IV was the best stand alone story. He wasn't going to get money for other movies if the first one stunk.
He stated that the technology wasn't at a good enough level, as you wondered about. The old trilogy is set in this war-scarred, depleted universe with scarce resources and technology, whereas he always envisioned the time before that as a bright and extremely developed universe. The 70s&80s technology wasn't at a level he felt comfortable for his vision. You can read about it here: http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Why-George-Lucas-Never-Thought-He-Make-Star-Wars-Prequels-71540.html
Lucas had a really long and weird meandering saga in his brain somewhere, and during the 'workshopping' with people like Francis Ford Coppola, it was hammered home to him that he couldn't tell it all in one movie like he naively thought he could do, and it would have to be broken down into smaller chunks. However, the sword-and-sorcery fantasy tale (set in a science fiction backdrop) was always intended to be the 'heroes journey' (established by Campbell) of one 'Luke Starkiller', and his rise from zero to hero. Once the studio decided to gamble on the project, Lucas made the only part which had been fleshed out and pared down into an actual shootable script: Star Wars. Whatever weird mess he may have had lurking in his mind at the time for other movies, well, even ol' George expected Star Wars to be a disaster, a critical bomb, and would not make a dime. The studio thought so too. So it was only AFTER the success of Star Wars that actual plans for sequels began to take shape. But Lucas had been clever as a fox when dealing with the studio, and managed to retain ALL marketing rights for toys and ancilliary items. Fox still owned it as of Empire Strikes Back, but after that, Lucas managed to obtain ALL rights to the franchise. Nowhere on any of those movies at that time was Star Wars considered to be 'Episode IV'.. that came later. in those early days, when the world was absolutely losing its collective mind over all things Star Wars, George gushed about how he planned to make nine movies in all (although no order or titles or anything like that was given - because George didn't HAVE any of it beyond empty promises). The problem was this: All along, Lucas absolutely SUCKED as a writer. The only reason Star Wars and ESB were so good was because George did not retain final script, because Fox still owned it, and it was worked and worked and re-written until it became a quality product. Lucas also HATED directing, and specifically HATED trying to communicate with actors. He didn't even direct ESB (considered by most people the be the best of the bunch). Even back in the 80's, he openly dreamed about the glorious day in the future when he would be able to use computer-generated actors, so he could just make them go where he wanted them to go and say what he wanted them to say. So along came Return of the Jedi, and from this point, it was ALL in Lucas' control. The sets were built, the actors were in costume, the cameras were loaded and ready to roll, and everyone was standing around waiting for George to finish writing the script. Literally. A first draft. Not a worked and re-written script, such as what had been the foundation of the first two films. No, George triumphantly emerged from his trailer on set holding a yellow pad, written in pencil, held it over his head and proclaimed 'Script's done!', to the cheers of everyone present. The gap between Episode V and Episode VI marks the clear delineation between the 'Great Star Wars Films', and the 'mediocre to terrible Star Wars Films'. The only real difference? Lucas no longer had anyone telling him no. He had felt all along that he had been stifled, that his vision, his creativity, had been kept chained up by the studio, and he could not WAIT to have the power and ability to do it.. HIS WAY. And 'his way' produced the first big dud in the Star Wars franchise. Return of the Jedi was a huge let-down. Where audiences had finished watching a very adult and deep and compelling Empire Strikes Back, now suddenly Lucas gave everyone a stupid movie with dancing puppets and midgets in teddy bear costumes, defeating the Empire, while under the command of a giant talking fish. Was it HORRIBLE? No, but it was a HUGE step down from what audiences had been expecting. The criticisms made George so mad and insulted, he decided 'screw the fans, I am not making any more of these movies then!', and he just left Star Wars on the vine to rot. But the public's hunger for more movies just wouldn't die, and eventually technology advanced to the point that George could ALMOST do away with actors and real sets and stuff, and make movies the way he had always dreamed of - with basically electronic puppets moving around in front of a digital background. And this is what we got with the prequels. Here's the thing though.. instead of writing into the prequels whatever weird acid-trip ideas he had cooked up in the 70's, he wrote it all from scratch at that point in time. And rather than give us this world filled with ancient history ('For more than a thousand generations, the Jedi