[Star Wars] Gary Kurtz on the franchise

[Finarvyn]

An interesting article on the Star Wars franchise, from the perspective of Gary Kurtz (who was around in the early days).

latimesblogs.latimes.com/herocomplex/2010/08/star-wars-was-born-a-long-time-ago-but-not-all-that-far-far-away-in-1972-filmmakers-george-lucas-and-gary-kurtz-wer.html

[geoffrey]

Interesting article, but I must point out two errors in it:

1. 'Lucas came up with a sprawling treatment that pulled from “Flash Gordon,” Arthurian legend, “The Hidden Fortress” and other influences. The document would have required a five-hour film but there was a middle portion that could be carved out as a stand-alone movie.'

That is simply wrong. This excellent site has all the earlier versions of the script for the 1977 Star Wars film:
starwarz.com/starkiller/category/star-wars-scripts/

I've read them all, and none is a sprawling, 5-hour treatment. At most you might be able to squeeze 2.5 hours out of the longest. Even then, you can trace the evolution through the successive scripts to its crystallization in the 1977 Star Wars movie. Lucas made-up ESB and ROTJ out of whole cloth much later. There aren't any chunks of the earliest scripts that made it into ESB and ROTJ. Anyone who reads these scripts will see that Star Wars was originally going to be one movie. Only financial success turned it into a multi-movie saga.

2. '“Star Wars” opened with a title sequence that announced it as “Episode IV”...'

False. In 1977, there was no "Episode IV" on the screen. It was simply STAR WARS.

Still, it is a good article overall.

[coffee]

Aug 13, 2010 14:59:40 GMT -6 geoffrey said:

2. '“Star Wars” opened with a title sequence that announced it as “Episode IV”...'

False. In 1977, there was no "Episode IV" on the screen. It was simply STAR WARS.

Exactly. I distinctly remember going to see it again when it was re-released the next summer. And the one after that -- that's when they started showing trailers for ESB, and only then did it become Episode IV.

That always kind of ticked me off. And today, when kids call it 'A New Hope', I just want to smack them. It's Star Wars, dammit, and nobody can tell me otherwise.

/rant

[Falconer]

Yeah, it’s heartbreaking.

I do think there were a few things in the later movies such as the speeder bike chase in RotJ, cloud city in ESB, the name Mace Windu, which were mined from the original scripts. Not to mention the Death Star in RotJ, heh. But I agree the later movies are pretty much whole cloth.

[Finarvyn]

Aug 13, 2010 15:09:21 GMT -6 coffee said:

[I distinctly remember going to see it again when it was re-released the next summer. And the one after that -- that's when they started showing trailers for ESB, and only then did it become Episode IV.

Either my memory is off or I'm misreading your post.

I know that it was only called Star Wars early on, and the first I can recall seeing "Episode Anything" was when Empire Strikes Back started off as "Episode V" and we all looked at each other and said "huh?"

I don't remember hearing the phrase "A New Hope" until years after Empire, but maybe I missed the trailers that used the phrase.

[piper]

Coffee has it right. Lucas re-released SW the summer of '78 and the crawl had changed to read "Episode IV: A New Hope".

BTW, the ESB trailer that showed before the re-release had a scene depicted that wasn't in ESB.

[Finarvyn]

Aug 14, 2010 8:51:16 GMT -6 Piper said:

Coffee has it right. Lucas re-released SW the summer of '78 and the crawl had changed to read "Episode IV: A New Hope".

BTW, the ESB trailer that showed before the re-release had a scene depicted that wasn't in ESB.

Hmmm. Must have missed the re-release in '78.

So, what was the deleted scene from ESB?

[piper]

It was a very brief snippit so it is difficult to say exactly what was going on in the scene. Vader was stepping out of some sort of a metal pod or tube, opening his arms wide in some sort of benediction or grandiose gesture. His helmet had an odd metal ring about jaw level. I think my DVDs have the old trailer on them. I'll see if I can do a screenie.

[piper]

Hmmm ... okay, the mind is a terrible thing to waste. The scene I was thinking of was from the trailer for "Revenge of the Jedi" before the rename to "Return of the Jedi". Which means the rerelease and rename was later than I first recalled, placing it between the release of ESB and RotJ. Sorry for the misinformation. Anyway, here is the screen shot from the Revenge teaser. I can't tell if the helmet is a variant or a trick of lighting. This is the clearest frame I could get in the brief time it was on screen, and the variant appears nowhere else in the trailer, though Vader is in several other scenes.

