What Could Have Been: Revenge of the Jedi

it's well known that Return of the Jedi was almost called revenge of the Jedi to the point where posters and trailers were made with that title but what's not as well known as that the movie itself was almost very different too so let's dive in and find out what could have been Return of the Jedi between a New Hope and Return of the Jedi Lucas had gone from a determined young filmmaker to a shrewd business owner at the helm of a swiftly expanding Empire of cinematic Innovation overseeing his own production company lucasfilm visual effects house industrial Light and magic and Skywalker sound then known as Sprocket systems and fueling this growing Empire was not only the money he made from Star Wars but also the incredibly lucrative and unprecedented toy and Merchandising Enterprise he created off the back of Star Wars from Star Wars The Empire Strikes Back collection new from Kenner when Lucas first made his deal for Star Wars it was for 200 000 to write direct and produce but after his film American Graffiti came out and proved to be a phenomenal smash Lucas's lawyer suggested that they leverage that film's success to get Lucas a lot more money I was very careful to say I don't want more money I don't want more points I don't want anything Financial but I do want the right to make these sequels Fox not for seeing Star Wars being the cultural phenomenon it became agreed and while Lucas would produce and self-finance the sequels himself he still needed a distributor to get the film into theaters and if Fox wanted to be that distributor they had to hand over the merchandising rights too which they did merchandising with their real money from the movie is made and as Lucas would begin to make billions in toy sales merchandising would begin to influence some of the key creative decisions he would make on Jedi for example what to do with Han Solo I thought Han Solo should die I thought he ought to sacrificed himself for the other two characters and I thought it should happen very early in the last act so you would begin to worry about everybody we should sacrifice somebody and George was against and George knew what he wanted and he got what he wanted famously proclaiming according to producer Gary Kurtz at a dead Han Solo doesn't sell toys another decision that's theorized to be influenced partly by toys was the creation of the Ewoks the idea that a band of cute little teddy bears with sticks and stones could defeat the Empire is still laughable to this day but what would have made much more sense is if you took those Ewoks and stretched them out to be about I don't know seven feet tall well then they'd look like Wookies wouldn't they and that's exactly what the original plan was which would have made much more sense and frankly been a hell of a lot better now Lucas will tell you his reason for the change was this I couldn't use Wookies because I established Chewbacca as being a relatively sophisticated creature so I had to develop a new kind of Wookiee or a new kind of creature that was primitive of new primitive societies but what Lucas leaves out here is that it would have been an incredible challenge to find enough seven foot tall actors to play all of the wookies which is partly why the decision was made to create these short lovable Ewoks however a prevailing theory is that the Ewoks presented an opportunity to create a new line of toys designed to appeal to small children one man who is opposed to many of the creative decisions being made during the writing of Jedi was producer Gary Kurtz while Kurtz claims he left the project in pre-production when he and George Had Creative differences I didn't like the way the script was going for for a Jedi in reality he was fired after he mismanaged The Empire Strikes Back shoot the film went over budget went over scheduled desperately in need of money and terrified of having to go crawling back to Fox to get it where he'd have to give up sequel or merchandising rights Lucas luckily found a solution we managed to do it in a way that I paid them just a little bit more money but they didn't get any of the licensing and they didn't get any of the sequels and that was what I was trying to hold on to and while Kurtz was rightly fired for this unfortunately by losing him Lucas lost a strong creative Voice who wasn't afraid to challenge him so why does matter well one of the biggest criticisms of Lucas on the prequel trilogy is that he was surrounded by yes men and nobody to challenge him this was not the case with Gary Kurtz let me give you an example this shot at the end of empire was redone after the first version looked kind of shitty and it was only redone because Kurtz pushed for it Lucas on the other hand dragged his feet and argued that wasting money fixing this shot wasn't going to have any effect on the film's revenue we could have let that go but it just didn't feel right now to be fair to Lucas at this point Kurtz had driven the film horribly over budget and I doubt he was thrilled that the prospect of spending even more money now going back to 1976 Lucas's original plan for the trilogy was to have the attack on the Death Star take place in the third movie but worried that he'd only have one shot at making a Star Wars film he added its attack and destruction to the end of a new hope and while early drafts of the Jedi script didn't have a death star Lucas feeling like he needed that climatic final battle he always envisioned added not one but two death stars to the script this is getting out of hand now there are two of them eventually he'd scale this back to just one death star under construction above the forest Moon of Endor Kurtz felt this was lazy and derivative but it also gave Lucas an ilm another shot at filming the attack on the Death Star with newer and more advanced visual effects which had come a long way since they first shot A New Hope however I'd argue that the use of a second death star in this film set a horrible precedent and in my opinion set off a chain reaction giving us the copycat Starkiller base and then the ridiculous Fleet of Star Destroyers with Death Star lasers attached to them and that is to have sharks with can laser beams attached to their heads Jedi's original draft also barely featured the emperor since his defeat and death would be saved for another Trilogy now we can't talk about this without talking about the original end of the movie so let's back up for a second according to Kurtz the original end of Return of the Jedi would have been Bittersweet and it would have seen the rebel forces and tatters Leia grappling with her new duties as Queen and Luke walking off alone into the sunset Allah Clint Eastwood in search of his long-lost sister Yes you heard that right Leia was never meant to be Luke's sister hence this moment instead Lucas would have made a new Trilogy centered around Luke's sister before the two of them would team up in a sixth Star Wars movie to take down the emperor however after his grueling experience on Empire Strikes Back Lucas decided to end the trilogy there was just one problem this line from Yoda in Empire that boy is our last hope no there is another in an effort to answer this question they just made Leia the other Yoda was referring to so that Lucas could wrap everything up there's also the matter of director Irvin kirschner turning down an offer to return to direct Jedi in addition to kazden's work on the Empire script kirschner should also be credited for the leap in quality from A New Hope to Empire and his absence on Jedi was certainly felt and that goes for Empire cinematographer Peter sashitski II who also didn't return for Jedi as it's rumored that his slow work speed contributed to cost and schedule overruns even if Star Wars has never looked better than through his lens Lucas famously then went on a hunt for new director approaching Spielberg and Lynch to name a few he ended up hiring cheap and fast British film and TV director Richard Marquand in an effort to avoid the overruns that happened on Empire unfortunately due to Richard's lack of experience working with VFX and Lucas always being on set breathing down his neck the two often clashed which eventually led to Lucas taking over the picture and finishing it himself Lucas's choices were also limited due to his Feud with the Director's Guild of America over the placement of Irvin kirschner's director's credit on Empire Strikes Back which came at the end of the film due to Lucas's decision to skip opening credits and Dive Right In with the opening crawl violating the guilds regulations the final change to Return of the Jedi concerns its title and while that was the original title writer Lawrence kastenfelt it was weak and inspired Lucas to change it to revenge of the Jedi but after letting it ferment Lucas realized that Jedis don't take revenge and reverted back to the original title however bookending the prequel trilogy by naming episode 3 Revenge of the Sith was a nice touch again it's like poetry so if they rhyme every stanza kind of rhymes with the last one thanks for watching everybody and don't forget to like And subscribe to bullets and Blockbusters for more great content

Channel: Bullets & Blockbusters

Views: 757,353

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Id: jMGVCA7eLFw

Length: 8min 34sec (514 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 21 2023