re: George Lucas talks about his Star Wars Sequels that were never made

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I remember when film makers tried to make movies people liked...aw, those were the days.

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There does seem to be an undercurrent to recent movies of "lets make a movie that will, really, really, piss off our fans!"

We could power the entire country if we could hook up a dynamo to Samuel Goldwyn spinning in his grave.

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At 7 in 1977 I fully understood what The Force was after this 15 seconds of movie. If it had been something else, Obi Wan would have told Luke right then when he asked.

There was just no reason to retrofit it at all. Lucas had allowed Obi Wan to beautifully explain it, only to then go back and make it unnecessarily convoluted.

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that didn't explain anything. So the force is everywhere. ok. How come only a few people in the universe can use it? What makes the few people who can control it, be able to control it?

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that didn't explain anything. So the force is everywhere. ok. How come only a few people in the universe can use it? What makes the few people who can control it, be able to control it?

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Actually, I think the force was best when it was mysterious and not explained in detail.

A lot of movies screw this up. Not everything has to be laid out and obvious. The force in the original trilogy was a mysterious unifying force. It had a dark and light side and you could move stuff around and shoot lightning with it. That was fine.

Then Lucas tried to get all scientific about it for no reason. He stuck in midichlorians and made a cool mysterious thing sort of boring and mundane. Movies usually benefit from a little mystery.

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suggesting anyone could wield it with some training,

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I don't think that was the implication or suggestion

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If everyone could become super powerful with the force it would make it a very, very different looking series with lots of force users.

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That's not necessarily true. In real life anyone can become a Bruce Lee/Chuck Norris type badass but not everyone has the discipline to achieve it.

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that didn't explain anything. So the force is everywhere. ok. How come only a few people in the universe can use it? What makes the few people who can control it, be able to control it?


Actually, I think the force was best when it was mysterious and not explained in detail.

A lot of movies screw this up. Not everything has to be laid out and obvious. The force in the original trilogy was a mysterious unifying force. It had a dark and light side and you could move stuff around and shoot lightning with it. That was fine.

Then Lucas tried to get all scientific about it for no reason

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No, what he did was worse than trying to get "scientific"; he tried to get pop-culture scientific.

Science... science can explain how you can Skype or Facetime with someone across the world using a couple of cellphones connected to wifi.
Try to explain an iPhone to, say, Plato or Aristotle. Those were great minds of the ancient world, and they would see the benefits. Instant communication, access to practically all known knowledge via a device smaller than a scroll. But they wouldn't understand the concept of wifi; they wouldn't even understand what all the materials (plastics) that iPhone is made of. Hell, it sure sounds like a crystal ball from a fantasy wizard, even as late as the mid-20th century.

Now apply that same knowledge gap to the Force, and multiply it exponentially, even taking into consideration that the people of Star Wars are scientifically advanced enough to travel many lightyears in hours. That was the sense of wonderment I got out of it...
The Force can be considered completely scientific, and still so far beyond current knowledge as to be magical. The Jedi and Sith just knew how to access that galactic "wifi", perhaps through sheer luck of discovery and without full understanding of it.
It's a beautiful and forward-looking concept, hugely cheapened by suggesting that something as mundane as a collection of microbes was responsible for it. I'd rather it be left a mystery, so that people could speculate on it- and perhaps some brilliant lunatic could somehow tap into it (or an equivalent) for real.

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Actually, I think the force was best when it was mysterious and not explained in detail.

A lot of movies screw this up. Not everything has to be laid out and obvious. The force in the original trilogy was a mysterious unifying force. It had a dark and light side and you could move stuff around and shoot lightning with it. That was fine.

Then Lucas tried to get all scientific about it for no reason. He stuck in midichlorians and made a cool mysterious thing sort of boring and mundane. Movies usually benefit from a little mystery.

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100% agree.

When I watched the OT as a kid, I never once thought "I'd really like to learn more about what the Force is in greater detail." I had a framework via Obi Wan's interactions with Luke, with some additional color via the scene with Vader, Tarkin and the officers on the Death Star.

I saw a Obi-Wan mind control storm troopers and go from hobbled old man to badass and chop a guy's arm off in the cantina, and I saw Vader choke a guy from several feet away. I didn't really need or want any deeper explanation.

It's like my 6 year old using the iPad. He doesn't know why or how it works or what makes it work, he just knows he can watch movies and facetime with his grandparents on it and thinks it's cool.

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That's not necessarily true. In real life anyone can become a Bruce Lee/Chuck Norris type badass but not everyone has the discipline to achieve it.

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no. some people are born with the physical and athletic ability to reach Bruce Lee status, the vast majority are not.

I never questioned things about the force in the OT, but at time there were only 5 force users in those movies in the universe. The prequels showed us that there were tons of force users. The question as to why some people can use the force and others can't is a valid question, and midiclorians attempted to answer that, and that answer didn't bother me. some people are simply born with more than others, simple as that.

That's the perfect gif for George Lucas.

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Somewhere Rian Johnson is smiling and drinking a big glass of that blue titty milk.

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Not gonna lie, this made me giggle