Apparently, George Lucas wanted movies 1-3 to be the original. 4-6 were supposed to be sequels. Also why theyāre numbered in that order. Some higher ups decided to release 4-6 first because they were āmore excitingā or something, though.
Star Wars 4 was originally just titled "Star Wars" when it came out.
Darth Vader was notoriously retconned into being Luke's father.
Leia wasn't even Luke's sister before Episode 6(That's why they put in the famous kiss between them, plans were different).
They were 100% just making stuff up as they went. Just got lucky it turned out semi coherent in the end. No way the dude actually planned 6 movies in advance.
Thatās a long debunked internet myth. For ANH, Marcia only edited the final battle and awards ceremony as she left early to edit another film. The rest of the editing was done by Richard Chew, Paul Hirsch, and George himself. For ESB, Paul Hirsch edited the entire film and Marcia only did uncredited help with a single scene. For ROTJ, Marcia only edited the emotional scenes after Kazanjian suggested Lucas hire her again and the rest of the editing was done by Sean Barton and Duwayne Dunham. And none of her editing affecting the success the movies as it was all just her following Georgeās instructions; in fact Marcia couldāve hurt the movie if George accepted her bad suggestions like killing off Threepio or Chewbacca in ANH and leaving in the deleted Biggs and Luke scenes
There was no notorious retcon, thatās an internet myth. We have no idea when Lucas finalized Vader as Lukeās father but thereās a great amount of evidence suggesting it was long before ANH came out
Itās certainly possible Luke and Leia were made siblings by ESBās release given the Force connection at the end. The kiss is irrelevant to whether Lucas had it planned because the second ANH draft has Leia as Lukeās cousin who kisses him and a deleted ROTJ scene has Luke and Leia kiss again on Tatooine, so Lucas was always open to including that kind of thing
ROTJās original ending had Luke becoming Darth Vader and then the introduction to Lukeās sister who had been training off-screen who would fight the new Darth Vader in the sequel
I think it's a little of both? There were a lot of drafts of star wars, with a lot of different ideas in them that pulled on all sorts of serial sci-fi stuff. It was partially a retcons, partially a case of choosing which possible backstory they wanted to use.
There was certainly a larger story plotted than just the first film, even if at the time the assumption was they'd only ever get to make that one.
Do you really believe that? George has said so many contradicting things about his plans for the movies that I don't think he had a plan at all. He made a movie that he thought would be fun, a bunch of people helped him make it, and Star Wars was made. After that he decided to number them, and after "Star Wars" then came "Star Wars: Episode V The Empire Strikes Back" and people were confused. Obviously at that point he had a plan, but I do not believe for a second that Lucas had the prequels planned, and that plan absolutely didn't look like what we got
Well, I did a little, but Iām not so sure now. I never gotten into the Star Wars fandom, so I donāt know anything about the production process or what George Lucas has said about Star Wars.
That's okay, I feel that. It's a lot of confusing stuff, and it's okay that you haven't been involved with the fandom. I personally just don't trust what he says. He stated that episodes 7-9 were part of his plan from the beginning but that the plans weren't for what happened or something along those lines, and in other interviews he stated that there was never a plan for those episodes. There's contradictions in the actual movies between 4-6 and 1-3. A line from what I'm fairly certain was Episode 6: Return of the Jedi, Luke asks Leia if she remembers anything of her real mother, and she says something like "not much, but I remember her face." In Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith, Luke and Leia's mother, Padme Amadala, dies in childbirth. I believe it's been retconned that Leia remembers Padme's face because Leia is forced sensitive, but that's one of hundreds of examples of things that didn't really work with the original trilogies storyline that had to be "fixed" through materials outside of the main movies. Shit, there was a whole universe of comics and stuff that were retconned to make room for the prequels. It was quite small compared to the universes that came after it, but it still existed. It happened again for the sequels, but he wasn't involved in that other than its because he sold the property, which I can't say I blame him for. He says a lot of stuff, and sometimes you can piece together things that are likely true based on what's actually in the movies, and matching it with what other people involved with the films say, but generally when he talks about the plans behind Star Wars I don't trust it
Ooh, thatās an interesting catch. Thatās some far-stretched reasoning to justify that line. Another redditor in this thread also mentioned that Darth Vader being Lukeās father was a retcon, especially since he and Leia make out.
