story was better than the films Disney have made? Perhaps he had a bigger role, or perhaps he’s just loyal to his lifelong friend.

Since Leia was shown to have Force sensitivity in the original trilogy (and of course she comes from the Skywalker bloodline), it stands to reason that she would develop this further in the sequels.

It’s also likely that one or more of the young characters in Lucas’s story was the child(ren) of Leia and Han Solo. Lucas’s focus was on the Skywalker family, after all.

Kira and Rey

The Star Wars sequel trilogy stars a new Jedi-in-training – Rey (surname unknown). This character was not in Lucas’s story for the sequels, but she is clearly based in part on a character called Kira, who is in concept art that Lucas commissioned while he was preparing for Episode VII.

Lucas’s story apparently revolved around young teenage characters, and it is speculated that Disney were concerned that this was too similar to Episode I – The Phantom Menace, which was perhaps the most divisive Star Wars film to date. Many fans of the original trilogy felt very negatively towards the prequels, with its shift in tone and change in look from the familiar ‘used world’ Star Wars aesthetic from the original movies. Regardless of the validity of those fans’ opinions (or the fact that many fans – especially the younger generation – loved the prequels), it’s understandable that Disney would want to regain the fans that felt betrayed by the prequels (and by Lucas). Therefore we can safely assume that Disney chose to change Lucas’s story in an effort to make a sequel that was more appealing to the fans who grew up on the original trilogy, and for new fans who might not have seen any of Lucas’s original six movies.

In The Art of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, two characters appear in concept art as possibly being the main protagonists of Michael Arndt’s original script draft (and therefore Lucas’s story). These are likely the young teenage characters that Lucas’s story revolved around. Kira is a girl wielding a lightsaber, and Sam is a boy with a resemblance to a young Han Solo. Both appear to be in their mid-late teens:

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Given Lucas’s comments that Star Wars is a ‘soap opera about a family’s generations’, it is quite likely that Kira and Sam are Skywalkers (or Solos), that is they are probably grandchildren of Anakin Skywalker, with either Luke Skywalker or Leia and Han as their parents. In the image above, Kira bears a resemblance to Natalie Portman, the actress who played Luke and Leia’s mother Padme Amidala in the prequel trilogy.

A Female Protagonist

Kathleen Kennedy implied that it was she and J.J. Abrams who decided the sequel trilogy’s main protagonist should be female:

“It was right from the beginning. [having a female protagonist is] something that J.J. and I started talking about day one. It was really important to us. We both have daughters, so, very important.” – Kathleen Kennedy, from <https://www.thesuburbanmom.com/2015/12/16/lucasfilm-president-kathleen-kennedy-star-wars-the-force-awakens/>

This implies that Lucas’s story didn’t have a female main protagonist, though it has been mentioned that Lucas’s story involved Luke training Rey/Kira as his padawan learner.

This next image shows a scene similar to the scene in the movie where Kylo Ren interrogates Rey on Starkiller base, but with a key difference: the Jedi is male. Overlooking the interrogation is a stormtrooper without his helmet on (Finn?). Since we know Lucas’s story had the Kira character as Luke’s padawan learner, who is the Jedi being tortured?

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 Luke and Kira Concept Art

Lucas’s Episode VII apparently contained a lot more Luke/Rey (Kira) interaction than  the final movie. In January 2013, George Lucas brought some concept art to the first story meeting for the sequels, including images of an older Luke Skywalker and his padawan learner, Kira.

In a promotional interview, Mark Hamill mentions some more concept art from early in The Force Awakens‘ development:

“[I saw]…all this conceptual art where Luke’s in scuba gear with [Rey]” – Mark Hamill

The mention of scuba gear brings to mind the concept art of Rey swimming around the wreckage of the Death Star, presumably crashed into an ocean on the forest moon of Endor:

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Is this image one of many, with others including Luke?

Introduction Part 4: A New Hope

In October 2012, Disney announced they were to buy Lucasfilm. Without skipping a beat, Disney went on to announce that new Star Wars movies were in the works, with Episode VII already in the early stages of development for a 2015 release date. There was going to be a Star Wars sequel trilogy.

As information started to flow from Disney, it became apparent that Lucas himself was working on this new trilogy.

