In “Parade” magazine (a Sunday newspaper supplement, if you’re not familiar with it), one of the questions asks why did George Lucas decide not to do episodes 7-9. The response was that Lucas said that “That was a myth. There never were any plans to do nine movies.”
OK. Where did this myth begin? I seem to recall hearing it when “The Empire Strikes Back” came out, so 1980 or thereabouts. It seemed pretty well circulated, even then, and I don’t recall ever hearing a rebuttal.
I wasn’t around then(Well, I was born the year Empire came out, but I can’t remember anything lucas said). I remember hearing as a kid that lucas was planning on a 9 part series, but I don’t know from where.
I still think he plans to do it, no matter what he says now. Because Lucas also made a big deal about how the Special Edition(and DVD’s) are how he originally intended to have the movies all along, and there is very little to believe that’s true. There are numerous things he changed that have nothing to do with his 1977 budget(like Greedo firing first, certain lines being added or subtracted) and even stranger, things that were changed again between the special edition and the DVD release.
So Lucas is Lying or just doesn’t know what the hell he wants. IMHO, that’s a good reason not to trust Lucas when he says something lately.
“Myth?!?!?” “Never?!?!” So was Gary Kurtz, producer of the first 2 films and “American Graffiti” but had a falling out with Lucas prior to “Return of the Jedi”, just pulling stuff out of his ass when he desribed the projected 9 file arc in various interviews around the time of “Phantom Menace”? Kurtz claims the reduction from 9 to 6 occured prior to “Jedi” and stuff was compressed into one film (e.g. Luke had a force sensitive sister, but it wasn’t Leia)
Does Lucas believe that since 1980 predates the Web that nobody remembers the May 19, 1980 Time magazine article. (It’s available at Time’s web site, but you have to be a subscriber to the dead tree edition) The trilogy of trilogies notion was in a sidebar that explained the whole “Episode V” bit at the beginning of “The Empire Strikes Back”. (I assume by now I don’t have to reiterate that “Star Wars” was **NOT ** subtitled “A New Hope” in 1977) I’ve got it somewhere in the garage, I’ll see if I can find it and scan it in.
Newsweek, May 19, 1980, P. 107.
Once again, Lucas is rewriting history to fit his meglomania.
I subscribe to Time Magazine. Here is the relevant portion of the May 19, 1980 article:
The thing to always keep in mind is that Lucas lies. Constantly. Inevitably. Incessantly.
I can almost forgive him forgetting what he said back in 1980, but I think he said recently that he changed his mind and wouldn’t be making the third trilogy. But considering this is the great work of his life, I doubt he forgot that nine episodes were originally planned.
Why not? Not to hijack, but Sen. Frist apparently doesn’t realize that CSPAN has cameras.
It’s amazing how stupid people can be. Granted, Lucas has a slightly better reason. 20 years is a long time to remember comments, but to pretend he never said it is stupid.
Don’t worry. Give Lucas a few years and he’ll figure out how to use his magic crayons to “update” the article to make it the way he originally intended it. He just didn’t have the money at the time to do it properly.
Lucas is now talking about a TV series to cover that time period. The problem with doing another trilogy, of course, is getting the original cast back (assuming that Lucas was serious when he meant that it would cover what happens 20 odd years after the Empire falls). Harrison Ford only does the films he wants to at this point, so to get him, Lucas is going to have to cough up a serious chunk of change. No doubt Lucas would rather spend that money on FX. Hamill and Fisher might come back, but given the amount of dreck Lucas has given us (and if he pens the next Indy move, I will so not be there), I think it’d be better for everyone if Lucas just goes back to colorizing his old movies.
The TV series is currently set between Eps III and IV. There’s a possibility that it’s about young Boba Fett, though apparently Joel Edgerton, who played young Uncle Owen Lars, is in talks to be in it, and Rick McCallum is saying that it may include a young Luke growing up, which doesn’t sound too exciting really.
Anyway, to the OP, I don’t believe he should be taken literally when he says it was a myth. Many of his off-the-cuff responses have been taken as gospel, and others as lies, when really they’re somewhere in between, a turn of phrase even.
The most definitive explanation that I’ve heard quoted (and I think it was in the Star Wars Insider official fanclub magazine where I read it) is that he never had a story for the last trilogy, but after Star Wars was a hit he admitted to the Press that he did have a trilogy in mind, and also some notes on a story that covered the origins of Darth Vader and Obi Wan Kenobi which he hoped to make one day as a further trilogy. And sure, maybe he could come up with something for a third trilogy. Nine episodes is a good round number.
I think he regretted saying that very quickly, and after Empire Strikes Back was released, he basically recanted the idea unofficially, and then after Return of the Jedi, much more officially because he felt the redemption of Vader was the end of his tale and there was nothing more he wanted to tell.
I agree with Lucas, what better ending would there be than the redemption of Vader?
The Return of the King ended better in the film than the books. The Scouring of the Shire (or whatever the last section of the book was called) was just a bit of a drag between the end of the war against Saruman and the big farewell. Having Saruman bumped off at the start of the film by Wormtongue was much better.
Similarly, whilst some of the comics I’ve flicked through in the newsagents seem interesting, I don’t see them as film material. I used to look on the story as the rise to glory of Luke Skywalker, but its much better as the fall and rise of Vader. So to have the story go on, even if the original cast were brought back, would be a bit too much.
It reminds me too that suddenly ROTJ is suddenly so much better given how ghastly the new trilogy is in comparison 
I don’t believe this has been brought up in the thread (I skimmed through a few posts), but in the introduction by George Lucas to the 1978 Star Wars novel Splinter of the Mind’s Eye (by Alan Dean Foster), Lucas says this…
“It wasn’t long after I began writing Star Wars that I realized the story was more than a single film could hold. As the saga of Skywalkers and Jedi Knights unfolded, I began to see it as a tale that could take at least nine films to tell - three trilogies - and I realized, in making my way through the back story and after story, that I was really setting out to write the middle story.”
Anyhoo…
Philistine.
I had that book too.
…"* As the saga of Skywalkers and Jedi Knights unfolded,*"…
Fiction doesn’t happen all at once. Any artistic endeavor that takes a significant amount of time to create is going to change as it develops. Lucas thought for a while that it would be a triple trilogy, now he’s lost the vision for the last trilogy, or realized that it wasn’t worth telling in the first place. That’s art. That’s the creative process.
[waves hand]There were only ever two trilogies. These aren’t the films you’re looking for.[/waves hand]
However, the Jedi mind trick didn’t make anyone believe that Greedo shot first.
I have read that too (AICN recently ha an article to that effect), wasn't part of the point of the Luke character that he was stuck on a backwater planet yearning for adventure?Some people would say you’ve managed to completely miss one of the major themes of the book. I would tell those people that they are being too restrained and begin peppering my arguments with gratuitous insults.