The Empire Strikes Back's Producer Reveals How the Star Wars Saga Should Have Ended


galadiman

 

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In an interview in the LA Times's Hero Complex blog for the 30th anniversary of The Empire Strikes Back, producer Gary Kurtz breaks his (comparative) silence and reveals his insider's perspective on what Star Wars was like to work on at the beginning, exactly when George Lucas began to go wrong, and the fallout from his departure from the series that was never intended to be a series.

And the Star Wars saga's ending? The Rebel Alliance decimated, Han dying in battle, Leia enmeshed in politics, and Luke taking off on his own "like Clint Eastwood in the spaghetti westerns."

A spokeswoman for George Lucas said he was unavailable for comment.


 

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Originally Posted by Golden Girl View Post
None of that is really new
Indeed, but the context and timing are notable. Not only is this the 30th anniversary of the best of the Star Wars movies (indeed, the last truly good one), but Kurtz is also going to be a special guest this weekend at the official Star Wars Celebration V to honor it. While Kurtz has alluded to his discontents before, this time he seems ready to air them very publicly and very clearly.


 

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Star Wars geek nitpick:

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“Star Wars” opened with a title sequence that announced it as “Episode IV” as a winking nod to the old serials, not a film franchise underway, Kurtz said.
The "Episode IV" wasn't added until after Empire came out.

As for Return of the Jedi- when I was a kid it was the greatest thing I had ever seen, my opinion now is irrelevant.


 

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Originally Posted by Golden Girl View Post
Actually, the "Episode IV" bit was added before ESB came out - for the 1978 rerelease, I think.
The 1981 re-release. (Then again, the early draft of Star Wars was called "Adventures of the Starkiller, Episode I: The Star Wars", so Lucas was toying around with the phrasing of serials' titles early on.)


 

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Originally Posted by TrueGentleman View Post
The 1981 re-release. (Then again, the early draft of Star Wars was called "Adventures of the Starkiller, Episode I: The Star Wars", so Lucas was toying around with the phrasing of serials' titles early on.)
I would also point out that Lucas and crew had literally no idea how lucky they would get back in 1977 when Star Wars first launched. So now that he knows he can get a franchise going and has the licensing/merchandising rights in his iron grip, then he can go back and stick the Ep 4 into the intro.


 

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Originally Posted by TrueGentleman View Post
In an interview in the LA Times's Hero Complex blog for the 30th anniversary of The Empire Strikes Back, producer Gary Kurtz breaks his (comparative) silence and reveals his insider's perspective on what Star Wars was like to work on at the beginning, exactly when George Lucas began to go wrong, and the fallout from his departure from the series that was never intended to be a series.

And the Star Wars saga's ending? The Rebel Alliance decimated, Han dying in battle, Leia enmeshed in politics, and Luke taking off on his own "like Clint Eastwood in the spaghetti westerns."

A spokeswoman for George Lucas said he was unavailable for comment.
Well Han was also rumored as to not going to be able to survive being in the carbonite or the thaw out. Also there were rumors that Lando and the Falcon were going to be incinerated just before they escape the Death Star. If you look at how close the flames were to the Falcon, that is on rumor that can almost be believed.

As to the Alliance being decimated, well it looked like not many survived the fight in space anyway since Death Star 2 began shooting down the fleet.

Still for all the hate that some fans feel about any of the movies, the plain fact is that Lucas got lucky back in 1977, and he would go on to create things like Industrial Light and Magic and THX among others.

Love him or hate him, the man has definitely had an impact on pop culture and the industry.


 

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Originally Posted by Vox Populi View Post
Star Wars geek nitpick:


The "Episode IV" wasn't added until after Empire came out.

As for Return of the Jedi- when I was a kid it was the greatest thing I had ever seen, my opinion now is irrelevant.
I never had a major problem with ROTJ except of course for the Ewoks, but I accept that budget constraints and FX problems forced Lucas to not have Wookies. For which he profusely apologized for in Revenge of the Sith by giving us some nice fight scenes on the Wookie homeworld

The Prequels: how much of what we hate about them can be credited to Lucas' apparent inability to direct or write romantic dialog and wanting total control vs. any rules in effect from the industry about violence and children in movies and what they can and cannot do to avoid upsetting parent groups, etc?

