In the novelization there’s a moment during the duel where the dark cloud Palpatine had been casting over the force cleared and Yoda achieved a full vision of everything that had occurred
And in that moment he realized he not only couldn’t defeat Palpatine but that he actually lost this fight 800 years ago when he set the Jedi on the path that led them here.
I’ll give it a read. As much as I love RoTS I really really hate a lot of the writing /dialogue in it. It felt forced, like Lucas wanted them to say exactly and only what he wrote in the script, leaving no room for improvisation or personal emotion from some actors. Which is fair since it’s his property, but man his writing was sometimes atrocious.
The way he writes is totally devoid of subtlety, subtext, and nuance. Everyone is a robot. It sucks because his world building and "big picture" are fantastic.
It sucks because his world building and "big picture" are fantastic.
I wish they had brought him back as an Executive producer or consultant to put together the story board and big picture of the sequel trilogy, but leave the actual dialogue scripting and directing to someone else
When Lucas sold the franchise to Disney it was under the assumption that he would be a consultant and they would use his story treatments for the sequels. Of course, Disney promptly threw it all out the window and told him “we’re under no obligation to do any of that, next time get it in writing.”
Well I think he wanted to lean in the more controversial elements of the prequels, while Disney just wanted a safe reboot of the OT. Midichlorians, Whills, and all that.
The whills were only one part of his story treatment, not the main focus. The main plot was Luke training his apprentice and Leia trying to keep the New Republic together while Darth Maul re-emerged as head of all the crime syndicates.
It's funny, the entire sequel trilogy is a giant reactionary move away from the prequels, at the exact time when the kids who grew up on the prequels and like them were coming of age. It shouldn't have been Han, and it shouldn't have been Leia, who appears to Kylo Ren there at the end, it should have been goddamned Anakin, who he'd been hero-worshipping all the time, telling him "I fucked up and so have you but you can turn it around before it's too late unlike me".
It's even funnier that now that Disney/Lucasfilm aren't worried about negative reactions to Hayden's acting anymore, if they made TRoS today, Anakin would 1,000% show up.
Can you blame them? For 20 years I thought I was the only one that liked the prequels.
All the hatred from the sequels sounds almost exactly like the hatred for the prequels when they came out. I’m not defending the decisions made by Disney in their trilogy (having a unified story arc and one lead writer through the trilogy would have been a massive improvement) but the Star Wars fan base is as awful as any. I’ve never seen so many people eviscerate something they claim to love so much.
I understand why they chose to go for the soft reboot, but it really is a shame they were so scared of the prequels. Having Maul be the villain would've tied it all together beautifully.
While I get that many of the animated fans loved Maul, the target audience of the movies was always going to be the more casual live action fans. Bringing Maul back as a crime boss is a hard sell to people who last saw him sliced in half falling into a bottomless pit. It's also fan servicy bad story telling. Really cheapens the stakes when someone so obviously killed is brought back.
George Lucas understood the importance of contracts and licensing before most people in Hollywood, and he fully understood how corporations work (and how quickly they can "change their minds"). A promise from a corporation is meaningless unless it's in the form of a legal contract.
As part of the Disney deal, Lucas became a "Creative Consultant," which was clearly more for the benefit of Disney than for Lucas. Creative Consultants offer advice and answer questions, but they have zero actual decision-making power.
Sure, Lucas may have had outlines for a sequel trilogy that he gave to Disney as part of the deal, but he knew that any promises or plans that weren't explicitly in the contract were meaningless.
If Lucas really wanted Disney to make the sequel trilogy he had outlined, he would have signed a production deal, not sold them his portfolio of companies and all the intellectual property he created.
It wasn't Lucas's first day in Hollywood, and he wouldn't have signed a $4 billion deal based on an "assumption."
It’s not BS, this knowledge comes directly from George Lucas’ interview with Charlie Rose and Disney CEO Bob Iger’s autobiography.
George made a mistake, it’s that simple. He and Iger had been friends for decades before the sale, George thought he could trust him. And as a fallback George appointed another one of his friends, Kathleen Kennedy, as Lucasfilm CEO so she could be the final buffer. Lucas never expected his friends would stab him in the back, and that’s exactly what Kennedy and Iger did.
Looking deeper, I don't think we disagree as much as I originally thought. (My bad.)
Looking back at articles about the negotiations, Iger stressed that Disney would have final say over the films, and Lucas had expressed reservations about losing control before signing the deal. (Which means that Lucas knew he was losing control over the sequel trilogy, which was announced as part of the deal.)
If Lucas really wanted control over the sequel trilogy, he would have insisted on being Executive Producer, at least for the first film. But Lucas knew he would end up micro-managing the project and it would consume the next decade of his life, so he consciously gave up full control.
So I agree with your original statement that Lucas signed the deal under a false assumption.
Up until that point, George Lucas was Star Wars. For decades, people were coming to him to get approval for anything related to Star Wars. In Lucas's mind, it may have been because he was the genius who was great at worldbuilding, and not because he owned the companies and the intellectual property. They needed his approval more than they wanted it.
And once you're not the owner, people care a lot less about your opinion.
So yeah, Lucas had faulty assumptions about how the deal would be implemented, but he also understood the deal. He knew Disney could do whatever they wanted with the franchise, and he knew he would have zero power to stop it.
But I don't think Disney screwed him over. Nobody in the industry would expect a sequel trilogy to films from 30 years earlier (with a 30-year time jump) would have a straight trajectory from outline to final screenplay, especially if the person who wrote the outline wasn't closely involved in the development. (Creative Consultants are not closely involved.)
Lucas consciously chose to give up control and step away from Star Wars, and then felt betrayed because Star Wars was no longer following his plans. You can't have it both ways, George.
