Had things gone the way George Lucas wanted, we could have seen a completely different new Star Wars trilogy. Yet, Disney chose to go a different direction eventually. In his latest book, Disney CEO Bob Iger revealed how things went when he, Star Wars director and producer J.J. Abrams, and director of LucasFilm Kathleen Kennedy met with Lucas (via Reddit).
“George immediately got upset as they began to describe the plot and it dawned on him that we weren’t using one of the stories he submitted during the negotiations,” Iger wrote. “The truth was, Kathy, J.J., Alan, and I had discussed the direction in which the saga should go, and we all agreed that it wasn’t what George had outlined. George knew we weren’t contractually bound to anything, but he thought that our buying the story treatments was a tacit promise that we’d follow them, and he was disappointed that his story was being discarded.”
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Iger went on adding that Lucas felt disappointment the first time he saw The Force Awakens.
“Just prior to the global release, Kathy screened The Force Awakens for George. He didn’t hide his disappointment. “There’s nothing new,” he said. In each of the films in the original trilogy, it was important to him to present new worlds, new stories, new characters, and new technologies. In this one, he said, “There weren’t enough visual or technical leaps forward,” Iger added. “He wasn’t wrong, but he also wasn’t appreciating the pressure we were under to give ardent fans a film that felt quintessentially Star Wars. We’d intentionally created a world that was visually and tonally connected to the earlier films, to not stray too far from what people loved and expected, and George was criticizing us for the very thing we were trying to do.”
In spite of Lucas’ negative reactions, Disney CEO thinks pretty highly of the new trilogy. Iger actually believes that “J.J. achieved the near-impossible” in creating a “bridge” between the old and the new Star Wars. After all, the new trilogy is a box-office success. On the other hand, though, it raised mixed reactions among the longtime fans of the franchise. We will see if the father of Star Wars will give his blessing to the final installment of the trilogy.
How do you imagine George Lucas’ story would have looked? Let us know your guess in the comments section below.
