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Darth Father ...was lucas planning the twist while writing ANH?

#16 User is offline   Vesuvius Icon

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Posted 28 December 2006 - 10:24 PM

Ahh, Storm, don't overstress yourself on it. I've thought all the same things and there are too many problems with how EP III is wrapped up for it to blend with the OT.

If you want to see things in more detail, check out the Making of EP III documentary on the second disk. George Lucas actually says to an effects artist, "Well, that doesn't matter, we can always change it in the OT later to fit what we're seeing here." I kid you not! After seeing him say that, I stopped the film, rolled with laughter, and felt an eerie sense of disgust.
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#17 User is offline   Otal Nimrodi Icon

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Posted 28 December 2006 - 10:32 PM

QUOTE (Storm @ Dec 28 2006, 09:36 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
I was watching a parody on YouTube making fun of the scene where Obi Wan is telling Luke about his father. I think it's pretty clear at that stage that Lucas had absolutely no intention of making Vader Luke's father.



Yeah, I agree with you there. It doesn't really make much sense, does it.

QUOTE
I think I have to agree with Civilian Number Two that the Luke/Leia makeout scene makes it hard to believe that Lucas had planned all along for Vader to be Luke's father.


Whilst I agree that Lucas probably didn't plan it, I disagree that this is evidenced by the fact that the Luke/Leia makeout scene was planned. That seems rather irrelevant to me, speaking as someone who doesn't... Like... ever watch Star Wars. Although I love Lucas-Bashing as much as the next Nightlifer, more so one may argue, since I don't like Star Wars, I think that only evidences that Lucas hadn't planned the Leia/Luke twins option.
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#18 User is offline   Storm Icon

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Posted 29 December 2006 - 12:51 AM

QUOTE (Vesuvius @ Dec 28 2006, 11:24 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
Ahh, Storm, don't overstress yourself on it. I've thought all the same things and there are too many problems with how EP III is wrapped up for it to blend with the OT.

If you want to see things in more detail, check out the Making of EP III documentary on the second disk. George Lucas actually says to an effects artist, "Well, that doesn't matter, we can always change it in the OT later to fit what we're seeing here." I kid you not! After seeing him say that, I stopped the film, rolled with laughter, and felt an eerie sense of disgust.


I realize that ROTS did a poor job of wrapping up, but the whole problem stemmed in making Vader Luke's father in ESB. Lucas should have made Vader and Anakin separate characters. The PT could have been based on Obi-Wan training both Anakin and Vader, and ultimately having Vader and Anakin square off after the twins (I would even go as far as to suggest that only Luke should have been Anakin's son) were born. Perhaps Anakin could have been responsible for Vader's injuries, but Vader survived and then killed Anakin in return. Vader's obsession with finding Luke in ESB could be based solely on wanting to seek revenge on anyone related to Anakin.

This post has been edited by Storm: 29 December 2006 - 01:00 AM

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#19 User is offline   Vesuvius Icon

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Posted 29 December 2006 - 01:03 AM

Those are interesting ideas Storm. I see how that would eliminate all sorts of confusion and actually make some of the PT blend quite well with the OT. But Lucas doesn't think that far ahead.
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#20 User is offline   johnnycancer Icon

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Posted 29 December 2006 - 04:02 AM

QUOTE (Storm @ Dec 28 2006, 06:36 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
I thought hard about the line "Your father wanted you to have this when you were old enough, but your Uncle would never allow it" really drives this point home. 1. It's not Anakin's decision to determine whether or not his children are to be trained in the Jedi Arts. The decision lies solely with the Jedi Council.


Now I know we've definitely mentioned this on the board before, although I never thought of that specific line.

I think a large part of the problem is that somehow, even though there are three prequel movies, we're still not given enough backstory for what happens in the Original Trilogy. I've always been curious as to what exactly Obi-Wan told Owen when he gave him baby Luke. I mean, Obi-Wan must have told him something along the lines that Luke was Shmi's grandson; but outside of that I'm not sure what Owen knew.

I think Owen knew that Anakin was Luke's father; but I don't think he or anyone else really made the connection that Anakin was Darth Vader. Well, at the end of ROTS, I don't think Obi-Wan even knew that Anakin was Darth Vader; he would have figured it out pretty fast, but, he probably believed Anakin was dead at the end of the PT.

I think Owen's lines need a lot of explaining too, given the backstory we got from the PT. I mean, as far as I know, Owen only met Anakin one time; so it doesn't make any sense why he's talking about Luke's father going on some damn fool adventures with Obi-Wan. Anakin is just his step-brother that he barely knows anyway; but from what's said in ANH, it's as if Owen and Anakin were brothers and best friends and that Obi-Wan drove a wedge between them by filling Anakin's head with some lofty idealism. But that's obviously not the case given what happens in the PT.

