A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

In Quora, someone asked: How much of Star Wars did George Lucas actually write? My reply: If you’re asking about the original screenplay for  Star Wars  (aka  Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope ), the film that begat the franchise, he wrote every one of the four drafts, most of them without a co-writer. However, whenever he showed the script to his peers (Brian De Palma, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, and Francis Ford Coppola), they would critique his efforts (which is what Lucas wanted them to do) and suggest revisions or rewrites. Lucas, as fans have learned over the years, is a dedicated  filmmaker,  and a talented one at that. However, he is happier when he is in the editing room and shaping his movies, while the actual tasks of writing scripts and working with actors are simply not in his comfort zone. (That doesn’t mean he doesn’t like people; Lucas has a reputation for being a super nice person and generous to a fault. He’s just not into  writing  or helping his

On the questions-and-answers site Quora, somebody asks:  Is there any way that Star Wars Episode IX will make all Star Wars fans happy? My reply is: You. Have. Got. To. Be. Kidding. The question you ask reflects either the inexperience or naivete of someone who hasn’t been around to experience the  Star Wars  phenomenon since it began in 1977. Well, I was 14 when  Star Wars  (as the original film was originally titled) premiered on May 25, 1977. And I can tell you right now that if there is one truth about the franchise’s fans, it is this: There is no such thing as a  Star Wars  movie that will make  all  fans happy. It wasn’t possible to please all of the fans in 1977 when some fans thought the tone of  Star Wars  was too kid-friendly, mainly because of the Laurel-and-Hardy relationship between Artoo Detoo and See Threepio. It wasn’t possible to please all of the fans in 1980 after  The Empire Strikes Back  was released; there was a lot of arguing about how in

Do you think Disney has done a better job with Star Wars than Lucasfilm? Questions such as “Do you think Disney has done a better job with Star Wars than Lucasfilm?” reflect either willful ignorance or a misunderstanding of the corporate relationship between The Walt Disney Company (TWDC or “Disney”) and Lucasfilm Ltd., especially when it comes to the topic of  Star Wars. The relationship between TWDC and Lucasfilm is no different from that of Sony and Columbia Pictures or the “old” 20th Century Fox Film Corporation and Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox (and before that, News Corporation). TWDC is the “corporate parent,” while Lucasfilm is an editorially-independent production company with its own President. Lucasfilm, for the most part, has free rein to decide how to handle its two major franchises,  Star Wars,  and  Indiana Jones.  TWDC has the right to decide  when  and  how  movies are scheduled for production  and  distribution, since it doesn’t want to have intramural

Someone on Quora asks: Why would Disney trust Kathleen Kennedy after the way the recent Star Wars movies were received? My reply: Well, it would be  most ungracious  if Bob Iger and Alan Horn fire Kathleen Kennedy after producing three of four financially successful films in a series that its creator, George Lucas, had once declared would consist only of the six “Tragedy of Darth Vader” Episodes (and, later, those six films  plus  the  Star Wars: The Clone Wars  series). As of this writing, the first two installments of the  Star Wars  Sequel Trilogy ( Star Wars: The Force Awakens  and  Star Wars: The Last Jedi ) have earned $$3.4 billion worldwide.  Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,  earned $1.056 billion. The only underperformer in the new post-George Lucas “era of Disney” Lucasfilm slate of movies in the  Star Wars  franchise is  Solo: A Star Wars Story,  which made “only” $392 million. Solo’s  box office flop was a given, at least in hindsight, considering that it followe

Concept art from The Empire Strikes Back by Ralph McQuarrie. © 1980 Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL) No. Going strictly by what we see in  Star Wars - Episode VI: Return of the Jedi,  it is obvious that Yoda is  not  referring to Rey from  Star Wars: Episode VII: The Force Awakens. Yoda’s last words to Luke before crossing over to the other side of the Force are: “There is…another…Sky…walk…er.” In the  very next scene,  which is what writers sometimes call an “exposition dump,” we find out who  the other  is: LUKE I can't kill my own father. BEN Then the Emperor has already won. You were our only hope. LUKE Yoda spoke of another. BEN The other he spoke of is your twin sister. LUKE But I have no sister. BEN Hmm. To protect you both from the Emperor, you were hidden from your father when you were born. The Emperor knew, as I did, if Anakin were to have any offspring, they would be a threat to him. That is the reason why your sister remains safely anon