Case in point: at no time in Ep 1 do I recall kid Anakin wielding a blaster or a lightsaber, yet oddly it's ok for him to launch into space and blow up the enemy base with proton torpedoes.....go figure.

Yes Ep 1 also had some dry moments in the plot and of course the dreaded Jar Jar Binks.

Ep 2: hideous romantic dialogue and no chemistry between Anakin and Padme were my main gripes. Yes many scenes were Lucas showing off new CGI and FX tech, but then again that's also what the Star Wars films are about too.

Ep 3: Anakin's decision to go darkside mirrors the situation Luke was in back in ROTJ. However his sudden agreement "yes I shall slay the children!" was like....okay....... Of course they also cannot show THAT happening otherwise parent groups would go berzerk and the movie would receive an R rating instead of PG 13. The Obi vs. Anakin fight and Yoda vs. Sidious fight I have no quarrel with, both were highly entertaining despite any violations of physics in the Mustafar fight (like not being fried from the splashing lava when the shields went down, or the heat in the air frying their lungs from the inside out). My only other main gripe with Ep 3 was that Lucas blew his best chance to explain the Force Ghosts since in the novel of Ep 3 Yoda converses with Qui Gon who offers to teach Yoda deeper meaning of the Force including how to join with it and become an eternal Force Ghost! I hope that if he makes a special edition of Ep 3 that gets included somehow. Padme dying....yeah ok that kind of contradicts Leia's memories unless they decide she remembered her adoptive mother instead.


 

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Originally Posted by Nericus View Post
The Prequels: how much of what we hate about them can be credited to Lucas' apparent inability to direct or write romantic dialog and wanting total control vs. any rules in effect from the industry about violence and children in movies and what they can and cannot do to avoid upsetting parent groups, etc?
Kurtz doesn't think especially much of the prequels:
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"I don't like the idea of prequels, they make the filmmakers back in to material they've already covered and it boxes in the story," Kurtz said. "I think they did a pretty good job with them although I have to admit I never liked Hayden Christensen in the role of Anakin Skywalker. I just wished the stories had been stronger and that the dialogue had been stronger. It gets meek. I'm not sure the characters ever felt real like they did in 'Empire.'"
I prefer to think of the prequels as an out-of-control campaign from the defunct pen-and-paper Star Wars RPG, with an incompetent GM desperately improvising as a ragtag band of players rebels against his attempts to impose a coherent story on their adventures.


 

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As much as I love the Original 3, a lot of new Star Wars fans did come in on the novels, Prequels and the Clone Wars TV show without watching the Original 3. Right or wrong they love the series as much as we do just for different reasons.

You can argue all you want how much you hate this and that, but Star Wars is going strong in popularity.

Hell, how many of us are looking forward the Star Wars <Bleep Against City of Heroes Forum Policy> when that comes out even though it has nothing to do with our beloved Original 3? This takes place before even the Prequels.

At least it is Lucas, the creator, is following what he sees his vision as and not a bunch of suit hacks (B&B) that ruined another perfectly good serial Sci Series (Star Trek) because neither of them know what they were doing.

Right or wrong of what we think at least Lucas is following his vision with no one to blame but himself which I find refreshing and something I do respect.


 

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Originally Posted by Nericus View Post
Case in point: at no time in Ep 1 do I recall kid Anakin wielding a blaster or a lightsaber, yet oddly it's ok for him to launch into space and blow up the enemy base with proton torpedoes.....go figure.
I think the reason it passed the cenosors was that he "accidently" hit the auto-pilot switch and the ship flew into space with the others in the sqad. Then, after he fixed that, he shot some random droids, and "accidently" fired the torpedo at the right angle in the ship to blow it up. And he was like "oh shi....". Then he finally got control and ran away.

