In high school, I was best friends with a hardcore SW fan and he told me that Lucas’ “original” plan for Star Wars was for three trilogies… the original trilogy, a prequel trilogy, and a sequel trilogy. Was there ever any concrete plans for this or was it just fanboy fantasy fueled by the resurgence of the series at the time?
If the former, are these still being considered or has the critical failure of first two films in the second trilogy pretty much put the SW movie franchise to a (temporary?) end?
A guy I know at work who’s a SW nut says that there was a post on Slashdot about a week, week and a half ago saying that the sequel trilogy was seriously being considered. I don’t care enough to go hunting it down, but maybe someone else does.
Before Return of the Jedi came out, Lucas was quoted as saying he wanted to make twelve episodes of Star Wars, so that Warsies could play them back-to-back and have an entire 24-hour marathon.
The first time I heard about plans for nine movies was in 1979, in Starlog magazine. I think it was in an interview with Lucas himself, although it may have been with a lesser collaborator, but back then it was put across that Lucas had an epic-but-sketchy story in a big ol’ three ring binder which was simply too big to fit into a 90 minute film. He figured he had enough for about nine movies, but, faced with the possibility of only being able to make one movie, took some of the most compelling bits from the middle and worked it up into the script for Star Wars.
I don’t think anyone ever said “We’re going to make nine movies,” only that there were enough story ideas to fill nine movies.
Being naive kids, I think most of us imagined the fabled three-ring binder contained a super-duper secret story written down in totally linear prose, only wanting actors to get in front of the camera. This is silly, of course, when you look at how much even the first movie evolved with each script revision. (Little things like the characters of Luke and Leia both being derived from a single character. )
Thank OG I’m not the only who remembers that. Ever since, whenever I’ve mentioned this, people have thought that I was nuts: “No way was he ever planning THAT many movies!” I remember someone saying at the time that the intent was to give the series a more epic heft.
The latest news came from a talk Mark Hamill gave at the comic book convention in San Diego. The Slashdot item links to an mp3 of his talk, but I can’t be arsed to check out the details.
From what I heard, Lucus is publicy saying there won’t be anymore movies. I have also heard that workers at ILM were asked to sign a confidentiality contract to work on the last three.
I was a high schooler from 78-82, and sometime during that period my best friend and I also glommed onto the 9-movie bit, plus I definitely recall that there was talk that in the past (during THE CLONE WARS) Ben fought Darth Vader (not named Anakin yet) at the edge of a volcano/lava pit, Darth fell in and was burned, maimed, thus causing his need for the suit.
I understand they do have such a fight in ROTS (though I understand they’re on surfboards or something).
From that time, I remember hearing Luke would be three years old at the end of the first trilogy.
Has anybody heard even a rumor about what the third trilogy would have been about? I mean, Return of the Jedi seemed to bring the story arc to a definite conclusion.
I suppose another three movies could be made about, say, a new civil war between those factions who want to “restore the Republic” and those who want every planet to go its own independent way . . . while the remnants of the Imperial forces lurk in the background and plot re-establishing the Empire as a military junta . . . but all that would be too intellectually challenging and politically controversial for Hollywood, therefore not to be thought of.
Way back when, my SF friends and I assumed it would be pretty much that – “rebuilding the Republic” with some forgotten Siths trying to make a comeback, etc.
Just occurred to me . . . if Lucas (or whoever inherits the franchise) took it that way . . . who would be the “good guys” and who would be the “bad guys”? Moral ambituity has no place in space opera.
Lucas also has said the special editions are the way he always inteded the series to be, just like Lenin and Stalin were always sitting on that bench together.
You can see why some of us don’t believe much of what he says any more.
It’s my understanding that Timothy Zahn’s first post-Jedi trilogy (Heir to the Empire, Dark Force Rising, and The Last Command) is considered canon by Lucas himself, so I don’t know where else a sequel trilogy could go.
After Star Wars (A New Hope) was a huge success, everyone asked Lucas about sequels, so he told them that he planned this to be the first part of a trilogy, then there’s a prequel trilogy (at least he had a general idea of what happened then), then, hey why not, a sequel trilogy!
Then probably only a few months later he realised a sequel trilogy was never very likely as he’d be working on Star Wars every single day for the whole of his life (which effecrtively he has anyway) so he scrapped the third trilogy idea. Any talk of a fourth trilogy was probably a misquote.
What Lucas is saying right now is that he will not be making any more SW movies after this one, but he is willing to pass it onto the medium of Television for other creative minds to take over. The strongest rumour is that it will be a live-action Young Boba Fett series, but it might be something else, including further sequels after the era of Return of the Jedi.
As for the godawful Zahn books being considered canon - no way. Lucas does not consider any ‘expanded universe’ works to be canonical, as evidenced by the contradictory Boba Fett histories (which have had to be retconned severely). He does, however, advise or ‘cursorily approve’ certain factors for them.
Let’s see here, Lucas has said that there was going to be nine films, then he said that there were only going to be six. Return of the Jedi was never supposed to be called Revenge of the Jedi and that was only a myth. He’s also said that he wasn’t going to release anything on DVD because he wasn’t sure how long the format was going to be popular, then he said that he was going to wait until he was finished with the entire prequel trilogy before releasing any of them on DVD, and now, of course, he’s released the two latest films, plus a boxed set of his Crayola versions of the original trilogy on DVD. On the documentary which comes with the boxed set for the Crayola versions of the original trilogy, Lucas makes some very veiled comments which could be interpreted as he’d be willing to make more movies in the saga. There’s the rumor that the folks at ILM have had to sign a confidentiality agreement in regards to a new trilogy of films.
Lucas has stated that he’s got it written into his will that after his death, there can be no more new Star Wars stories written.
Given all this, plus the fact that he’s made further revisions to the OT for their release on DVD, I think we can safely say that if Lucas can figure out a way to make a buck off of it, and fuck up the OT even more, he’ll do more movies.
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