were the Guardians of Peace throughout the Galaxy" - as spoken by Kenobi in Star Wars), instead he decided to set the entire thing only roughly 20 years in the past, and also made the incredibly stupid decision to take one of film-history's all time biggest and baddest villains and try to make the entire thing about HIM.. as a small CHILD.. and make him a sympathetic character to boot. Wrong wrong and wrong. And not only that, he decided to simply think of every possible way to 'tie' the prequels to the successful earlier movies, which is how we ended up with R2D2 and 3PO all throughout the prequels, as well as basing essentially the entire thing on a throwaway sentence spoken by Princess Leia ("General Kenobi, years ago you served my father in the Clone Wars.."), thus turning every 'storm trooper' into nothing but an endlessly-repeating army of clones. Stupid. Not one mention of 'midichlorians' anywhere in the first three movies. Lucas invented THAT crap out of thin air when writing Phantom Menace. Star Wars gave every viewer the notion that ANYONE could learn to use the Force, if only we were willing to embrace it. Even Vader himself, when trying to shoot Luke over the Death Star, says 'The Force is strong in this one!'.. meaning that EVERYONE has the Force in them, but some people can be stronger in it than others.. But then Lucas just turned Jedis into some kind of 'Master Race'.. ..and think about THAT for a moment.. allegedly, Jedi are not allowed to marry, not allowed to have children, not allowed to love.. WHY? And yet the 'midichlorians' clearly 'run in families'. How can that be, if every Jedi becomes a biological dead end? Again, just plain stupid. One of the worst things, to me, was how Lucas also tried to be 'edgy' and 'topical'. Remember the scene where Palpatine is in that big bowl filled with people in floating saucers, and he is declaring martial law, or whatever it was? And Natalie Portman's character says something like 'So this is how liberty dies? To thunderous applause?' Remember what was happening in the world at the time? We had been attacked by terrorists, and were involved with starting the invasion of Iraq.. and many of the elite big brains on TV were saying the EXACT SAME THING.. so Lucas decided to make Palpatine this sort of Bush clone.. NOT something he could possibly have had in his tiny little drug-addled brain back in the 70's. And what about 'There can only be two - one Lord and one 'Darth''..??? One Sith Lord, and one apprentice? To control a galaxy? So force-strong people really COULDN'T turn to the dark side and become evil force-users after, like Yoda warned? WTF? Oh, and this: suddenly 'Darth' was not even Darth Vader's NAME any more, but was just some sort of weird title?? Come on George! Darth Maul? Darth Sidious? What, was Darth Meanie-Man and Darth Boogabooga already taken? And General Grevious? Really? How about Captain HarmYou, or Colonel Dangerous?? Seriously, only two Sith 'Masters' in the whole universe at any one time. Stooooopid. And all the infantile baby names for the characters - Ani, Padme, Dooku, Windu, Naboo, Ja-Ja, Obi, Gungans.. and the list goes on and on.. Lucas could never get past the notion inside his head that this whole thing was always just for little kids.. toddlers even. Patton Oswalt and Mr. Plinkett have said it all way better than I ever could. Look them up on Youtube, it's hilarious stuff. Bottom line, the three prequels are among cinema's worst abortions, and honestly should never be watched at all. But IF a person must watch them, then they should ONLY be watched well after having the opportunity to cleanly absorb Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back. Return of the Jedi is barely tolerable, but likely important to see prior to seeing Episode 7. For those very few people who have never seen any of them yet, I beg you, PLEASE do not watch ANY of the prequels until after you wave watched 4-7. You will never get a second opportunity to see these movies for the first time, so don't spoil them by watching the prequels before 4-7. There is absolutely NOTHING in the prequels worth seeing, and Abrams and Disney made it clear that George's 'treatment' for #7 was very kindly neither wanted or needed... which tells ME that they have hopefully completely thrown out all the stupid crap George made up when he wrote the prequels. I will not be surprised to see little to no reference to anything in the prequels at all. The people who say things like 'the prequels are not horrible' are apparently using a different definition of the word 'horrible' of which I was previously unaware. They ARE horrible. --- Whew, had to vent.. I feel better now. And I know, TLDR.. sue me.
For god's sake, simply watch the original Star Wars that was released in 1977. I think George Lucas lost his mind at some point after making The Empire Strikes Back. If you can, OP, see it before Lucas decided to alter the original film with a bunch of stupid special effects amid crucial changes in the original plot. A brilliant fellow took all of Lucas' stupid changes out of the flick and restored it to the original version. Do a google search. It's Out There.