“George [Lucas] and Kathleen [Kennedy] had already been working in secrecy for months on the earliest stages of planning for new Star Wars films” from <http://www.starwars.com/news/new-video-series-a-discussion-about-the-future-of-star-wars>

“I have story treatments of 7, 8, and 9” – George Lucas from <http://collider.com/star-wars-episode-7/>

Lucas had met with the original trilogy actors to gauge their interest:

“[Lucas] was the one who  initially approached Harrison and Mark and Carrie.” – Kathleen Kennedy from <https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/lucasfilms-kathleen-kennedy-what-george-846858>

Lucas had written story outlines, created characters, and had his art department working on concept images of old and new characters. Kennedy and Lucas had been meeting with writers to turn Lucas’s ideas into completed scripts, and in November 2012, Michael Arndt was announced as the screenwriter for Episode VII.

At this point in the journey, Lucas had some amount of story written for the sequel trilogy, and it’s safe to assume that Arndt’s screenplay was based on Lucas’s story. But in another twist, when director J.J. Abrams was hired to direct Episode VII, he decided to write his own screenplay (with Lawrence Kasdan, who had co-written The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi with Lucas), scrapping Arndt’s screenplay, and Lucas’s ideas within it.

“The [stories] 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]” – George Lucas from <https://www.cinemablend.com/new/How-George-Lucas-Star-Wars-7-Ideas-Were-Used-By-Disney-69271.html>

In an interview with Charlie Rose after the release of The Force Awakens, Lucas said:

“[Disney] looked at the stories and they said ‘We want to make something for the fans’…All I wanted to do was tell a story of what happened [after the existing movies]” – George Lucas

It can be inferred from the above quote – and others – that by ‘for the fans’, Disney meant for the fans that didn’t enjoy Lucas’s prequel trilogy, and this implies that Lucas’s ideas had similarities with the prequel trilogy.

  

The final credits for Star Wars Episode VII – The Force Awakens grant Arndt a co-writing credit, implying that some of his draft remains in the final film, and along with it some of Lucas’s original ideas for the sequel trilogy. But this is where the two diverge. There are the films that Disney have produced (and continue to produce) and the ideas George Lucas had for continuing his Skywalker saga. The rest of this blog aims to find out as much as possible about what could have been…

Introduction Part 3: No Plans

During writing for The Empire Strikes Back, Lucas decided that (SPOILER) Darth Vader was Luke Skywalker’s father (in an earlier draft of the script, Luke’s father was included as a ‘force ghost’, and was an entirely separate character from Darth Vader). This change in the story perhaps started a chain reaction that made the saga’s final form as a pair of corresponding trilogies inevitable. With the revelation of Luke’s heritage, the final episode of the original trilogy had to resolve that conflict, and Return of the Jedi did just that. Jedi ended with Darth Vader finding redemption; the trilogy became the story of a father finding redemption through his son. The prequel trilogy naturally became Darth Vader’s (Anakin Skywalker’s) back story (Lucas had previously spoke of the prequel trilogy as being primarily about Obi-Wan Kenobi, and depicting Luke’s father’s death), and Lucas used his skills as a visual storyteller to create a prequel trilogy that mirrored the original trilogy, showing the sweetest boy in the galaxy turn to evil while following a path similar to what his son would follow a generation later, only with sad, tragic results.

With a saga now consisting of two trilogies that converge at the end of Episode VI with a definitive full-circle, happily-ever-after finale, Lucas’s hands were somewhat tied. The saga became Anakin Skywalker’s life story from virgin birth to evil, to fatherhood, to redemption, and finally to death. What more could there be?

As of 2005, George Lucas had finished his saga with Star Wars Episode III – Revenge of the Sith. In an interview coinciding with Sith‘s release, Lucas said ‘There is no Episode 7’:

 

When asked about a sequel trilogy in 1997 while promoting the original trilogy Special Editions, Lucas had this to say:

“I don’t have scripts on those stories. The only notion on that was, wouldn’t it be fun to get all the actors to come back when they’re 60 or 70 years old and make three more about them as old people.”[10] from <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_sequel_trilogy>

And Lucas told Vanity Fair magazine:

“When you see it in six parts, you’ll understand. It really ends at part six.” – George Lucas, Vanity Fair from <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_sequel_trilogy>

In 2008, as The Clone Wars animated series began, Lucas said:

“I get asked all the time, ‘What happens after “Return of the Jedi”?,’ and there really is no answer for that…the movies were the story of Anakin Skywalker and Luke Skywalker, and when Luke saves the galaxy and redeems his father, that’s where that story ends.” – George Lucas from <http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-et-lucas7-2008may07-story.html>

As of 2005, there were no plans for more Star Wars movies as far as George Lucas was concerned. But seven years later, in 2012, an announcement surprised everyone…