The original Star Wars Trilogy on DVD, by which USA Today means the original original trilogy, before George Lucas did whatever it is George Lucas does to his movies.
Every other post and comments thread I've seen about this makes two points:
a) This is a scam, since they'll just come out with yet another version in another format a year later;
b) Everyone will buy it anyway.
Sounds about right.
Thursday, May 04, 2006
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5 comments:
If anyone knows the answer to this, I bet it'll be you. When Chapters IV-VI were first in theatres, some Star Wars kook told me that nine chapters were planned. Is this so? If it is, what was the subject of Chapters VII-IX to be, and whatever happened to 'em?
There were no other chapters planned when the original Star Wars (now part IV) came out.
Lucas would have to have been a lunatic to have planned out a nine part movie and start with part IV without having any idea if Stars Wars was going to be a hit and allow for the making of sequels.
OH HAPPY DAY!! (oh happy daaay) OH HAPPY DAY!! (oh happy daaay)
What happened was this:
Lucas had either written himself or had commissioned through ghost writers (Ala Dean Foster, among others) at least radically three different STAR WARS scripts. Characters, elements, and sub-plots from unused frafts eventually found their way into the films produced later.
When STAR WARS was wrapping up, there was some hope that it would be successful enough to spawn a sequel. The Hollywood rule of thumb being that most sequels only do 30% of the business of the original film, so Lucas comissioned Alan Dean Foster to write a treatment based on props, costumes, and stock shots left over from the first movie, including a full size X-wing. Foster began working on this, but when STAR WARS went through the roof with audiences, his work was shunted aside into the first STAR WARS original novel, "A Splinter of the Mind's Eye."
Lucas originally envisioned a grandiose plane of 15 films: Four sets of trilogies plus on bridging film between each set (this was reported in CINEFANTASTIQUE and elsewhere). As work began on THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, Lucas quickly dropped the bridging films and the fourth trilogy; up through RETURN OF THE JEDI he spoke of doing three sets of trilogies.
JEDI left Lucas physically and emotionally drained (the man does have health problems that have plagued him, and his divorce certainly didn't help his creative mojo); he intimated that perhaps they would be the only STAR WARS features. As time went on and STAR WARS proved a popular franchise, he gradualy began warming up again to doing at least the three "first" films in the trilogy.
Now that they are complete and Lucasfilm is focusing on the TV series, it will be intersting to see if them remain canon or if he will add to them yet again at some point in the future.
Too bad Lucas is so rich that we can't pay him to stop making the films.
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