[piper]

Okay ... one last post about the helmet. Looking at it carefully I think I see it is merely a trick of lighting. The rim of the helmet is light from below and the resulting optical illusion makes it look as if it is projecting in the front of the helmet ... especially when the helmet is in motion and only on screen for a few seconds.

[Finarvyn]

Aug 14, 2010 8:51:16 GMT -6 Piper said:

Coffee has it right. Lucas re-released SW the summer of '78 and the crawl had changed to read "Episode IV: A New Hope".

Interesting. Wikipedia (not the most reliable source) says this:

The lines "Episode IV: A NEW HOPE" were added to the opening crawl in its 1981 re-release, one year after "Episode V: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK" was released with its full title. The new opening crawl also capitalized the word 'Rebel' in 'rebel spies', which was not capitalized in the original 1977 opening crawl, altered the formatting to accommodate the two additional lines, and slightly changed the timing so the crawl itself no longer appears at the same music cue. (This last change had been present on EMPIRE's initial release, and would remain on all four subsequent films as well.)

This says it was 1981, and after the release of Empire Strikes Back.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_changes_in_Star_Wars_re-releases

[Finarvyn]

Wow! According to the wikipedia link I just posted, there were even changes to movies I, II, and III after theatres and before DVD release! This is incredible!

[piper]

Yeah, I caught the time error in the post with the screen grab. Some of the changes had to do with the fact some, though very few, theatres had stereo sound systems. So there were different dubs for mono and stereo. This may account for the "blast doors" change in dialog.

[Falconer]

In The Phantom Menace, Yoda was a muppet still. It has since been changed (I think for the first DVD release) so he is now CGI. (Of course he was CGI in Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith).

[geoffrey]

Aug 14, 2010 14:44:03 GMT -6 Finarvyn said:

Aug 14, 2010 8:51:16 GMT -6 Piper said:

Coffee has it right. Lucas re-released SW the summer of '78 and the crawl had changed to read "Episode IV: A New Hope".

Interesting. Wikipedia (not the most reliable source) says this:

The lines "Episode IV: A NEW HOPE" were added to the opening crawl in its 1981 re-release, one year after "Episode V: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK" was released with its full title. The new opening crawl also capitalized the word 'Rebel' in 'rebel spies', which was not capitalized in the original 1977 opening crawl, altered the formatting to accommodate the two additional lines, and slightly changed the timing so the crawl itself no longer appears at the same music cue. (This last change had been present on EMPIRE's initial release, and would remain on all four subsequent films as well.)

This says it was 1981, and after the release of Empire Strikes Back.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_changes_in_Star_Wars_re-releases

That's my (uncertain) memory of the matter. I seem to remember thinking as a 10-year-old in 1980 watching ESB for the first time: "Huh? Episode V? What did I miss? Shouldn't this be called Episode II?" I don't remember the 1977 SW film being called Episode IV until after I saw ESB.

[Falconer]

[coffee]

Again, memory -- whattya gonna do?

I remember going to see another movie (not a clue which one), and there was a preview for ESB. Boy, was I stoked! And then, when it came out, there was this Episode V thing.

But first, there was this HUGE Star Wars -- I thought they were running the wrong movie, at first.


Now that my memory has been jogged, that's probably the way it happened. Wish I'd remembered that sooner.


BTW, when I first saw Star Wars (in 1977), there was an intermission. I guess they had to change the reels or something. I distinctly remember talking to my brother during the intermission.

Does anybody else remember an intermission?

[James Maliszewski]

Aug 15, 2010 2:36:23 GMT -6 coffee said:

Does anybody else remember an intermission?

For Star Wars, no, but there was an intermission when I saw ESB. I doubt it was a widespread practice back in those days and I'm pretty sure the movie wasn't made with the assumption there'd be one. As you say, I suspect it had more to do with technical issues like reel changing than anything else. The movie where I saw ESB was a small one, so they may simply have lacked the tech necessary to keep the movie rolling continuously.

[blackbarn]

Aug 13, 2010 14:59:40 GMT -6 geoffrey said:

Interesting article, but I must point out two errors in it:

1. 'Lucas came up with a sprawling treatment that pulled from “Flash Gordon,” Arthurian legend, “The Hidden Fortress” and other influences. The document would have required a five-hour film but there was a middle portion that could be carved out as a stand-alone movie.'

