Originally posted by ckolchak

interviews with Kurtz talk about the original ideas they hashed out for the 'whole' saga- including what were to be eps 7,8, 9.
originally- surprise- Leia was NOT lukes sister. he did have a sister who was on the other side of the universe and wouldn't have been revealed until the next trilogy.
the resolution of ROTJ only involved the death of Vader- the Emperor was the 'big bad' who would see his ultimate demise in ep9.
in the original story for ROTJ, Han was supposed to die and Leia was to be named Queen, and Luke was to go off on his own.
it was to have been a very bittersweet, non-banal Disneyesque, ending.

for more info on this track down the IGN interview with Kurtz or consult the annotated screenplays book.

IGNFF: Well what were the original outlines for the prequels? Since they can be compared and contrasted now that the first one's out there, and the second one's soon to be out there. Were there major differences from what you saw, from the original outlines of prequel ideas?

KURTZ: Well a lot of the prequel ideas were very, very vague. It's really difficult to say. I can't remember much about that at all, except dealing with the Clone Wars and the formation of the Jedi Knights in the first place – that was supposed to be one of the keys of Episode I, was going to be how the Jedi Knights came to be. But all of those notes were abandoned completely. One of the reasons Jedi came out the way it did was because the story outline of how Jedi was going to be seemed to get tossed out, and one of the reasons I was really unhappy was the fact that all of the carefully constructed story structure of characters and things that we did in Empire was going to carry over into Jedi. The resolution of that film was going to be quite bittersweet, with Han Solo being killed, and the princess having to take over as queen of what remained of her people, leaving everybody else. In effect, Luke was left on his own. None of that happened, of course.

IGNFF: So it would have been less of a fairy-tale ending?

KURTZ: Much, much less. It would have been quite sad, and poignant and upbeat at the same time, because they would have won a battle. But the idea of another attack on another Death Star wasn't there at all ... it was a rehash of Star Wars, with better visual effects. And there were no Ewoks ... it was just entirely different. It was much more adult and straightforward, the story. This idea that the roller-coaster ride was all the audience was interested in, and the story doesn't have to be very adult or interesting, seemed to come up because of what happened with Raiders of the Lost Ark and the Indiana Jones films – and the fact that that seemed to make a lot of money and it didn't matter whether there was a really good story or not – that wasn't what this kind of film was about. We had serious differences about a lot of that.

Originally posted by QuiGonJosh
ROTJ and the Prequels are great to those who actually pay attention...

Originally posted by Superboy
You must have one hell of an attention span. I fell asleep in ROTJ and both prequels.

Originally posted by QuiGonJosh
ROTJ and the Prequels are great to those who actually pay attention...

Originally posted by Groucho
Interesting that Lucas would take a "hands off" approach that resulted in what most consider the best film in the series. Interesting comments.

Originally posted by kcbrett5
Then why do you continue to watch them? I guarantee you will see Episode 3 as well.


This is what kills me. All you fools in all these threads kill Lucas and Star Wars yet you will almost all be there on opening night when the next one comes out and you will almost all buy every edition of every movie that comes out.

Lucas is Star Wars. He created the whole thing. Its all his. If you hate him so much than stop watching. It clearly causes you all great pain to watch the movies, so why do you continue to torture yourself? Just stop. And go away.

The fact that Jedi most clearly resembles the prequels (muppets in every frame, lots of FX, storyline as an afterthought) just makes that even clearer

It's a shame he didn't work with a co-director or have a really good co-writer for the prequel movies. Star Wars was its best when it was a collaborative project, but somehow people (including Lucas) seem to have forgotten that.