One thing is for certain, if George Lucas had been in charge of the sequel trilogy of ‘Star Wars,’ things would be very, very different. Whether that is a good thing or a bad thing, is anyone’s guess. For those who sneer at ‘The Last Jedi‘ and what it was trying to accomplish, they may feel Lucas might have had a better handle on the characters and the world, and at the very least been able to maintain some sense of ‘Star Wars’ throughout it all, even while pushing the boundaries of filmmaking and developing new technologies. For everyone else who remembers when he did all of those things and still ended up making the nonsense that was the Prequel Trilogy, there is less faith that the new ‘Star Wars’ movies under Lucas’s control would have been better than what Disney is churning out. At least now we are getting some excellent directors trying their hands in the world, and we haven’t seen any character anywhere close to being as annoying (or as racist) as Jar Jar Binks.
Of course, a big point of contention for many fans is how Lucas’s characters are being handled by these directors, most notably Luke Skywalker in ‘The Last Jedi,’ as many feel Rian Johnson did not manage to really capture the spirit of Luke with the cantankerous old hermit we experience in the film. While talking recently to IGN about the differences between how Rian Johnson and JJ Abrams handled the character of Luke Skywalker, Hamill switched gears and spoke about how Lucas was going to handle the character in his original plans for episodes VII – IX:
“I happen to know that George didn’t kill Luke until the end of [Episode] 9, after he trained Leia. Which is another thread that was never played upon [in The Last Jedi].”
Hamill also spoke on the overall direction of the story of the new ‘Star Wars’ films and how that compares to what Lucas had planned:
“George had an overall arc – if he didn’t have all the details, he had sort of an overall feel for where the [sequel trilogy was] going – but this one’s more like a relay race. You run and hand the torch off to the next guy, he picks it up and goes…Ryan didn’t write what happens in 9 – he was going to hand it off to, originally, Colin Trevorrow and now J.J. […] It’s an ever-evolving, living, breathing thing. Whoever’s onboard gets to play with the life-size action figures that we all are.”
I will admit, I do wish there was more of a sense of a plan for the Disney ‘Star Wars’ trilogy, as I am not a big fan of just making it all up as they go along, and it definitely felt a bit like that during ‘The Last Jedi,’ though I have faith that JJ Abrams might be able to tie it all back together in ‘Episode IX.’
As for the character of Luke, it would be have been interesting to see him train Leia and live until the end of the final film of the trilogy, but that would have also been very predictable. I kind of applaud Lucasfilm and Johnson for making the bold decision of having him die at the end of ‘The Last Jedi,’ something few in the audience really saw coming.
What are your thoughts here? Would you really have rather seen George Lucas’s version of the sequel trilogy? Or do you think Disney/ Lucasfilm is doing alright? Feel free to share your opinions in the comments below!