There was no intention to do prequels when the original Star Wars was released, which is why it was simply called Star Wars. After falling in love with the script for Empire Strikes Back that called for Vader to be Luke's father (this was not Lucas idea) he wanted to do prequels. He did an interview in 1978 (two years before Empire Strikes Back was released) where he said that he wouldn't call ESB Star Wars II because he wanted to make 3 more movies, prequels to the the first too. He said then that the appropriate title for ESB would be "Episode V." That was in 1978. Star Wars officially became "Episode IV: A New Hope" in 1981 with the VHS release.
Totally this. Anybody who thinks the prequels were always planned... and he just happened to start with the movies where he did in 1977 "just because" is completely jaded. The prequels are also overflowing with "hindsight story telling"... stuff only put in there because it was in the original trilogy, so they had to somehow work it back in to make it look like it was planned all along (over explanation of force ghosts, C3po and r2d2 getting their minds erased, "you served my father in the clone wars", etc.).
I'm confused how someone as great and wise as Yoda could not have stopped Annakin's Jedi training as he grew into his teens. Little breh was arrogant, hot tempered, a brat, socially awkward, and looks douchey. But no, little Annakin's future is cloudy with a chance of meatballs... so let's keep it going.
Luke's just not a farmer, Owen. He's got too much of his father in him. That's what I'm afraid of.... I don't have any problem with the prequels being made. There's an incredible story to tell. It was just the actual execution of the story being told that sucked on ice.
nero you really Really broke that down. i've heard some of that before, but i enjoyed reading it though thanks.
Agreed... they could have been done A LOT better. Who knows, maybe if Disney comes upon the magic formula, and this next trilogy kills it... perhaps somebody will get the balls to re-make the prequels the right way. Its not as if they aren't doing remakes of remakes anyways in the industry... I've lost count as to how many fantastic four's, Hulk's and spidermans there are, and which ones are the "good" ones.
I remember seeing this order years after and thought it made perfect sense And I hate flash forward and flashbacks as a story telling method.
I actually have the originals all on DVD. You wouldn't think you could find them but there was a collection released at some point that had the special re-releases but, on the special features, has each and every unaltered version of the original three. Might be a few people, not me, willing to sell it.
There was a HECK of a story to tell. Lucas was just too non-sensical in the setup. The key decision that ruined everything was having Anakin start the prequel as a little kid. It made no sense whatsoever. If as a little boy Anakin was "too old" like Yoda said, then Luke was WAY TOO OLD. LOL That one decision set events into motion that the series could never recover from. Should have started with a teenaged Anakin, should have ditched Naboo nonsense, if you wanted to use the Trade Federation as the bad guys they should have done Christopher Lee's character in the first one as the head of the TF... Ugh. It honestly makes me mad how messed up they were. The only good thing from the prequels as far as I'm concerned was Natalie Portman's "so this is how liberty dies" line. The rest was rubbish. The entire plot that drove the Republic to war was so convoluted and stupid.
I've seen them all. The first two were great movies. Nero's rant is spot on though. Particularly the part about Lucas making awful decisions in 1-3 and 6 making them far too kid friendly. How awesome would a war between the rebels and the imperials have been if they were fighting on a Wookie home planet? Too terrifying for five year odds, replace the army of howling angry Wookies with teddy bears throwing stones. Then just go completely overly cartoony in the prequels with just about everything... again purely for the kids. The jar jar theory making the rounds this week is interesting and makes a lot of sense on how such a bumbling character ended up in so many positions of authority in 3. If Lucas really set all that up and then gave up on it because he made the character too cheesy... thanks for making us suffer through that for nothing. They spent so much time in the first two creating a dark story in a dark universe just to have Lucas completely pull a 180. I'll end up watching the next three, or at least give it a chance as I like most of what Abrams does. If 7 sucks as much as the last 4 though... may not make it to 8 & 9.
Ian McDiarmid's performance in all 3 prequels was top notch, IMO. Frankly, his transformation to the Emperor was much more compelling than Anakin's to Vader. I loved his line at the end of I when he said "And you, young Skywalker; we shall watch your career with great interest." One of the most powerful lines in the entire saga.
I disagree with people that 7 sucked. I agree that the Wookie to Ewok change was really stupid, but that's still an enjoyable movie.