Oh sure, we are to believe that the Force was guiding his actions, but what Lucas SHOWED us was that this kid had tremendous luck and bumbled his way to a victory for the people of Naboo.
Rather like the way Jarjar survived his battle on the ground...


 

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Originally Posted by TrueGentleman View Post
Kurtz doesn't think especially much of the prequels:


I prefer to think of the prequels as an out-of-control campaign from the defunct pen-and-paper Star Wars RPG, with an incompetent GM desperately improvising as a ragtag band of players rebels against his attempts to impose a coherent story on their adventures.
Nicely put. Oh yeah, you forgot: "with a bats*** CRAZY hormonally challenged teenager incompetent GM..."

I'm bitter from time to time. The medications help... mostly.


Arc #6015 - Coming Unglued

"A good n00b-sauce is based on a good n00b-roux." - The Masque

 

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Originally Posted by Golden Girl View Post
Lucas did push the violence enough to get III a PG13 rating.
Well with all the Jedi getting slaughtered, including the kids, plus Mace Windu being...disarmed.., the Jedi that came with him to face Sidious being skewered and beheaded, plus Anakin attacking Padme......yeah I can see it being PG 13. Revenge of the Sith is where it all hits the fan for the Republic and the Jedi.

In ROTJ; how many Ewoks were killed? We know there was one when that pair got blasted and one lived and knelt by the other and began to weep.

Of course the real answer to how many Ewoks were killed in ROTJ is real simple: NOT ENOUGH!


 

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Originally Posted by Nericus View Post
Of course the real answer to how many Ewoks were killed in ROTJ is real simple: NOT ENOUGH!
Perhaps some day Lucas or his heirs will go back and create a re-remastered edition of Return of the Jedi with a new epilogue showing the Endor Holocaust. (Spoiler alert: You can't explode a moon-sized artificial satellite in low orbit around a planet without causing an extinction-level catastrophe.)


 

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I believe Ford himself also pushed for his character to be killed in ROTJ. He wanted the final instalment to show the price of freedom sometimes requires the ultimate sacrifice.


 

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Originally Posted by TrueGentleman View Post
Perhaps some day Lucas or his heirs will go back and create a re-remastered edition of Return of the Jedi with a new epilogue showing the Endor Holocaust. (Spoiler alert: You can't explode a moon-sized artificial satellite in low orbit around a planet without causing an extinction-level catastrophe.)
Well Robot Chicken Star Wars 2 shows the Endor holocaust.


 

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Originally Posted by Mothers_Love View Post
I believe Ford himself also pushed for his character to be killed in ROTJ. He wanted the final instalment to show the price of freedom sometimes requires the ultimate sacrifice.
Yeah, that and Ford supposedly hates sharing the spotlight with too many other characters. Ever notice that in pretty much all the Star Wars games, we might see the Falcon and Chewbacca, Luke and Lando......but never Han?


 

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This dude sounds really bitter about Lucas not accepting his ideas. Yes there was a inherent darkness to ESB but its because it was the middle act. First act introduces the characters sets up the world and the stage motivations etc. The second act puts those characters into a total no win situation, the third act, they get out of the troubles. Star Wars follows this basic dramatic formula pretty closely.

And honestly i think Kurtz was wrong. I would have been really pissed off, even at 13 when ROTJ came out, that these characters i loved died, or rode off into the sunset, etc. At that age i want a happy ending. And RTOJ mostly provided that. Star Wars wasnt intended to be a movie about the cost of wars, the price of freedom etc. Its a heroes journey about facing challenge, doing the right thing, redemption for mistakes etc. And just like other mythic hero journeys the point really is mostly to see the heroes win.

I take the prequels for what they were, and though i can sit back and say how dorky some of the dialog sounded etc, i know one thing, i had waited 25 years to see a fight between anikin and obiwan, and when they were circling on the landing platform before they started fighting, i was literally sitting on the edge of my seat. And i dont think i had been that excited in a movie since i was 13 watching the emporer taunting luke and just waiting for him to reach out for his lightsaber.

