AFICIONADO CLASSIC BLOG: 'STAR WARS' - THE FINAL END?

George Lucas with some familiar faces...

Just wanted to let you all know about some interesting stuff that has appeared in this month’s issue of the UK cinema magazine TOTAL FILM (May 2008-the SPEED RACER cover). To tie-in with the release of INDY, and the upcoming CLONE WARS animated film as well, the magazine has an excellent interview with George Lucas which goes into lots of details for the future, including their asking him something mega-important. The all important: what would happen with new STAR WARS tales after his demise?

Here’s the reply-and you can see he’s very protective of his baby!!

“I’ve left pretty explicit instructions for there not to be any more features. There will definitely be no EPISODES VII-IX. 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 EPISODES 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…”

So there you have it-straight from the horse’s mouth-STAR WARS movies beyond EPISODE SIX are a no go area. Risk making them at your peril!!!

This is sad news to me. In my eyes there had been a glimmer of hope that perhaps Jett Lucas, a keen STAR WARS fan who made an impressionable impact as a young Jedi in the ORDER 66 scene in REVENGE OF THE SITH, might have taken up the mantle one day and perhaps make STAR WARS films himself, the ultimate passing of the torch. The idea seemed very comfortable to me, but now even that seems to have been shot to pieces!!

Lucas has been saying there WON’T BE ANY MORE FILMS for ages, anyway, but I’m still not sure-with him you really never know (and not even Lucas’s closest friends are really sure- that he’ll do a Connery “never say never” on us all!!). Even when he was making RETURN OF THE JEDI, and even though by the end of the filming he was exhausted and couldn’t even guarantee when, or even if, the Prequels would get made, they did eventually get made, with Lucas at the helm. And in April 1982, talking to the Yuma Daily Sun newspaper during the Sail Barge filming, he hinted about the Episodes to come after those, telling them that they would be set thirty to fifty years after JEDI.   

Despite the “Anakin is dead. There’s no more story” we’ve always known in interviews before the Prequels were made, that, despite his “wouldn’t it be great to get the gang back at sixty” musing to Mark Hamill, there were some notes for Episodes Seven to Nine-not many, but just a couple of pages in that infamous binder of his. This begs the question-what’s on those pages-just what other shattering events in the STAR WARS universe might happen to our favourite characters? In my opinion, now’s the time for those questions to be answered. C’mon George, if you’re not going to make Seven to Nine-if you really are totally resolute and won’t hand them over to anyone else at all-then please hand your notes over to LUCASBOOKS whilst you are still here to entertain the world-lets get some great storytellers like Alan Dean Foster and Terry Brooks to work with you in turning those notes/ideas of yours into terrific adventures-surely your very name with the words “Based on a Story by” are guaranteed to make it of worldwide interest to fans/media/ book lovers, and become a worldwide success. We know with LUCASFILM that it’s not all about profit to keep the company going, it’s also about quality-and the idea of new “Based on a Story by George Lucas” books is quality enough for me and, I’m sure, legions of others-it could be absolutely fantastic. I’ve dipped in and out of the Expanded Universe, but to me it’s not official stuff- I want to know from you, the saga’s creator, what happened to Luke and our other heroes after JEDI, especially, George, as you’ve pretty much said in that quote that much of what has happened to them in the EU books is not what you would have done with the Saga anyway!!

So, George/LUCASFILM, please, finally, free those stories for the real EPISODES SEVEN to NINE and let us enjoy the saga as you once officially wanted it to be...