© 2007 Del Rey Books and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL) How did George Lucas envision the Star Wars franchise while making the first movie? To be honest, I don’t believe that Lucas had a grand blueprint for a “franchise.” When he was writing and directing  Star Wars,  aka  Star Wars -Episode IV: A New Hope,  he had a vague outline for the Prequels (proof of which is the prologue to the novelization of  Star Wars ), the four drafts of  Star Wars,  and ideas (not a complete screenplay that he pared down into thirds, as he has claimed) for possible sequels. That’s it. No more, no less, as a certain Jedi Master that sounds suspiciously like Fozzie Bear as a Zen master might have said.  Between 1973 and 1976, and especially when he was shooting Star Wars, Lucas didn’t have a grand scheme to make a nine-part Saga with secondary Expanded Universes all over the media. He had  hopes  that  Star Wars  would be a decent enough hit at the box office to be able to make all kinds of films, inc

© 1977 20th Century Fox Film Corporation In the Star Wars series, how many people knew (in-universe) that Darth Vader was Anakin Skywalker prior to the revelation in The Empire Strikes Back? In-universe, you say? Well, it goes without saying that Emperor Palpatine knew, since it was he - as Darth Sidious - who dubbed Anakin as “Darth Vader” some 19 years before the events of Star Wars -Episode IV: A New Hope. As for the rest of the Imperial hierarchy, it’s possible that Vizier Mas Amedda might have known since he was Sheev Palpatine’s trusted confidante and next in line to rule the Empire. However, I can’t be 100% sure, since - from the Sith perspective, the smaller the number of people in the know that both the Emperor and his chief enforcers were Sith Lords, the lesser the chances that the galaxy at large would find out. Wilhuff Tarkin may have known, or at least suspected, that the Jedi general he had met during the Clone Wars was now “Lord Vader.” In at least two

What is the reason Disney got rid of so much good Star Wars content by making the Expanded Universe legends? There are several reasons why Lucasfilm ( not  Disney) decided to “get rid of” much of the Expanded Universe. First, if Lucasfilm was going to make new films, it needed to have full creative license to do so without being beholden to stories that other writers had written between 1978 and 2014. This includes the Marvel Comics issues that  were not  adaptations of the Original Trilogy movies, Alan Dean Foster’s  Splinter of the Mind’s Eye,  the Brian Daley  Han Solo  trilogy, and the various novels and comics published by Bantam Spectra, Dark Horse Comics, Bantam Skylark, Del Rey Books, and other licensees. No self-respecting screenwriter or film director, much less the Lucasfilm Story Group, would have wanted to wade through a thicket of superficially connected but wildly uneven stories. Second, I hate to break it to you, but  not  everything in the old EU was “good.

The mighty Chewbacca, his bowcaster, and his best friend in the galaxy, Han Solo in a publicity photo from Star Wars ©  1977 20th Century Fox Film Corporation   What is the exact science behind Chewbacca's bowcaster? Could we possibly make such a weapon? If such a thing were possible, how devastating would it be? The answers are, in order, as follows: What is the exact science behind Chewbacca's bowcaster?:  There is no real-world science behind the concept of Chewie’s bowcaster, aka “laser crossbow.” Could we possibly make such a weapon?  As a movie prop, yes. That’s what it is, a movie prop. As an honest-to-goodness weapon that fires short bursts of highly coherent energy bolts? No. We can’t make such a weapon. If such a thing were possible, how devastating would it be?  I imagine that if humans were to someday figure out a way to make weapons that work like imaginary ones from a purely fictional story, a laser crossbow would be deadly. Having said that,  Star

In A New Hope, why does Obi-Wan call Lord Vader 'Darth' as if it's a first name and not a title? Lord Darth Vader enters the captured Rebel Blockade Runner after its capture by an Imperial Star Destroyer above the desert planet Tatooine. © 1977 20th Century Fox Film Corp.  You have to understand that in 1977 when  Star Wars  was originally released,  Darth Vader  was the character’s given name. It wasn’t a “Sith” alias; it was just a name, on par with “Luke Skywalker” or “Obi-Wan Kenobi.” Now, in George Lucas’s original screenplay and the novelization, Vader is said to be a Dark Lord of the Sith, but 42 years ago, audiences and readers were not told what the Sith were or even how many of them existed in the  Star Wars  universe during the Empire’s reign. The most information that was given to us - and that was in Alan Dean Foster’s novelization - was that “fear always followed in the wake of a Dark Lord’s passing.” No details about Darth Bane’s Rule of Two or t

Why does it seem that Disney is ignoring the prequel trilogy of Star Wars? Who says that the Walt Disney Company, or, more correctly,  Disney-owned  Lucasfilm, is ignoring the  Star Wars  Prequels? Obviously, in the internal chronology of the films, from an in-universe point of view, the fall of the Republic, the rise of the Empire, and the Great Jedi Purge are almost half-a-century away in the past. Many billions of people in thousands of systems that were born after the Battle of Endor and its immediate aftermath have no memory of Anakin Skywalker, Qui-Gon Jinn, Count Dooku, or even Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, and many of the adults who were young kids and/or teens during the Dark Times know of the last days of the Republic through biased filters depending which side (Rebel Alliance, Empire, or neutral) they were on during the Galactic Civil War. If anything, the people living in the galaxy in the Sequel Era focus more on the events of the Galactic Civil War, except of cours

