I’m a Star wars geek from the first movie back in 1977. I saw it seven nights at the $1.50 movie theater in town. I scheduled my driving road test for the same day Return of the Jedi came out so I could take the road test in the morning and go to the movie in the afternoon.
I’ve been watching Star Wars movies all day today, but I still feel just so blah. I know it’s the effects of the quarantine. Usually I have fun with this day. I watched some of the new Lego Star Wars series and my 4 year old granddaughter was watching it with me.
Today I had to cancel the third piece of travel I had scheduled for this year. The first was a cruise I should have been on last week. The second was a trip to the U.K. the end of this month. Today I cancelled a Baltic cruise for September I had planned with friends for over a year. Our pay-in-full date was coming up, and I didn’t think the cruise would happen. Truth is, I think the entire summer cruise season for Europe isn’t going to happen. I’m not willing to tie up more money with the cruise lines at this point. I have five cruise-next certificates with Norwegian sitting out there now, plus another credit for them cancelling the cruise last week. We’re going to apply what we can to a cruise next January for my 55th birthday. Maybe that will actually happen.
That has me bummed as I binged on the Star Wars movies. It’s fun to nitpick on these now. No matter how much George Lucas says he had the stories planned to some extent when the first movie was filmed, I don’t believe him. There are way too many inconsistencies and contradictions. At some point I’ll review all of the movies, but right now I want to talk about one thing. If we’re to believe Lucas’ statement that he had a certain amount of the story in mind from the beginning – such as Vader being Luke’s father – then we have to wonder….
Why the hell is his name Luke SKYWALKER?
At the end of Revenge of the Sith, we are given to believe that Padme Amidala dies of a broken heart or something. I have a friend who believes that in order to live and transform into Darth Vader, Anakin drew life-energy from her and that’s what killed her. Either way, she gives birth to twins. Yoda and Obi-Wan Kenobi make the decision to separate them and send them off to live away from Vader. Fine, Leia goes to live with Senator Bail Organa of Alderaan and his wife and takes their last name – perfect. Luke, however, is sent to live with his father’s step-brother on Tatooine. Obi-Wan decides to live nearby to keep an eye on the boy. If you were trying to make sure you weren’t drawing attention to the child, wouldn’t you have changed his last name to something other than Skywalker? It’s like a neon sign saying “come get me Dad!” Why not take the Uncle’s last name of Lars? Why not make up some other name?
For that, and many other reasons, I’m certain Lucas was just making it up as he went along. I don’t believe he had a real backstory to his characters from the beginning at all.
May the 4th be with you ~~~ stay well
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Categories: Opinion, Personal Stories
While I do not believe Lucas had a fully fleshed out story for the original trilogy, he did have a framework for the backstory; he needed to know at least a little bit about who Obi-Wan and Luke were, and also a bit about the Old Republic, the near-extinction of the Jedi and the rise of the Empire.
The proof can be found in the prologue of the 1976 (that’ right, 1976) novel Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker. This book was ghostwritten by Alan Dean Foster (same guy that novelized Star Trek: The Animated Series and, later, Alien) and based not just on the fourth draft of George Lucas’s script, plus notes from Lucas to Foster about the nebulous story of how Palpatine (yes, he is mentioned by name) rose to power.
The prologue is a very rough and not very detailed outline for the Prequel Trilogy. One can’t say, for instance, that Naboo was first mentioned then, or that Anakin and Padme were explicitly named. But the basic narrative – large corporations conspiring to place Palpatine into power, Palpatine naming himself Emperor, and the extermination of the Jedi through treachery. – is there.
On a personal note, I’m sorry that you have to cancel your travel plans. I know that going places is what brings you joy, and I feel a sense of frustration and sadness because you can’t have that joy, at least for the time being. It’s hard, I know, but as Queen Elizabeth II said in her address to her subjects, better days are ahead.
May the Force be with you on this Star Wars Day.
He might have had a vague outline, but I can’t believe he had any hint at that moment that Luke and Leia would turn out to be siblings, never mind Vader’s child. I think his basic story was probably more like what it seemed when A New Hope came out – a young farm boy with a fixation on his deceased father takes on the Empire and rescues the Princess.
I was holding out hope that by September the virus would be enough on the downspin that there could be some travel. Still do, but realistically these cruise ship companies are not going to move ships to where they need to be for a lot of these cruises, which is why I think the European summer season is toast. I thought that for a long time. Now I have to see what happens with my airfare.
I can tell you with 100% certainty that Luke’s father and Darth Vader were not one and the same before Leigh Brackett died after finishing the first draft of “Empire.” Various notes, interviews, and early drafts of that screenplay prove that. There may have been abandoned drafts where the character we know as Luke had a brother, and there might have been other ideas for Luke having a twin that was NOT Leia. So yeah…the whole one-screenplay-three parts story doesn’t make sense.
As for the travel thing, I doubt that this year’s travel season will be saved. Coronaviruses have a tendency to mutate, so much so that even though the original virus can be traced SPECIFICALLY to China, new strains can be traced to Europe, North America, other Asian countries, possibly even Latin America. And there are going to be new waves as politicians try to mollify their citizens and ease up on restrictions…thus creating new outbreaks. Japan experienced this in March, so there is precedence.
I am happy you are not in NYC. NH seems to be safer…stay healthy, Patti.
Also..another brick in the whole “he didn’t have the whole Original Trilogy pre-planned” wall:
Five words: “Splinter of the Mind’s Eye.”
Yes, especially the Luke & Leia tension that was in that.