I can understand Owen maybe being bitter because Obi-Wan dropped a kid on his doorstep, and so I can explain away at least some of his statements as being out of resentment. Obi-Wan on the other hand is just telling blatant lies. And that sucks. I've always defended Obi-Wan on this point, saying that the reason he did this was because he knew that:

1) Luke couldn't handle the truth. Luke was still immature at that point, and he wouldn't have understood the reasons why he needed to be protected from his father. And, knowing the truth, Luke might have resented Obi-Wan for lying to him, and would have refused training from him, which would have had some sever ramifications for the remaining Jedi in their upcoming battle with the Sith.

and

2) Knowing the truth about his father, Luke would have wanted to seek out his father, and he would have been in a mental state where he could easily be tempted to the Dark Side; and that was the one thing that Obi-Wan wanted to avoid at all costs because that would mean the end of the Jedi.

But, still, it sucks that Obi-Wan is just a liar who's essentially manipulating Luke so that he'll kill Vader and the emperor for him. I don't like to look at it that way, but it's hard with all of the extra baggage of the prequels.

But, that's basically the only explanation for Obi-Wan's lines given what's in the PT. I still feel that Obi-Wan bends the truth with the best of intentions - that is, to protect Luke - but if he's not lying then he's suffering from severe dementia or memory loss.

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#21 User is offline   johnnycancer Icon

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Posted 29 December 2006 - 04:19 AM

QUOTE
I realize that ROTS did a poor job of wrapping up, but the whole problem stemmed in making Vader Luke's father in ESB. Lucas should have made Vader and Anakin separate characters.


Vader being Luke's father doesn't create any problems on its own; if you're only looking at what we see in ANH, ESB, and ROTJ, then it squares up fine with the story that's there.

I agree that having Anakin and Vader be two separate people would have been an interesting concept, but the fact is, that's NOT the story in the OT. Whether or not Lucas should have done something else in ESB is irrelevant. All that matters is that Lucas already had a well established storyline for how all the characters in the OT are connected to one another, and he chose to ignore it; and the majority - if not ALL - of the problems regarding the "I am your father" plot twist stem from this fact. It is entirely a problem created by the prequels.

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#22 User is offline   civilian_number_two Icon

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Posted 29 December 2006 - 11:02 PM

I agree that Anikin is Luke's father in the Original TRILOGY. The question is whether he was Luke's father in the original MOVIE, that is STAR WARS, released in 1977, and the answer is no, he was not. He became Luke's father sometime in 1979, and was revealed as such in 1980 with the film THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. At that time, by the way, Leia was NOT Luke's sister. Leia became Luke's sister only months before principal photography began on REVENGE OF THE JEDI, later renamed RETURN OF THE JEDI.

There's no point in overthinking it or trying to shoehorn later developments into the earlier films. It's just how film series get written; sometimes the rules change. What did they say about the rules of trilogies in the SCREAM series? "In the sequel, the rules change, while in the final installment, all bets are off." I'd say that sums it up nicely for STAR WARS, even though one character in SCREAM (possibly ironically) asserts that the follow-ups were "not sequels, parts of a series, totally planned from the beginning." Which is what Lucas would have you believe, even though it's horseshit.

(all citations above are paraphrases at best)
"I had a lot of different ideas. At one point, Luke, Leia and Ben were all going to be little people, and we did screen tests to see if we could do that." -George Lucas, in STAR WARS: the Annotated Screenplays (p197).
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#23 User is offline   johnnycancer Icon

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Posted 30 December 2006 - 01:27 AM

QUOTE (civilian_number_two @ Dec 29 2006, 08:02 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
There's no point in overthinking it or trying to shoehorn later developments into the earlier films. It's just how film series get written; sometimes the rules change. What did they say about the rules of trilogies in the SCREAM series? "In the sequel, the rules change, while in the final installment, all bets are off." I'd say that sums it up nicely for STAR WARS, even though one character in SCREAM (possibly ironically) asserts that the follow-ups were "not sequels, parts of a series, totally planned from the beginning." Which is what Lucas would have you believe, even though it's horseshit.

(all citations above are paraphrases at best)


What was the original question for this thread? Didn't it start off just being a question about the litereal translation of Darth Vader?

Anyway, yes, that is a nice summary of Star Wars.

Does anybody know where the idea to make Vader Luke's father came from? From reading posts here, the impression I get is that it was a very last minute decision. As I understand it, Lucas didn't even tell David Prowse that his character was Luke's father; the line that Prowse read was "No, Obi-Wan killed your father." But, Lucas told Mark Hammill to react as if the line was "No, I am your father." And later the real lines were dubbed in when James Earl Jones read them.

I can understand a bit of secrecy; but to me, this episode would be further evidence that Vader as Luke's father was a script revision made well into ESB, and was never intended during ANH.

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#24 User is offline   civilian_number_two Icon

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Posted 30 December 2006 - 08:20 AM

QUOTE (johnnycancer @ Dec 30 2006, 01:27 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
What was the original question for this thread? Didn't it start off just being a question about the litereal translation of Darth Vader?

Anyway, yes, that is a nice summary of Star Wars.

Does anybody know where the idea to make Vader Luke's father came from? From reading posts here, the impression I get is that it was a very last minute decision.
johnnycancer

The original question was "Did Lucas know he was going to make Vader Luke's father when he wrote STAR WARS?," and the answer is certainly no.

