May the 4th be with you!

I only ready his X-Wing books. I stopped reading most of the Star Wars novels in the NJO era, but my wife kept reading all the new ones and telling me the plot of each so I still kept abrest of the EU. If I recall, he wrote Star by Star, which was my wife's favorite NJO book.

He also did some work for Richard Garriott's Origin Games way back in the day. We wrote the "Claw Marks" in game fiction for Wing Commander.

 

..... And also with you .

 

Troy Denning did Star by Star. Allston did the Rebel Dream and Rebel Stand NJO books.

I enjoyed his Wraith Squadron stuff, and Legacy of the Force and Fate of the Jedi. He was one of the top tier authors.

 

No surprise George Lucas is screwing with the story lines again. Boba Fett has 4 different back stories. Plus the clone wars was different than the awesome version Marvel comics did.

 

Star Wars was originally a Dune rip-off when Lucas failed to get the Flash Gordon rights and then failed to get the Dune rights.

Jabaa was a fat human who looked like a Harkonnen. There was a desert planet with two suns where spice came from sands with Krayt Dragons. The Whills had magical powers they got from spice. It wasn't until Lucas read Joseph Campbell and watched Hidden Fortress that Journal of the Whills got rewritten to pull heavily from both of those sources to become Star Wars. And the scene where they fight off TIE Fighters was lifted straight from Dam Busters.

As he wrote each movie, he changed his mind. The behind the scenes books on ESB and RotJ showed how he changed his mind daily on major plot points WHILE FILMING. And since the ESB to RotJ phase was somewhat a dark phase in Lucas' life, he had to be talked out of a very dark ending to RotJ where Luke was going to join the Emperor at the end and kill all his buddies. There was a blank page in the end of the script where Vader angered Luke in their duel and he couldn't figure out how. The sibling thing with Leia was determined while filming. Both Lucas and Ford wanted Han Solo dead in RotJ. Some of the cooler ideas we lost on RotJ did make their way into RotS however (space battle over Coruscant and a battle with Wookies fighting the Empire).

Star Wars was just titled Star Wars, and it wasn't until re-release right before ESB it became retconned into Episode IV: A New Hope.

Lucas in different interviews said he'd do 6, 9, or 12 movies.

There are video interviews of Hamill and Ford where they said Lucas planned sequels right after RotJ he wanted to film right away.

When he finally got around to making Episode 1, he said in interviews that Ric Olie and Captain Tanaka would be in the whole trilogy. He said the explanation of Force Ghosts would be critical to the whole trilogy. Aura Sing was going to be a major character in the whole trilogy.

When he was doing Episode 2, the Lost 20 was going to be a major plot point. They filmed scenes for it, until it got dropped. Master Sifodyus ordering the Clone army was going to be a major plot point and it was dropped. Liam Neeson filmed for Episode 2 as a Force Ghost only for those scenes to disappear forever.

When they filmed Episode 3, Rick McCallum said they'd fix all those broken promises and explain why Force Ghosts are important and why Qui Gonn didn't disappear. Again, Liam Neeson filmed and stuff just disappeared.

George Lucas made Han shoot second in the Special Editions, and then when filming Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Lucas was wearing a shirt that said Han Shot First. Reports where that he agreed he made a mistake, and just like Spielberg had made a 180 on the walkie talkies in ET, the Blu Ray release of Star Wars would have Han shooting first, until Lucas changed his mind again.

There is a great fan book on the history of making Star Wars that wasn't licensed, but you can find the PDF on the internet.

Lucas is a great technical pioneer. He invented ILM. He invented THX sound. He invented THX 7.1 for Episode 1. He pushed the bar on CGI. But when it comes to story, he has never had a master plan. He changes it every two seconds and is an accidental genius in the universe he created. When others enriched that universe and made it better, it is sad to see all that get yanked away.

 

You guys know a lot about this stuff, so perhaps you can answer something that's been bugging me for years!

Both my hubby and I saw the original Star Wars as kids, and we both think there was a part at the beginning that showed Luke and his friends racing their speeders through some canyons. (Please forgive me if I get some of the names wrong, I love it but I'm not a big enough fan to remember everything!). But every video/DVD/Blue Ray/extended-revamped-director's-let's-change-stuff-unnecessarily edition (looking at you, ghost of Anakin...) that we've seen in adulthood has not had those scenes.

Were we both imagining it? We figure those races (presumably similar to the pod races in Episode 1) were the reason Luke was able to fly through the Death Star so well, because he'd had lots of practice. Doesn't he even say something about how it's just like he did back home? So what happened to that part, and why was it cut from subsequent editions?

 

There was a Star Wars radio dramatization that greatly expands Luke's time on Tatooine with his friends. They did film at least one deleted scene with Luke and his friends. Luke is watching the space battle above (Leia's ship being attacked). But I don't recall if they filmed a scene with him racing.

It's possible you both head the radio drama at some point and remember the scene from that.

 

If this is indeed true, it is blowing my mind. I was only ever old enough to see the VHS version.
Luke flew his T16 Skyhopper through Beggar's Canyon shooting Womp Rats. A T16 was added in the CGI enhanced versions to the mos eisley landing scene. So it is likely the ship existed from the very beginning and intended for filming.

Also, RIP Anakin Skywalker

in the words of Noah Antwiler, BETRAYAL!

 

Thank you for the idea, but I wasn't even aware a radio drama existed so it wasn't that. I saw the original movie at the cinema when it first came out (1977 or whenever it was - my rather conservative mum was awesome enough to take her daughter to see a sci-fi movie!), and I'm sure I saw a scene involving flying through canyons near the start (Beggar's Canyon, thank you Selbie! Perhaps I was wrong about it being an actual race) but no one other than my husband seems to remember that.

I think we do have the VHS version somewhere but I don't know if we have anything that can play it now (probably didn't bring our PAL video player when we emigrated)... if I can, I'll have to check it out and see if it is on there!

I'll have to do some digging on the interwebs sometime and see if I can find anything else about it, but sometimes it feels like hubby and I must have been in a parallel universe where this scene existed - or there was some mass memory-wipe by Lucasfilm that missed us...

 

Oh wow, I never knew this ! This is really interesting.

Yeah, it's too bad George Lucas and Ridley Scott, who used to be so good, seem like they forgot how to make good films.

I guess having a ton of money and yes men around and studios interfering doesn't help.

But yeah, the original Star Wars was good because it was greater than the sum of it's parts. I think it was unintentionally greater than Lucas really was capable of

Even today it's kind of got a life of it's own...

 

Maybe this will help:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Scenes_cut_from_Star_Wars#A_New_Hope