That is simply wrong. This excellent site has all the earlier versions of the script for the 1977 Star Wars film:
starwarz.com/starkiller/category/star-wars-scripts/

I've read them all, and none is a sprawling, 5-hour treatment. At most you might be able to squeeze 2.5 hours out of the longest. Even then, you can trace the evolution through the successive scripts to its crystallization in the 1977 Star Wars movie. Lucas made-up ESB and ROTJ out of whole cloth much later. There aren't any chunks of the earliest scripts that made it into ESB and ROTJ. Anyone who reads these scripts will see that Star Wars was originally going to be one movie. Only financial success turned it into a multi-movie saga.

Geoffrey, that's not entirely true. Cloud City was originally the Imperial headquarters "Alderaan" and some other bits like that. The Wookiees vs. the Empire became the Ewoks vs the Empire, and so forth. Lucas really did borrow earlier ideas in later films, just not entirely. And it was, in fact, hoped that he could make more someday, though of course financial success would dictate that. The simple fact Luke and Vader never had a direct confrontation, and Vader lived, should show it was hoped there would be more.

Not to sound like a broken record, but I'd also highly recommend reading the essays on this site, which I mentioned in another thread. I think he does an excellent job explaining exactly what happened when, and why, with references.

secrethistoryofstarwars.com/

I really liked The Nature of the Beast article, but they are all interesting, even ones that address prequel issues. This guy did his homework.

[geoffrey]

Aug 15, 2010 2:36:23 GMT -6 coffee said:

Now that my memory hasBTW, when I first saw Star Wars (in 1977), there was an intermission. I guess they had to change the reels or something. I distinctly remember talking to my brother during the intermission.

Does anybody else remember an intermission?

The very first time I saw SW, there was an intermission. I saw SW three more times after that in the summer of 1977, but there weren't intermissions in any of those showings.

I seem to remember that the intermission came right after Ben cut off that guy's arm in the cantina, but I'm not sure.

[geoffrey]

Aug 15, 2010 10:53:32 GMT -6 blackbarn said:

Aug 13, 2010 14:59:40 GMT -6 geoffrey said:

Interesting article, but I must point out two errors in it:

1. 'Lucas came up with a sprawling treatment that pulled from “Flash Gordon,” Arthurian legend, “The Hidden Fortress” and other influences. The document would have required a five-hour film but there was a middle portion that could be carved out as a stand-alone movie.'

That is simply wrong. This excellent site has all the earlier versions of the script for the 1977 Star Wars film:
starwarz.com/starkiller/category/star-wars-scripts/

I've read them all, and none is a sprawling, 5-hour treatment. At most you might be able to squeeze 2.5 hours out of the longest. Even then, you can trace the evolution through the successive scripts to its crystallization in the 1977 Star Wars movie. Lucas made-up ESB and ROTJ out of whole cloth much later. There aren't any chunks of the earliest scripts that made it into ESB and ROTJ. Anyone who reads these scripts will see that Star Wars was originally going to be one movie. Only financial success turned it into a multi-movie saga.

Geoffrey, that's not entirely true. Cloud City was originally the Imperial headquarters "Alderaan" and some other bits like that. The Wookiees vs. the Empire became the Ewoks vs the Empire, and so forth. Lucas really did borrow earlier ideas in later films, just not entirely. And it was, in fact, hoped that he could make more someday, though of course financial success would dictate that. The simple fact Luke and Vader never had a direct confrontation, and Vader lived, should show it was hoped there would be more.

Not to sound like a broken record, but I'd also highly recommend reading the essays on this site, which I mentioned in another thread. I think he does an excellent job explaining exactly what happened when, and why, with references.

secrethistoryofstarwars.com/

I really liked The Nature of the Beast article, but they are all interesting, even ones that address prequel issues. This guy did his homework.

You're right. Lucas certainly used certain names and concepts in the early scripts in later SW movies. What I'm getting at is that the idea that Lucas wrote a HUGE script that was so big he could film only a third of it in 1977, and then substantially filmed the other 2/3rds of the script later, is not the case.

I love The Secret History of Star Wars. I am proud to have influenced the author (known as "zombie" on at least two SW message boards, while my handle is "Binary Sunset"). Look at the Acknowledgements page of the book, and you'll see me specially mentioned along with six other people. I'm also quoted later in the book. Humbled and proud.