What do people think the Star Wars franchise would be like if Disney had not bought Star Wars? Before I give you my answer to the question at hand, let me first make an observation. It seems to me that  Star Wars  fans have no understanding of how corporate ownership of a media company works. The impression that I get when I see questions such as “What do people think the Star Wars franchise would be like if Disney had not bought Star Wars?” is that the persons that ask queries like this have a huge chip on their shoulder about George Lucas’s retirement and subsequent sale of his company, Lucasfilm Limited (and all of its subsidiaries and intellectual properties) to The Walt Disney Company. The Walt Disney Company (aka “Disney”) owns a large number of subsidiary companies which enjoy a great deal of autonomy. I don’t have time to name them all, but here are the most prominent Disney subsidiaries: The American Broadcasting Company (ABC) Marvel Entertainment (which includes M

Is it fair for Star Wars fans to target Kelly Marie Tran for her role in The Last Jedi? No, it’s not. It’s not only unfair, but it shows that “fans” who target and harass anyone involved in the making of a  Star Wars  film, TV show, or any part of the canon are immature, self-centered, and have too high an opinion of themselves. Same goes for anyone who “targets” George Lucas, Bob Iger, Kathleen Kennedy, J.J. Abrams, Lawrence Kasdan, or Rian Johnson in a campaign fueled by irrational hate because they made the movies or TV series in a way that they found aesthetically or thematically wrong. Now, I’m not suggesting that people have to like  The Last Jedi, The Force Awakens,  the Prequels, the Special Editions of the Original Trilogy, or whatever it is they don’t like about the franchise. Far from it. If you honestly don’t like something, that’s fine. George Lucas, Bob Iger, or Kathleen Kennedy aren’t going to show up at your door with a real-life Darth Vader as their enforcer

If someone actually bought Star Wars from Disney, would Canon and other things change once again? Sure,  if  there was a company or individual with enough money to buy Lucasfilm Ltd. and the  Star Wars  franchise from The Walt Disney Company, and if  Bob Iger and the stockholders were willing to sell either the franchise or Lucasfilm. Whoever owned the  Star Wars  brand would then decide: What “canonicity” means under the new regime What new content would be created, in what format, and which venue (theaters, television, or Internet) Whether or not to re-release existing movies in their current form, or (in the case of the Original Trilogy) their original (as released) editions Which video game companies would get licenses to create new games Whether or not licensed printed media original works (novels, comics, anthologies) are canonical After all, that’s what ownership entails. If The Walt Disney Company had not been given independence from what the previous owner. Geor

This is one variation of the 2015 reissue of 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment's Star Wars: The Complete Saga  Blu-ray set, which contains the nine discs of the 2011 box set, except with different packaging. © 2015 TCFHE and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL) A curious Quora member asked this question yesterday: How do you (legally) watch the entire Star Wars series without breaking the bank? Honestly, if you live in the U.S. or Canada, have a steady income, and are diligent about paying your bills, acquiring and watching the current 10 movies that exist at this moment (February 2019), it's not as hard as you might think.  If you want to limit yourself to the live-action Skywalker Saga films, you'll need to get the following: The Complete Star Wars Saga nine-disc Blu-ray set, preferably the 2015 reissue because it's easier to acquire on Amazon or other sellers (Best Buy, Target, etc.). Right now Amazon is asking $74.79 for the box set.  Star Wars: The Force Aw

Goodness gracious,  no. The Walt Disney Company bought Lucasfilm Ltd., its intellectual properties (not just the  Star Wars  franchise), and all of the rights thereof from George Lucas over six years ago. Lucas chose Disney instead of, say, Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox or Paramount because he had collaborated with the House of Mouse on various projects before, including theme park attractions such as  Star Tours, The Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular,  and Michael Jackson’s  Captain Eo  film . And regardless of what a loud and vocal subgroup of fans tends to believe, other than maybe releasing too many  Star Wars  movies in a relatively short time, I don’t think that Lucasfilm, under the Disney aegis, has done as badly as those “Disney bashers” claim. So…Disney is not looking to sell either  Star Wars  or Lucasfilm, so even if some fans can “pool money together to buy the  Star Wars  rights from Disney,” they can’t force Bob Iger to sell. Furthermore, the phrase “buy back