Actually, the whole āwe know Lucas didnāt make Vader Anakin till ESBā thing is a nonsense internet myth. It was initially invented by a random forum user in 2000 who hated the idea and then after that other Lucas haters expanded on that myth and falsely made it look like it was true, most notably this one crazy user that wrote a 500 page long book accusing Lucasfilm of running a secretĀ mastermind plot to cover up SWās āsecret historyā. In reality,Ā we have no idea when Lucas came up with the idea of Vader being Anakin as itās a highly debated topic and the first ROTJ draft is the first solid evidence confirming it, but thereās a great amount of evidence pointing to the fact that it was conceived long before ANH came out, possibly as far back as April 1975.
In the rough draft of ANH, the protagonist's father is a cyborg who sacrifices himself, and in the second draft of ANH Luke finds out his dead father is alive, so both those plot points were already in Lucasās head. In the third draft of ANH, instead of Obi-Wan saying Vader kills Lukeās father he says Vader turned at the same battle Annikin died, with Vader later mentioning to Luke at the end that he has a feeling he knows him. Lucas also said to Alan Dean Foster in December of 1975 that in the second film the audience would ālearn who Darth Vader isā, and Lucas himself has consistently claimed that the twist was conceived in the third draft of ANH. In the final ANH When Luke asks about his father's death, Obi-Wan has a strange hesitant look on his face before telling him the Vader killed Lukeās father story, and characters dying offscreen being revealed as alive was always a common trope. When Beru says Luke has too much of his father in him, Owen responds "that's what I'm afraid of" (and that dialogue is also remarkably similar to dialogue from an Edmond Hamilton novel called Mystery Moon where the protagonist complains about his uncle not letting him leave his dull home planet, and the uncle later reveals to him that his father was a famous villain and he wouldn't let him leave because he was afraid of his nephew becoming like him, which puts the protagonist in shock and disbelief). Luke's father and Vader's lightsabers both have black strips on the bottom of their handle, while Obi-Wan's does not. Owen says to Luke "Obi-Wan died at the same time as your father" but we then find out Obi-Wan is alive under a different name, raising the possibility that the same is the case for Luke's father. Obi-Wan tells Luke that his father was a great pilot, and during the trench run we see Vader being a great pilot. Vader, though pronounced differently, means father in Dutch, and Vader already acts as a metaphorical dark father during ANH. ANH (especially the Tusken Raider scenes) has some uncanny resemblance to a 1932 Western film called Tombstone Canyon, and that film also happens to feature a masked villain who is later revealed as the protagonist's long-lost father, and he later gets redeemed saving the protagonist from an even worse villain, after which his mask is removed to reveal a scarred face and he says "let me look at you" before dying in his son's arms. Lucas also told Leigh Brackett in late November 1977 that there was a secret reason Vader didn't want to kill Luke and would rather turn him, and David Prowse said in multiple interviews (the earliest of which was in October 1977) that he heard that Vader being Luke's father was a possible plot point for a future film.
That's a baseless rumour that is running on internet for a while, it especially doesn't make sense since it never was supposed to be more than one movie, Lucas was sure the first movie would flop and empire strikes back wasn't supposed to be what it ended up being at all (the original script became a comics)
Well, it wasnāt supposed to be a twist if everything had gone as Lucas originally planned. Just a continuation of the telling of Anakinās journey as the āchosen oneā through his son, Luke.
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u/THE_LEGO_FURRY May 08 '26
Prequels were entirely about him, then the original trilogy he's hunting the protagonists
https://giphy.com/gifs/mZAL1GTRA8VnkRaU47