2. The Death Of The Sequel Trilogy?
1997 1999: Star Wars was back. Many forget but there was a long period between the late 80s and early to mid 90s where no one really spoke about Star Wars. It was very much something you looked back to in your youth. Of course you had fonder memories than you did other childhood loves such as Transformers and He-Man and such and more often than not you still kept all your toys and collectables but generally kids of the 80s had moved on to action movies, the early days of superhero films and, yknow, girls and stuff. Then though a series of limited release videos and of course the Special Editions in our cinemas Star Wars suddenly came back. Toy lines appeared again, books and even pop culture references started featuring the Star Wars trilogy. Suddenly Star Wars felt current again and now multiple generations could enjoy it! Somewhere between 1997 and 1999 we discovered the prequels were coming. The rumours of nine episodes began again but Lucas was quick to dismiss the speculation. At a 1997 Special Edition press conference Lucas remarked;
"Everyone said, 'Well, are you going to do sequels to the first three?' But that was an afterthought; I don't have scripts on those stories. The only notion on that was, wouldn't it be fun to get all the actors to come back when they're 60 or 70 years old and make three more about them as old people. That's how far that has gone, but the first six will definitely get finished." Then Lucas carried on in a 1997 issue of Star Wars Insider, where he pretty much destroyed any notion of Episodes after Episode VI.
"The whole story has six episodes.... If I ever went beyond that, it would be something that was made up. I really don't have any notion other than, 'Gee, it would be interesting to do Luke Skywalker later on.' It wouldn't be part of the main story, but a sequel to this thing. Then in 1997, via an online Q&A hosted by Leonard Maltin, Lucas was asked
"Will we ever get to see Episodes 7, 8 and 9?", to which he answered,
"Right at this moment, the answer is no. Once the prequel trilogy is complete I plan to put Star Wars on the shelf and walk away from it for good. There are many other kinds of films I would like to make. This angle of
Theres other kinds of films I would like to make continued right up until 2012s Red Tails which Lucas ended up producing and arguably directing the fighter plane action sequences. In 1999, just as the prequel train began, while at a press conference in New York City to discuss The Phantom Menace Lucas hit us with this bombshell;
Q: Does that mean you won't do episodes seven, eight and nine? Lucas: I will not do seven, eight and nine. Q: You will not? Will they be made by somebody else? Lucas: No. They will not. Q: So this trilogy ends it? Lucas: This is it. This is all there is. The further hopes of a sequel trilogy came think and fast as Revenge of the Sith rolled around and beyond Things like
"When you see it in six parts, you'll understand," he said.
"It really ends at part six. - I never had a story for the sequels, for the later ones." or
"The movies were the story of Anakin Skywalker and Luke Skywalker, and when Luke saves the galaxy and redeems his father, that's where that story ends were regularly heard from Lucas and even when the possibility of someone else making Star Wars films came up Lucas was even dismissive of that prospect with comments like
Probably not, it's my thing. A further comment Lucas made at that 1999 press conference noted that the nine year commitment
required to make a Star Wars trilogy would now come into play. In 2002, he described his past answers about the sequels in this way:
"Basically what I said as a joke was, 'Maybe when Harrison and Carrie are in their 70s, we'll come back and do another version.' The thing I didn't realize then, and that I do realize now very clearly, is that not only would they be in their 70s, but I would be in my 70s too." Later in 2007 Lucas described making the films at that age as
"An idea that seemed amusing at the time, but doesn't seem realistic now", and suggested that off-the-cuff comments he had made in earlier years about the sequel trilogy had been misconstrued as absolute statements. This seems very telling of Hollywood really. Small things become absolute fact when it comes to film, especially much loved films like Star Wars. In early May 2002, rumors of Star Wars Episodes VII, VIII, and IX were posted on the Internet (like they often are). Lucas noted that there would be no Star Wars Episodes VII, VIII, and IX since the time feels right to move on:
"I am going to do my own movies. I have got some ideas but they are the kind of movies that aren't going to be popular, they're not going to be successful in terms of financing. I have managed to get a fund by doing these (blockbuster) movies that allows me the creative freedom to do things that may never see the light of day or if they do get distributed they will be on a very limited basis because they are not mass entertainment movies. There are a lot of things I still want to do. I want to do a TV show, some TV movies, mostly they will be historical in nature." Lucas also concluded with a statement he's held to since 2005's Revenge of the Sith
"Ultimately, the saga will be six films, a 12-hour story. Then people can watch all six films together as they were intended to be seen." Even as far back as 2004, with the Star Wars DVD release Lucas was adamant :
"There is no VII, VIII, IX. There never has been. ... The story was originally intended to be IV, V, and VI. But I had a back story which I found fascinating, and now you've got the full story from beginning to end. There really isn't any more." It just didn't stop. In an interview published in Total Film in May 2008, Lucas went even further to kill the dream of more Star Wars;
"I've left pretty explicit instructions for there not to be any more features. There will definitely be no Episodes VIIIX. That's because there isn't any story. I mean, I never thought of anything. And now there have been novels about the events after Episode VI, which isn't at all what I would have done with it. The Star Wars story is really the tragedy of Darth Vader. That is the story. Once Vader dies, he doesn't come back to life, the Emperor doesn't get cloned and Luke doesn't get married..." Our dreams of more Star Wars were pretty shattered with that statement, even though it contradicts pretty much everything discussed in the past.
"Whatever it is that happens after ward, that isn't the core Star Wars story that I like to tell," Lucas said in 2008.
"There really isn't any story to tell there. It's been covered in the books and video games and comic books, which are things I think are incredibly creative but that I don't really have anything to do with other than being the person who built the sandbox they're playing in." In July 2008, Lucas even explained the logical difficulties of making a Star Wars Episode VII:
"The story, the saga, of Star Wars, which is the Skywalker saga or the tragedy of Darth Vader starts with him being 10 years old. It ends when he dies. Luke's role in that story is the fact that he redeems his father, but that is the story. There is no more story after that. What happens to Luke after that, it isn't relevant to the story of what happens to Darth Vader because he's gone." Even as late as January 2012, Lucas continued to deny the prospect of Episode VII. While on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Lucas stated that the aerial combat footage in his 2012 American war film Red Tails
"is as close as youll get to Star Wars Episode VII Lucas seemed through with Star Wars and then after the Blu-ray release of the Saga hit and hed made further changes to the original trilogy that once again angered some fans, he even gave us a reason as to why he wouldn't make any more Star Wars movies.
"Why would I make any more, when everybody yells at you all the time and says what a terrible person you are?" At this stage George Lucas seemed done with it all. Star Wars was a raging success on TV with The Clone Wars and all of its merchandise but the prospect of more films seemed thin, even with regular rumours to the contrary and even other directors talking about the prospect of being able to do films about individual characters. With Lucas it was a no go. It was over. We'd had our lot when it came to Star Wars and then in 2012 the house of mouse made some moves to change all that.