The Original Trilogy 1977 – 1983

In 1971 Universal Studios agreed to make American Graffiti and Star Wars in a two-picture contract, although Star Wars was later rejected in its early concept stages. American Graffiti was completed in 1973 and, a few months later, Lucas wrote a short summary called “The Journal of the Whills” which told the tale of the training of apprentice C.J. Thorpe as a “Jedi-Bendu” space commando by the legendary Mace Windy. Frustrated that his story was too difficult to understand Lucas then wrote a 13-page treatment called The Star Wars, which was a loose remake of Akira Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress. By 1974, he had expanded the treatment into a rough draft screenplay, adding elements such as the Sith, the Death Star, and a protagonist named Annikin Starkiller. For the second draft Lucas made heavy simplifications and also introduced the young hero on a farm as Luke Skywalker. Anakin became Luke’s father, a wise Jedi knight. “The Force” was also introduced as a supernatural power. The next draft removed the father character and replaced him with a substitute named Ben Kenobi and in 1976 a fourth draft had been prepared for principal photography. The film was titled Adventures of Luke Starkiller, as taken from the Journal of the Whills Saga I: The Star Wars. During production, Lucas changed Luke’s name to Skywalker and altered the title to simply The Star Wars and finally Star Wars.

At that point Lucas was not expecting the film to become part of a series. The fourth draft of the script underwent subtle changes that made it more satisfying as a self-contained film, ending with the destruction of the Empire itself by way of destroying the Death Star. However, Lucas had previously conceived of the film as the first in a series of adventures. Later he realized the film would not in fact be the first in the sequence but a film in the second trilogy in the saga. This is stated explicitly in George Lucas’ preface to the 1994 reissue of Splinter of the Mind’s Eye: “It wasn’t long after I began writing Star Wars that I realized the story was more than a single film could hold. As the saga of the Skywalkers and Jedi Knights unfolded, I began to see it as a tale that could take at least nine films to tell – three trilogies – and I realized, in making my way through the back story and after story, that I was really setting out to write the middle story.”

The second draft contained a teaser for a never-made sequel about “The Princess of Ondos” and by the time of the third draft some months later Lucas had negotiated a contract that gave him rights to make two sequels. Not long after Lucas met with author Alan Dean Foster and hired him to write these two sequels as novels. The intention was that if Star Wars were successful Lucas could adapt the novels into screenplays. He had also by that point developed a fairly elaborate backstory to aid his writing process. When Star Wars proved successful Lucas decided to use the film as the basis for an elaborate serial although at one point he considered walking away from the series altogether. However, Lucas wanted to create an independent filmmaking center – what would become Skywalker Ranch – and saw an opportunity to use the series as a financing agent. Alan Dean Foster had already begun writing the first sequel novel but Lucas decided to abandon his plan to adapt Foster’s work; the book was released as Splinter of the Mind’s Eye the following year. At first Lucas envisioned a series of films with no set number of entries, like the James Bond series. In an interview with Rolling Stone in August 1977 he said that he wanted his friends to each take a turn at directing the films and giving unique interpretations on the series. He also said that the backstory in which Darth Vader turns to the dark side, kills Luke’s father and fights Ben Kenobi on a volcano as the Galactic Republic falls would make an excellent sequel.

Later that year Lucas hired science fiction author Leigh Brackett to write Star Wars II with him. They held story conferences and, by late November 1977, Lucas had produced a handwritten treatment called The Empire Strikes Back. The treatment is very similar to the final film, except that Darth Vader does not reveal he is Luke’s father. In the first draft that Brackett would write from this Luke’s father appears as a ghost to instruct Luke.

Brackett finished her first draft in early 1978; Lucas has said he was disappointed with it, but before he could discuss it with her, she died of cancer. With no writer available Lucas had to write his next draft himself. It was this draft in which Lucas first made use of the “Episode” numbering for the films; Empire Strikes Back was listed as Episode II. As Michael Kaminski argues in The Secret History of Star Wars the disappointment with the first draft probably made Lucas consider different directions in which to take the story. He made use of a new plot twist: Darth Vader claims to be Luke’s father. According to Lucas he found this draft enjoyable to write as opposed to the year-long struggles writing the first film. He quickly wrote two more drafts, both in April 1978. He also took the script to a darker extreme by having Han Solo imprisoned in Carbonite and left in limbo.

This new story point of Darth Vader being Luke’s father had drastic effects on the series. Michael Kaminski argues in his book that it is unlikely that the plot point had ever seriously been considered or even conceived of before 1978 and that the first film was clearly operating under an alternate storyline where Vader was separate from Luke’s father; there is not a single reference to this plot point before 1978. After writing the second and third drafts of Empire Strikes Back in which the point was introduced Lucas reviewed the new backstory he had created: Anakin Skywalker was Ben Kenobi’s brilliant student and had a child named Luke but was swayed to the dark side by Emperor (who became a Sith and not simply a politician). Anakin battled Ben Kenobi on the site of a volcano and was wounded but then resurrected as Darth Vader. Meanwhile Kenobi hid Luke on Tatooine while the Republic became the Empire and Vader systematically hunted down and killed the Jedi.

With this new backstory in place Lucas decided that the series would be a trilogy, changing Empire Strikes Back from Episode II to Episode V in the next draft. Lawrence Kasdan, who had just completed writing Raiders of the Lost Ark, was then hired to write the next drafts and was given additional input from director Irvin Kershner. Kasdan, Kershner, and producer Gary Kurtz saw the film as a more serious and adult film which was helped by the new, darker storyline and developed the series from the light adventure roots of the first film.