My only real complaint on the prequels is that Lucas either disreguarded or ignored things in the novels for them that make aspects of the movies make more sense. Like in ep 1 describing how anakin was able to pilot the pods by using force powers he didnt even know he had, or just "felt" in the force why he should have fired a torpedo into a dark part of the ship which ended up being the energy core.

In the second movie i think it almost all works well, acept they dont really touch on his dreams close enough, his attachment issues etc, which is really the corner stone of his gradual fall to the dark side.

And in the third movie, his fall seems clunky because they didnt use the set up in the book. In the book he feels very betrayed by the Jedi when they grant him council status becaus Palpatine wants him there, but not Master rank, which would give him access to the jedi archives to in his hopes find a way to save Padme's life. So in this way he feels the jedi are betraying him, costing him padme etc, which opens him up more to the seeds of discontent that palpatine spent years planting in side his head.

But I really try to keep inmind that these are movies primarily made to appeal to the 8-13 year old crowds, and as much as i would have liked a new set of movies made to appeal to me in my thirties, that really just wasnt going to happen. It sounds bad and i usually would say that its a bad trait of a movie to force me to do it, but when i check my brain at the theater door, i enjoyed the prequels very much.


 

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Originally Posted by Mothers_Love View Post
I believe Ford himself also pushed for his character to be killed in ROTJ. He wanted the final instalment to show the price of freedom sometimes requires the ultimate sacrifice.
Actually, I think he was getting tired of the role

As he said about the script while shooting A New Hope, "George, you can type this ****, but you sure can't say it"


@Golden Girl

City of Heroes comics and artwork

 

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Originally Posted by TrueGentleman View Post
Perhaps some day Lucas or his heirs will go back and create a re-remastered edition of Return of the Jedi with a new epilogue showing the Endor Holocaust. (Spoiler alert: You can't explode a moon-sized artificial satellite in low orbit around a planet without causing an extinction-level catastrophe.)
Yeah but the holocaust would be a bunch of dead Ewoks and no one would have cared. Correction the audience would have cheered.


 

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Originally Posted by QuiJon View Post
This dude sounds really bitter about Lucas not accepting his ideas. Yes there was a inherent darkness to ESB but its because it was the middle act. First act introduces the characters sets up the world and the stage motivations etc. The second act puts those characters into a total no win situation, the third act, they get out of the troubles. Star Wars follows this basic dramatic formula pretty closely.

And honestly i think Kurtz was wrong. I would have been really pissed off, even at 13 when ROTJ came out, that these characters i loved died, or rode off into the sunset, etc. At that age i want a happy ending. And RTOJ mostly provided that. Star Wars wasnt intended to be a movie about the cost of wars, the price of freedom etc. Its a heroes journey about facing challenge, doing the right thing, redemption for mistakes etc. And just like other mythic hero journeys the point really is mostly to see the heroes win.

I take the prequels for what they were, and though i can sit back and say how dorky some of the dialog sounded etc, i know one thing, i had waited 25 years to see a fight between anikin and obiwan, and when they were circling on the landing platform before they started fighting, i was literally sitting on the edge of my seat. And i dont think i had been that excited in a movie since i was 13 watching the emporer taunting luke and just waiting for him to reach out for his lightsaber.

My only real complaint on the prequels is that Lucas either disreguarded or ignored things in the novels for them that make aspects of the movies make more sense. Like in ep 1 describing how anakin was able to pilot the pods by using force powers he didnt even know he had, or just "felt" in the force why he should have fired a torpedo into a dark part of the ship which ended up being the energy core.

In the second movie i think it almost all works well, acept they dont really touch on his dreams close enough, his attachment issues etc, which is really the corner stone of his gradual fall to the dark side.

And in the third movie, his fall seems clunky because they didnt use the set up in the book. In the book he feels very betrayed by the Jedi when they grant him council status becaus Palpatine wants him there, but not Master rank, which would give him access to the jedi archives to in his hopes find a way to save Padme's life. So in this way he feels the jedi are betraying him, costing him padme etc, which opens him up more to the seeds of discontent that palpatine spent years planting in side his head.

