by Kenny » Thu Nov 05, 2015 7:45 pm
Lucas did want to do sequels way before ANH came out but had radically different ideas for them. This was before it was cemented that Vader will be Luke's dad and all that other stuff. Star Wars is basically a big budgeted version of those old serialized western and sci-fi episodics he grew up with.
And as far as a "perfect" ending, perfect in the sense the hero's journey has ended. Everything else is just padding. It's like saying "well Odysseus' story certainty didn't end at the end of the Odyssey, he probably went on with his life afterwards". I'm sure he did, but do you really care? Is it even necessary to know what happens after his great journey ended? Only if something just as great or greater happened but that technically didn't transpire.
Especially when you break it down as:
1. Prequels were about the establishment of the Empire.
2. OT is about the fall of the Empire.
So these sequels are about... bringing the Empire back again? Have a new evil leader precede over these mercenaries and fight back the Rebels? Regurgitating the whole cycle again? Obviously it's hard to judge what they intend to do until they come out, but I'm expecting them to come up with something great. But early reports suggested that JJ wanted more time to work on the script but Disney was forcing him to push for a December 2015 release. So as cool as some aspects seem to be, I'm largely still on the fence.
And yes you can write as many stories after, before, in-between, sideways, or generally around the original movies but how many of those are as impactful as the OT? They set the bar incredibly high.
As for Lucas accidentally creating Star Wars, that depends on what you mean by that. ET was accidentally created by Melissa Mathison, with the ET character accidentally created by Rick Baker, which was then given to Spielberg who was given a dirt cheap budget to work on after accidentally tanking big time only to rebound with Raiders the year before.
Lucas came up with the idea but hired the right people to help bring it to life. He wrote it, but hired two people to rewrite his script when everyone else in Hollywood were scratching their heads as his initial drafts were purely NONSENSE. He edited it, but then hired two other guys to re-edit it to give it a faster paced more exciting style. He came up with rough concepts for alot of the characters and worldly objects & vehicles, but Ralph McQuarrie was the one who came up with the exact designs that ended up being the sole basis for the actual creature and set designs. He gave direction on how he wanted certain scenes to be played put based on reels he cut, but it was the teams at ILM that figured out how to do it with the limited budget given. One of the lead designers for 2001 Space Odyssey was also hired to be on board the project.
Lucas was also the one who whip them all into shape and quickly get them to finish their SFX shots. Star Wars was nothing but purely collaborative. This is why the prequels sucked too. Lucas barred everyone from letting him change his ideas when everyone was basically stepping all over him circa 1976 and he was forced to make compromises.