Time to abandon ship! Hold on! Here we go! Can I persuade you to join us for a drink? It's a tradition. Here, here. Jar Jar, homie, my main man, quickly! Before the Separatists attack, get into the escape pod! Hey! This is escape! Then where's the pod? This is escape pod! Welcome back to Star Wars Escape Pod. I'm your host, Josh, and we have our co-hosts, Blake and Bryce, in the escape pod to chat all about George Lucas' original Star Wars trilogy.
I have in front of me the gargantuan red XXL edition of Paul Duncan's Star Wars Archives book covering 1999 through 2005. That is the prequel, the prequel book. And, you know, this is a numbered edition. Huge flex there. We're going to dive right in. We're going to go right to the end. And there is a whole lot about George Lucas' original vision for the sequel trilogy. Lots to talk about there. So let's dive right in. Another happy landing. Well, hello there. Hello there. Hello.
How are you guys doing? Doing well. Hello. Hello. Josh, I just wanted to open by saying my condolences. For? Well, you must be getting older. Your eyesight must be going, because you had to get the XXL version. Yeah. Get the big font. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I try and make myself feel better saying it's a limited edition. Take it out. Comes with a free pair of spectacles. Yeah. Bifocals. Exactly.
So, you know, we're not going to waste any time, but I just wanted to kick things off with, you know, this can be a sensitive issue for some people who do love the movies that we do have. And there are others of us that do not. And, you know, it's always going to be a divisive thing. But this is the original sort of conceptual of what George would have done with his movies. And this isn't from the Internet. This isn't from an article of any kind.
This is a firsthand interview published in a very esteemed book by Paul Duncan, who sat down with George in person. He sat down with a lot of people. Ben Burtt and, you know, Doug Chang and Rick McCallum. You know, a lot of people, a lot of people in this interview. And page by page, you know, there's a lot of artwork and production reports and just like the things that you don't really need to look at, but like are just so cool to like all us nerds. Right. It's a pretty sweet book.
The XXL format kind of gives you like a nice wide spread on all these cool, awesome images and stuff like that. Towards the end of the book, though, Paul asks George some really interesting questions. About sort of why he sold the company and, you know, what he would have done if he hadn't.
And there are some very familiar things that George says in this interview, things that he's told Charlie Rose on the Charlie Rose interview way back when, when he first sold the company and the Force Awakens was being developed by a new team of people. And JJ Abrams had been brought on to the company. Brought on to help write and direct that movie. And this is sort of reminiscent to that because this book was well, the interview took place before this book was published.
I think it was in 2020 that this book was published. And the publisher is Taschen. They make some amazing, super large format things. They do like a James Bond one. They do tons of stuff. They got a classic Walt Disney one. Really nice things. Yeah. Fan stuff then like really high quality collectible. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. Not cheap books either. But the interview totally worth reading.
And there's a budget version of this book, by the way, there's like a $40 version, which is like way smaller. You just lose some of the nice big images, but that's, you know, all the text is the same. Pocket size book. Yeah. Yeah. Regular size. Regular size book. It has thumbnails instead of photographs. About the size of Order of the Phoenix over there. For kids with good eyes. Yeah. That's right. It comes with a magnifying glass. For kids with good eyes. Yeah. So yeah.
So what we're going to do is we're going to go section by section through this interview and just kind of break down exactly what's going on here. But yeah, just question for either of you guys. Do you remember anything about the Charlie Rose? If you'd watch Charlie Rose interview with George. Just that famous quote. Oh yeah. How's it go again, Josh? You can go ahead. Yeah. Yeah. It's... Anikin wouldn't be super happy. No. Anikin. George's words. Yeah. They could be quite offended.
It's a good interview. It's quite difficult. Yeah. It's difficult to watch sometimes only because I love George's movie so much that it's kind of a wrench in my gut knowing what we could have had and more George Lucas Star Wars. I want more of that. I want more of that. It was on the horizon.