As to when the concept was introduced, it's hard to say because Lucas does claim that it was always the plan, along with the claim that he intended all along to write six or nine films all as a series, with STARWARS being the first of the middle or last trilogy. He also said at another time that he had a bunch of sequels in mind that had no specific order or long storyline, but he quickly dropped this iodea and said that just intentional misinformation. So in the end you can't tell when the thing happened because Lucas is not a reliable historian.

Certainly the idea was in the completed second draft of the screenplay, which was written long before scouting began on EMPIRE. The business of having David Prowse recite dummy lines on set was apparently to keep the spoiler away from the crew, not the cast. Unless we're to believe that the drafts of the script were altered after the fact in order to be in line with Lucas's claim that he had it planned from the start, then I accept that explanation for the dummy lines.
"I had a lot of different ideas. At one point, Luke, Leia and Ben were all going to be little people, and we did screen tests to see if we could do that." -George Lucas, in STAR WARS: the Annotated Screenplays (p197).
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#25 User is offline   Cyzyk Icon

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Posted 01 January 2007 - 01:02 PM

Ever consider the fact that the Luke-Leia makeout scene might have gotten a lot of bad press if people had known it was vaguely incestuous? The vagueness has more to do with the making out than the incestuousness of it, but it really wouldn't have gone over well with censors if Lucas had put it all in the same film.

By the way, Anakin (some spelling) is also a Dutch name, and I believe it was the name of some Protestant who got himself "martyred" for being a political activist. Or possibly just martyred for being a Protestant, I wouldn't want to put too much spin on it. Anyway, it is a real name, it is Dutch (like the word Vader), and it happens to be the name of a girl I know.
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#26 User is offline   johnnycancer Icon

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Posted 02 January 2007 - 01:40 AM

QUOTE (Cyzyk @ Jan 1 2007, 10:02 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
Ever consider the fact that the Luke-Leia makeout scene might have gotten a lot of bad press if people had known it was vaguely incestuous? The vagueness has more to do with the making out than the incestuousness of it, but it really wouldn't have gone over well with censors if Lucas had put it all in the same film.


Actually this is a point I've wondered about for a long time. This is actually what has confused me for a long time about Darth Vader being Luke and Leia's father: why would you make that change in the plot if you knew that it would create a vaguely incestous scene? And more importantly, since Lucas says that he plans this from the beginning, why would he insist on including a scene with implied incest?

I'm guessing that Vader's parentage of Luke and Leia came out of the fact that Lucas (and audiences) favored Han Solo and Leia as a couple, and Lucas needed a way to resolve that love triangle. But still, why would the solution to that be to make Luke and Leia siblings and have a scene with implied incest? Why not just have Leia choose Han?

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#27 User is offline   Cyzyk Icon

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Posted 02 January 2007 - 12:11 PM

I dunno, incest is a longstanding tradition of literature, it's just our twisted sense of public morality that makes it taboo to discuss. It's all over Ovid's Metamorphoses, for example.
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#28 User is offline   johnnycancer Icon

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Posted 03 January 2007 - 02:44 AM

QUOTE (Cyzyk @ Jan 2 2007, 09:11 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
I dunno, incest is a longstanding tradition of literature, it's just our twisted sense of public morality that makes it taboo to discuss. It's all over Ovid's Metamorphoses, for example.


I'm not making any moral judgments; I'm asking, why, knowing the kind of cultural bias that exists, would Lucas have included such elements in his film? Star Wars isn't an art house film and it wasn't ever marketed that way, so while plot twists involving incest might appeal to those well versed in literature, that's not who the target audience was.

I am only bringing it up because from a marketing standpoint, it's one more reason you can cite as to why the trilogy was not some story that Lucas had mapped out from day one. Because, either Lucas wrote a story, he made changes to it, and then retroactively it changed the context of a kiss between two characters; OR, Lucas had the story set in stone during the filming of ANH, and insisted that the brother and sister kiss be included. And you're going to tell me that no censor objected to this? That all of the producers were totally okay with a brother-sister kiss? That 20th Century Fox said, "hells yeah, nothing better than implied incest in a movie we're marketing to kids!"

Maybe some of that is an overstatement, but I highly doubt that nobody would have objected. And okay, maybe Lucas didn't let everybody in on the secret until after the fact, but I still think that it would have been a stupid element to include in something that's essentially a family film. And if you're going to bring out the literary defense, then there's a lot of sexual tension between Luke and Leia that should be addressed in the films. It would be an interesting plot; but as I've said on many occasions, Star Wars just isn't that deep.

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#29 User is offline   Despondent Icon

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Posted 03 January 2007 - 09:45 AM

I watched some of Die Walkerie on youtube last night. Wotan, the king god, has two children who meet unknowingly, fall in love, and create the ultimate hero; the one who knows no fear and will restore balance to everything. It's kinda riveting. I'm sorry, I meant boring. But interesting. Nonetheless,

QUOTE (johnnycancer @ Jan 3 2007, 03:44 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
Star Wars just isn't that deep.

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#30 User is offline   Cyzyk Icon

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Posted 03 January 2007 - 11:45 AM

Sorry, it just seemed for a moment that there was a glimmer of actual planning in Star Wars and depth of plot.
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