By the time he began writing Episode VI in 1981 (then titled Revenge of the Jedi) much had changed. Making Empire Strikes Back was stressful and costly and Lucas’ personal life was disintegrating. Burned out and not wanting to make any more Star Wars films he vowed that he was done with the series in a May 1983 interview with Time magazine. Lucas’ 1981 rough drafts had Darth Vader competing with the Emperor for possession of Luke – and in the second script, the “revised rough draft,” Vader became a sympathetic character. Lawrence Kasdan was hired to take over once again and, in these final drafts, Vader was explicitly redeemed and finally unmasked. This change in character would provide a springboard to the “Tragedy of Darth Vader” storyline that underlies the prequels.

Prequel trilogy

After losing much of his fortune in a divorce settlement in 1987, Lucas had no desire to return to Star Wars and had unofficially canceled his sequel trilogy by the time of Return of the Jedi. Nevertheless the prequels, which were quite developed at this point, continued to fascinate him. After Star Wars became popular once again in the wake of Dark Horse’s comic book line and Timothy Zahn’s trilogy of novels, Lucas saw that there was still a large audience. His children were older and with the explosion of CGI technology he was now considering returning to directing. By 1993 it was announced, in Variety among other sources, that he would be making the prequels. He began outlining the story, now indicating the series would be a tragic one examining Anakin Skywalker’s fall to the dark side. Lucas also began to change how the prequels would exist relative to the originals; at first they were supposed to be a “filling-in” of history, backstory, existing parallel or tangential to the originals, but now he saw that they could form the beginning of one long story that started with Anakin’s childhood and ended with his death. This was the final step towards turning the film series into a “Saga”.

In 1994 Lucas began writing the first screenplay titled Episode I: The Beginning. Following the release of that film Lucas announced that he would also be directing the next two and began working on Episode II at that time. The first draft of Episode II was completed just weeks before principal photography and Lucas hired Jonathan Hales, a writer from The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, to polish it. Unsure of a title Lucas had jokingly called the film “Jar Jar’s Great Adventure”. In writing The Empire Strikes Back Lucas initially decided that Lando Calrissian was a clone and came from a planet of clones which caused the “Clone Wars” mentioned by Obi-Wan Kenobi in A New Hope. In it Shocktroopers from a remote planet which attacked the Republic and were repelled by the Jedi. The basic elements of that backstory became the plot basis for Episode II with the new wrinkle added that Palpatine secretly orchestrated the crisis.

Lucas began working on Episode III before Attack of the Clones was released offering concept artists that the film would open with a montage of seven Clone War battles. As he reviewed the storyline that summer, however, he says he radically re-organized the plot. Michael Kaminski, in The Secret History of Star Wars, offers evidence that issues in Anakin’s fall to the dark side prompted Lucas to make massive story changes, first revising the opening sequence to have Palpatine kidnapped and his apprentice, Count Dooku, murdered by Anakin as the first act in the latter’s turn towards the dark side. After principal photography was complete in 2003 Lucas made even more massive changes in Anakin’s character, re-writing his entire turn to the dark side; he would now turn primarily in a quest to save Padmé’s life, rather than the previous version in which that reason was one of several, including that he genuinely believed that the Jedi were evil and plotting to take over the Republic. This fundamental re-write was accomplished both through editing the principal footage and new and revised scenes filmed during pick-ups in 2004.

Lucas often exaggerated the amount of material he wrote for the series; much of it stemmed from the post–1978 period when the series grew into a phenomenon. Michael Kaminski explained that these exaggerations were both a publicity and security measure. Kaminski rationalized that since the series’ story radically changed throughout the years it was always Lucas’ intention to change the original story retroactively because audiences would only view the material from his perspective. However by January 2007 Lucasfilm stated on starwars.com that “there are no definitive plans or dates for releasing the Star Wars saga in 3-D.” At Celebration Europe in July 2007 Rick McCallum confirmed that Lucasfilm is “planning to take all six films and turn them into 3-D,” but they are “waiting for the companies out there that are developing this technology to bring it down to a cost level that makes it worthwhile for everybody”. In July 2008 Jeffrey Katzenberg, the CEO of Dreamworks Animations, revealed that Lucas plans to redo all six of the movies in 3D. In late September 2010 it was announced that The Phantom Menace will be theatrically re-released in 3-D during 2012. All six films will be re-released in order with the 3-D conversion process taking at least a year to complete per film. An altered clip from The Phantom Menace included in a featurette on the DVD release of Revenge of the Sith features a computer generated Yoda replacing the original puppet; animation director Rob Coleman stated that the clip had been created as test footage of Yoda prior to work on Revenge of the Sith. Lucasfilm Vice President of Marketing Jim Ward announced that Lucasfilm is likely to do more work on the films stating “As the technology evolves and we get into a high-definition platform that is easily consumable by our customers, the situation is much better, but there will always be work to be done.” At Chicago Comics and Entertainment Expo 2010, Steve Sansweet, Lucasfilm’s Director of Fan Relations, revealed that “a very full set of all six movies on Blu-ray with lots of extra material” is being prepared for release. On August 14, 2010, George Lucas announced that all six Star Wars films will be released on Blu-ray Disc in the Fall of 2011. On January 6, 2011, Lucasfilm announced the release of the Star Wars saga on Blu-ray for September 2011.