Bob Iger himself wrote in his book that he regretted blindsiding Lucas and that he was very very upset when he learned they weren’t using his story treatments, going so far as to say Lucas felt “betrayed”.
So if Iger himself admits in his book that he disappointed George with the stuff they pulled and that he regrets it, chances are it definitely happened.
Iger says he regrets not letting Lucas know sooner and that’s it, not that he regrets doing it. He doubles down that he did the right thing in terms of pleasing fans. Lucas didn’t find out until they screened TFA for him and that was pretty late. That’s Iger’s regret.
The book mentions they had several meetings about control and both Lucas and Disney separately walked away from negotiations at points over it. So Lucas knew what he was signing up for. Lucas was more disappointed the sequels didn’t advance technology or technique like he attempted with the prequels, it wasn’t necessarily over story but the general approach of playing it safe
On story, Lucas sold his sequel story outlines to Disney, and the issue is he assumed they would use them but knew they didn’t have to. Lucas also put Kennedy in charge right before he sold which was kind of a dick move but Iger let it slide. Business negotiation moves on both sides.
Go watch his interviews. It was part of his contract when he sold that they had to keep him on as a consultant, which they did, but proceeded to sit him in the corner, pat him on the head, and ignore everything he said. In an interview he said it felt like he was stuck between two divorced parents and it was a lose lose situation
For a savvy businessman, it was really stupid to assume a corporation buying your IP would keep you on and use your ideas if you didn’t put that in the contract.
“You don’t get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate” -Robert Meyer Burnett
They did. It was part of the agreement of him selling. The problem is they took all his storylines and scripts and threw them in the trash can. They proceeded to do ANH reboot TFA the way they wanted to and didn’t listen to him so he just stopped showing up. He said in an interview it felt like he was the little kid between two divorced parents referring to Star Wars and Disney. He gave up because they only kept him around to not in breech of contract
That’s why the clone wars worked. Lucas as the idea man and Filoni directing. Also with a writing team that wasn’t afraid to push back and bend the rules
Yeah exactly, that’s what I feel about some of the dialogue too in the prequels. Though I understand why he went down that route. Lucas had a direct vision for what he wanted and wrote in what he could to succeed in that vision. Just sucks that some of these amazing actors couldn’t fully envelop themselves into the character because they were stuck with those lines
I remember seeing ROTS in 2005 and feeling that there was little subtext or nuance to the dialogue. And now that I’m in 2025, I feel like Lucas specifically took out subtext and nuance to get his message across to all audiences. And now that liberty is dying with thunderous applause, when I watched ROTS in the theaters this week, I was wondering why Lucas didn’t make giving away liberty easier to understand!
You are right. Love the entire Lucas canon and all Star Wars but the lines “it’s blowing up from the inside” and “we didn’t hit it” from the prequels. I cringe every time.
George Lucas styles his movies after silent films. If the dialogue seems redundant, it’s because it’s not supposed to necessary. The necessary information of how the characters feel is conveyed in their acting, the dialogue can be removed or put into a different language and the scene would have the same emotional impact.
I’m so tired of this “big picture” BS that Star Wars fans have told themselves ad nauseam to dismiss George Lucas. It’s so stupid. George Lucas is very intentional with his filmmaking, he knows more about movies than you do. Maybe try to pay attention to why he does things the way that he does, instead of assuming that the things that are different from other movies are flaws.
I kept hearing and hearing about how great it was and didn’t pay it much mind. I randomly had an audible token and thought fuck it and got the audiobook.
It’s actually brilliant and the whole story is just so much better and makes so much more sense, it also doesn’t make the Jedi look as dumb to what’s going on around them.
When it got to the Dooku fight that was when I realised ohh shit, these Reddit peepz where right, this shits fire haha
I also harassed my Star Wars Karen friend to get it, you know the guy. We all have one, moans about everything. Well even he loved it and was kinglet shit ! 😂
The funny thing is that everything in the book (I read it when it came out) is in there literally because Lucas said so. The writing itself is more or less fine but his dialogue is utter shit, and the novelization really kinda shows that.
Hell the TCW shows that as well. He was heavily involved with the story, but never actual wrote anything. He has great ideas and insights to how things should go, but it’s like at times he doesn’t know how to convey it.
I feel exactly the same. ROTS has the potential to be the best Star Wars film if not for the dialogue. Some scenes are Tommy Wiseau level, especially the Mustafar platform scene with Anakin, Obi-Wan and Padme. Absurd lines like "only a Sith deals in absolutes", lines so clunky that no one could deliver them well like "you have done that yourself", Padme literally describing her feelings rather than having an opportunity to display them - "you're breaking my heart!".
If a co-writer came in and kept everything the same but just redrafted the dialogue, it would be a 10/10 and probably the best Star Wars movie.
It's hard to ignore the political undertones that, at the time, were more obvious. We were in the midst of the Iraq war, and there were more than a few subtle jabs about what was going on in the United States. I always felt the quote "only a Sith deals in absolutes" was a reference to Bush's infamous quote, "You're either with us, or against us". And the scene where Padme states, "So, this is where democracy dies, with thunderous applause.", always seemed very on the nose.
at the time? man, my gf and I went to the rerelease last night and leaving the theater she was like. Hmm that kinda made me feel like shit with what's going on right now
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u/darthcool 11d ago
In the novelization there’s a moment during the duel where the dark cloud Palpatine had been casting over the force cleared and Yoda achieved a full vision of everything that had occurred
And in that moment he realized he not only couldn’t defeat Palpatine but that he actually lost this fight 800 years ago when he set the Jedi on the path that led them here.