But I really try to keep inmind that these are movies primarily made to appeal to the 8-13 year old crowds, and as much as i would have liked a new set of movies made to appeal to me in my thirties, that really just wasnt going to happen. It sounds bad and i usually would say that its a bad trait of a movie to force me to do it, but when i check my brain at the theater door, i enjoyed the prequels very much.
You make some interesting points about the Prequels, but aside from borrowing a note from 80's Dune movie and having us hear their thoughts aloud (please no), I can't see any easy way to incorporate such things without some serious rewrites. In ep 3 though he did get a bit angry at first when told he was not a Master but reigned himself in, and he did complain to Padme about how he feels held back.

Still, another missed opportunity to try to save Anakin: in Ep 2: Yoda is meditating and years Qui-Gon's scream in the Force as Anakin OBLITERATES the Tuskens that killed his mother. (the ep 2 novelization makes it quite clear that Anakin cut loose and was hurling boulders with the Force and carving them all up with his saber. The only hut left standing was the one his mother was in). Yoda knows that Skywalker is in incredible pain and likely knows that some are dying from his pain. Yet Yoda doesn't talk to Anakin in the rest of Ep 2 due to the events moving against them, but still doesn't try talking to him after things settled down?


 

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Originally Posted by UltraTroll View Post
Yeah but the holocaust would be a bunch of dead Ewoks and no one would have cared.
Disney thinks the Ewoks are "lovable" enough to devote one third of their upcoming Star Tours attraction to their home on Endor. (I love the LAT article's description of TRotJ's finale as "the teddy bear's luau".)

With the Ewoks, Lucas delivered a masterpiece case study in the combination of sentimentality and cynicism. On one hand, he clearly believed, in his heart, that a technologically superior military force could be defeated by a stone age-level tribe as long as they're the Good Guys; on the other, he decided he needed a new marketing angle on his franchise's toy tie-ins. Thirty years later, we have James Cameron's Avatar recycling the former idea and Disney confirming the latter.


 

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Originally Posted by Nericus View Post
You make some interesting points about the Prequels, but aside from borrowing a note from 80's Dune movie and having us hear their thoughts aloud (please no), I can't see any easy way to incorporate such things without some serious rewrites. In ep 3 though he did get a bit angry at first when told he was not a Master but reigned himself in, and he did complain to Padme about how he feels held back.

Still, another missed opportunity to try to save Anakin: in Ep 2: Yoda is meditating and years Qui-Gon's scream in the Force as Anakin OBLITERATES the Tuskens that killed his mother. (the ep 2 novelization makes it quite clear that Anakin cut loose and was hurling boulders with the Force and carving them all up with his saber. The only hut left standing was the one his mother was in). Yoda knows that Skywalker is in incredible pain and likely knows that some are dying from his pain. Yet Yoda doesn't talk to Anakin in the rest of Ep 2 due to the events moving against them, but still doesn't try talking to him after things settled down?
I agree that adding an internal monologue to star wars just would be out of place. I was just pointing out that in the novels that intent becomes easier to understand when dealing with motivations of the characters because of a books ability to use thoughts that are not vocalized on screen.

But they could have added a scene between QuiGon and young ani in ep1 dealing with exploring how ani uses the force even without knowing it. But they glossed over it simply with a comment eluding to how no other human could handle the speed of pod racing.

As you pointed out, the books have a clearer intent on anikin when he cuts loose on the raiders. It also deals with the converstation later with Padme i think alot better also if i recall correctly. And Episode 3 i think would have worked alot better if maybe toward the begining the elude that Obiwan knows of the secret mariage so that Anikin has a sounding board for his conflicts during the movie to talk about his dreams and such. Either that or have used his relationship with Palpatine in that way. It would have i think added to the believablity of how Palpatine worked Anikin over to show a more personal relationship between them.