I remember some interviews 10 years back where Lucas said the saga has ended with ep6. There is no story after that. Luke redeemed his father Anakin and the story ends. He did have some ideas for sequels but he would have understood that there would be no proper arc and it will be just be a cash grab opportunity. That is the reason he never wanted to continue after ep6. Now it looks like he is right.
shareI think a trilogy revolving around Luke's Jedi academy would have been intriguing.
shareEssentially star wars is about fathers and sons and the Skywalker clan , perhaps an academy featuring Luke's and leias offspring would of been good the fall and rise of the Jedi
shareThe one where Luke uncharacteristically, if only for a moment, decides to murder his child nephew? Yeah that would be awesome, not.
shareI didn't say I wanted this particular story, just a film focusing on the New Jedi Order.
sharewell he spent a lot of time trying to kill his dad in the earlier films....
shareMaybe that's what people mean by TLK "ruining" Luke's character. Instead of instinctively feeling the compulsion to prevent the suffering of his friends and everything he had achieved being destroyed, Luke should have actaully launched a sustained and savage attack on the sleeping Ben, at least severing his hand. That's the Luke we're accustomed to. Not this guy who ignites his saber then thinks better of it when he remembers that he would be killing his nephew.
shareThat would have been amazing. Heck, all they had to do was take Kevin J Anderson's Jedi Academy Trilogy and turn that into a trilogy of movies. It would have been awesome.
However, due to the age of the classic trilogy actors, they would have to set it way further than 6-7 years after Return of the Jedi.
I remember reading that interview back then, but apparently Lucas went back on his mind. He was actually writing a treatment for the sequel trilogy as early as 2011, and some ideas have surfaced recently.
shareA damn shame we will never see that trilogy. I have to believe it would be better than what Disney has given us.
shareDisney has been using a lot of George's ideas from his treatment, mixed with elements from the novel sequels.
FYI I don't recall those novels ever getting bashed for continuing the Empire and making it even stronger.
Force Awakens and Last Jedi use elements of Lucas' ep. 7 outline that he had prepared, including production art that had been released lately.
Notably, Rey is directly based on Kira, the Jedi apprentice who was Lucas' main character. In his version she went diving underwater to locate the sunken remnants of the Emperor's tower from Death Star 2 instead of exploring old Star Destroyers for parts... I believe that diving also lead her to finding Luke. She locates Luke on a lush green mountainous planet that has the ancient Jedi Academy.
Yet so many bashers and Disney haters like to believe Lucas' ideas were thrown away. They also like to believe that Force Awakens is unoriginal and just A New Hope rebooted/remade while ignoring that that old movie is literally a rewrite of a Flash Gordon story that Lucas pursued in the early 70s, and that A New Hope was never intended to be original or new ideas.
"Star Wars" ended with "Return of the Jedi." Maybe Lucas needed to put a very big, old fashioned "THE END" at the end to make that point clear.
But, it is his own fault. He sold "Star Wars" and everything else he's ever created, to Disney with zero conditions.
If he'd have put a very big, old fashioned "THE END" at the end , he'd have youthenised a valuable brand / legacy whatever that he later sold for 4 billion dollars.
Have you got anything lying around your house worth 4 billion dollars? If you had would you put it out for the garbage men , sell it , or just keep it hung up above the fireplace?
So, the billions that Lucas already has isn't enough? Okay.
As usual, it's all about money. That's the way you and Disney see it.
I don't think it was about the money. As you said, he was already a billionaire before the sale:
According to Wealth-X, Star Wars creator George Lucas had about $1.4 billion in cash, investments and other assets before the deal. That didn't include the value of his private companies, which included LucasFilm.
After Michael Eisner had come in and turned Disney strictly into a cash machine, Lucas really couldn't have been surprised with the way things have turned out.
shareSomeone should do that on the fan edits.
shareI recently reread the Heir to the Empire trilogy, and i've read a bunch of later set EU novels, and it's okay. But really, they're just space adventure novels. The SPACE OPERA that is the rise and fall and redemption of Anakin Skywalker is the real meat and potatoes of the saga. IMO, there is no trilogy they could have made that would have brought any further closure or significance to the films we already have. Now i'm all for Star Wars movies. Make a hundred of them. But they should not have continued the "Episode line".
shareI'm absolutely certain that Lucas would not have wanted the OT to be repeated so unashamedly and so inferiorilly as it was in The Farce Awakens, that's for sure.
What I despise is Disney's total ARROGANCE in unofficially declaring the whole of the EU null and void, with all its interesting plots and future plans for Luke, Leia, Han and co, and then immediately making E7 a blatant repeat of A New Hope. Who the HELL do they think they are???
And what a cash cow it is.
shareI would actually argue that the original Star Wars trilogy was complete in and of itself. It's Luke Skywalker's story and it starts and ends when his journey is complete.
The prequel trilogy took an unnecessary addition and then did it poorly.
The sequels are soft-rebooting the original (also poorly), and have shifted focus away from Luke.
To explore Luke's failures, victories, and growth as a Jedi Master would have been an avenue into the sequels, but they warped thirty years and created many, many plot and character inconsistencies in the process. These same inconsistencies started popping up with the prequels as well.
Star Wars is a brilliant film and an excellent trilogy. As a 9+ film franchise, it's tired, worn out, and lost.