A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

© 1977 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation  Star Wars  (as the film originally was titled) underwent many story changes from 1973 (when George Lucas first had to come up with his own space fantasy after Universal Pictures denied him permission to make a film version of  Flash Gordon ) all the way to 1976 (which is when principal photography began). Lucas went through four drafts of the  Star Wars  script before filming began, and in most of them, Ben (Obi-Wan) Kenobi survived and escaped from the Death Star with Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Han Solo, Chewbacca, C-3PO, and R2-D2. Up until the fourth unrevised draft, Ben lived on and stood by Leia’s side in the Rebel base during the climactic Battle of Yavin. However, Lucas (and perhaps even Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz, the writers of the  American Graffiti  screenplay and uncredited script doctors for  Star Wars ) ,  realized that after having established that Obi-Wan was not only a veteran of the Clone Wars and a powerful

Do you think the Empire in  Star Wars  was based off of the Nazis? The Galactic Empire’s resemblance to Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich is neither superficial nor coincidental. It is intentional. When George Lucas made the original  Star Wars  film in the late 1970s, he and his design team (which included illustrator Ralph McQuarrie, costume designer John Mollo, and storyboard artist/model designer Joe Johnston) looked at 20th Century history and modern totalitarian states for design ideas that would fit the ethos of a ruthless and evil dictatorship in a galaxy far, far away. Nazi Germany was the most obvious font of inspiration for the designers; the Second World War, after all, had occurred only one generation earlier and Nazi uniforms, German army gear and weaponry, and other regalia still evoked the evil tyranny that was the Third Reich. It’s no accident that this Imperial soldier is called a “stormtrooper.” That’s what the brown-shirted rowdies of the Nazi SA called themse

(C) 2015 Dorling Kindersley Limited and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL) On April 28, 2015, Dorling Kindersley Limited's DK Books published Ultimate Star Wars, a large "coffee table" format visual encyclopedia which covers "characters, creatures, locations, technology, and vehicles" that have been depicted in the Star Wars saga in film and on television. Written by Ryder Windham, Adam Bray, Tricia Barr, and Daniel Wallace, this 320-page volume delves into the history of a certain galaxy far, far away across various time periods, including the decline of the Old Republic, the Clone Wars and the birth of the Galactic Empire, and the Galactic Civil War.  Ultimate Star Wars is a comprehensive, wonderfully detailed encyclopedia of the entire Star Wars galaxy that explores characters, creatures, locations, vehicles, technology, and more.  Reflecting the saga's epic scope, Ultimate Star Wars is structured chronologically from Episode I: The Phantom Menace

Pros:  True to the Star Wars universe, great sound and graphics, interesting premise. Cons:  It can be overwhelming. Too much info to digest at once until you master Rebellion . Since 1977, Star Wars has inspired video games and computer simulations. And why not? Its storyline and visual effects-heavy battle scenes are ready made video game material. Want to fly an X-wing fighter or its nemesis, the Imperial TIE fighter? You can, if you have a PC and the X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter CD-ROM game. Want to be a Jedi Knight? There are several LucasArts Entertainment titles that will allow you to wield your trusty lightsaber, face Sith Lords and assorted baddies, and join the ranks of the Jedi Order in either the Prequel or Classic Trilogy eras. In short, there is a Star Wars game for almost every computer game category in the marketplace. (There is even a Monopoly variant released as a joint effort between Hasbro Interactive -- now Infogrames -- and LucasArts!) One of

This will always be the "core canon" of Star Wars, even under the House of the Mouse. (C) 2015 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL) Does Disney-owned Lucasfilm ignore the old Star Wars 'Expanded Universe' when determining canon? Pretty much, yes. I understand that a vocal group of  Star Wars  fans (which don’t represent the vast majority of  Star Wars  fandom but nevertheless make lots of noise, especially online) feels that the old Expanded Universe, aka  Star Wars  Legends, is not the primary source for the Sequel Trilogy and languishes, according to them, in The Walt Disney Company’s equivalent of purgatory. Apparently, for many fans, especially those who were teens and/or young adults in the Dark Times between the Classic Trilogy and the Prequels, the Expanded Universe  was  the  Star Wars  universe, only instead of movies, its main fare was a series of novels, comic books, graphic novels, and a plethora of video games, spac

(C) 2017 Lucasfilm Ltd. and Dolby Labs Today's question is:  Why do a lot of fanboys hate ‘The Last Jedi’? I’m probably going to get a lot of flak from some of the  angry fanboys  that this question is about, but since I am a  Star Wars  fan of the 1977 Generation, I’ll give you my two credits’ worth. Star Wars  fanboy angst is not a new phenomenon. It’s probably been around since the first movie premiered 40 years ago ( Oh, See Threepio is too silly! ). I first became aware of it when fans who were 10, 11, or even 12 when  Star Wars  came out in 1977 and didn’t notice some of the kid-friendly humor in it suddenly became aware of the kid-friendly Ewoks in 1983’s  Return of the Jedi …and started grousing that Lucas had invented the “teddy bears”  just to sell more toys.  (There were other issues that fans groused about, but  Ewok-hate  was the trendy topic among the angry-fanboy crowd.) (C) 1983 Lucasfilm Ltd (LFL) Before Jar Jar Binks, Wicket and his pa

I have never understood why  some  science fiction/fantasy fans insist that  there has to be an “either/or” choice  and that one has to like one franchise but not the other. I was three years old and living outside the U.S. when  Star Trek: The Original Series  premiered on Sept. 8, 1966, and the show did not air in the South American country where we were until 1970. Thus my introduction to Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and the voyages of the  Starship Enterprise  was not under the most optimal of circumstances. We only had black-and-white TV (even if you owned a color set, that country didn’t yet broadcast in color), and of course the series was dubbed in Spanish. I was a kid who had forgotten any English that I’d learned as a toddler, but even at the age of seven I noticed one detail about Latin American TV: every imported American show used the same voice actors to dub the Spanish-language audio track. As a result, the US shows, which at the time included  Star Trek, Hogan’s Heroes, T