Star Wars

Conception

"Star Wars" began with a 13-page treatment for a space adventure movie which George Lucas drafted in 1973.

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The original plan

Star Wars creator George Lucas had originally written the summaries for fifteen stories that would make up his entire Star Wars saga. The material present was enough for fifteen films. Out of his fifteen stories, Lucas originally planned to tell only one of those, Episode IV, on the big screen. Then, in 1978, he announced to the world that he would create a total of twelve films, of which A New Hope was the first, that would chronicle the adventures of Luke Skywalker. However, in 1979, he retracted that statement, saying he would only make nine of those twelve. Subsequently, around 1983, at the completion of Episodes IV-VI, Lucas announced that he was finished with Star Wars, and no more films would be made than those three.

Related Topics:
1978 - 1979 - 1983

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He maintained this stand until the year 1995, when he suddenly announced that he would produce a prequel trilogy to Episodes IV-VI, and that only these six films would be made. Lucas' past statements have shown that he, in fact, did originally intend to produce more than six films in his series, and these statements contradict his modern claims of "envisioning the whole thing as a series of six films," as he puts it.

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For more information on the supposed sequel trilogy, see Sequel trilogy.

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The ideas

George Lucas originally wanted to make a film of Flash Gordon but the rights were owned by Dino de Laurentiis and he decided that it would be cheaper to make up his own characters. Much of the plot and characterizations were borrowed from the 1958 Japanese film The Hidden Fortress starring Toshiro Mifune and directed by the famed Akira Kurosawa. Originally, Lucas created a story that spanned a total of fifteen films, though he never actually planned to make all of those. Instead, he began with the fourth story of the fifteen, Episode IV: A New Hope. Lucas wrote a total of 4 drafts, in which the story underwent great changes. At one point the Force was represented by the Kaiburr crystal, before it became the metaphysical source of power of the lightsaber-wielding Jedi. Another great influence were the writings of Joseph Campbell, who wrote bestsellers, such as The Hero with a Thousand Faces, and explored in depth the meaning and working of the world's mythologies. The original film, later known as A New Hope, closely followed the archetypal journey of a hero, discussed and illustrated in the aforementioned book by Campbell.

Related Topics:
Flash Gordon - Dino de Laurentiis - 1958 - The Hidden Fortress - Toshiro Mifune - Akira Kurosawa - Joseph Campbell - The Hero with a Thousand Faces

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The scripts

Lucas' original script was almost 500 pages long. The title changed from The Adventures of Luke Starkiller, before becoming simply Star Wars. Later he decided to divide it into several episodes, because the story became too big for one film. The back story, which would later become the prequel trilogy, was only a few pages of notes and brainstorming, to help him better understand the characters he had created. He used this brief outline as a guide when he began writing Episode I in late 1994. Fans always dreamed and talked about a possible third trilogy, but this is now said to be a myth despite interviews (such as in Scholastic's Dynamite magazine in 1978) that suggested otherwise. Lucas now claims that he never planned to tell a story after Episode VI. The official line now is that the story was initially planned to stretch over 12 episodes, then he confined his vision to 9, and now, 6 episodes. However, it was always the same story.

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