Yeah. And after kind of what we're getting into here with the book and the interview him talking about it, I was surprised that he was willing to get back on the horse again after what happened with the prequels because towards the end, he just seemed like he was kind of fed up. Yeah. That's part of it actually. So we're definitely going to get into that. But yeah. Do you guys remember anything about that? No. Nothing. Not too much.
Like I said, I think I've only seen like 10 minutes of it aside from the stuff in the news. But interested to hear what he had planned and what we could have had. Yeah. Or like what... There's like a multiverse out there where Star Wars fans are happy, right? For sure. For sure. For sure. And this is going to be an entirely alternate universe also to what we got with EU, I would think. Yeah. Because now there's a multiverse of three at the moment. Which I don't know. Maybe...
Yeah. I guess that's like an initial question I have is like, what was his plan in relation to like the EU if he already had this? Yeah. This laid out for a sequel trilogy, right? That's something he answers is sort of like what he would have done with the trilogy. So focus is completely on this book today, everybody. If you want to watch the Charlie Rose interview, I will link it in the description below in this podcast.
But yeah, today we talk all about this interview between Paul Duncan and George Lucas. So I'll start off kind of by reading the first section here. And then, you know, and then I'll kind of give you guys a signal as to when we can kind of converse about this. All right. So Paul Duncan says, and it's sort of stylized like a script, like it's like, you know, the person saying whatever, and then what they said, and then the other person and so on and so forth.
It's like reading like a, you know, like a stage script. Okay. So Paul Duncan says, Doug Chang, Ryan Church, and others. Church and others described to me how much freedom you gave them and allowed them to do the best work of their lives. The whole environment that you've created Lucasfilm, The Ranch, ILM, Skywalker Sound has been inspirational. So I wonder why you pass control of Lucasfilm on to Disney in 2012. George Lucas says, at that time, I was starting the next trilogy.
I talked to the actors and I was starting to gear up. I was also about to have a daughter with my wife. And it takes 10 years to make a trilogy. Episodes one through three took from 1995 to 2005. Paul Duncan says, so if you started in 2012, you'd finish in 2022. And George Lucas says, I'd still be working on episode nine. In 2012, I was 69. So the question was, am I going to keep doing this the rest of my life? Do I want to go through with this again?
Finally, I decided I'd rather raise my daughter and enjoy life for a while. I could have not sold Lucasfilm and gotten somebody to run the productions. But that isn't retiring. On Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, I tried to stay out of the way. But I couldn't. I was there every day. Even though the people were friends of mine and they did great work, it wasn't the same as me doing it. It was like being once removed. I knew that probably wouldn't work again, that I'd be frustrated.
I'm the one with those micromanagers. One of those micromanager guys, I can't help it. So I figured I would forego that, enjoy what I had, and I was looking forward to raising my daughter. Also, I wanted to build a museum, which I'd always wanted to do. So I was thinking, if I don't do this now, I'll never get that done. I've spent my life creating Star Wars, 40 years, and giving it up was very, very painful. But it was the right thing to do. I thought I was going to have a little bit more.
A little bit more to say about the next three, because I'd already started them. But they decided they wanted to do something else. Things don't always work out the way you want it. A life is like that. I can just piggyback on what I was saying earlier. I'm very surprised that it was getting back into it again. I guess when you're in love with something, you forget about the bad. And over time, you get reinvigorated again.
Because I know there was... I think it was... I think with the fallout of a lot of the fandom after the prequels left a lot of bad taste in his mouth, which I always thought fueled the sale to Disney, but it seems after reading this quote, it had more to do with where he was at that point in his life. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. It's rough. You invest so much of your life. You invest so much of your life into something. And then you kind of be... You're a guy like that.
He's known for that something. To sell it, I think the question of identity really comes to mind. It's like, oh, I'm the guy who made Star Wars. I'm selling that. Yeah. You're selling a huge part of really who you consider yourself to be. Yeah. And that's why on the Charlie Rose interview, if anyone watches that, he describes Star Wars as like his children. He's like, Charlie Rose, you sold your children. Well, it's...
Yeah. it's still still a story but i mean you know sold his one child for his other child i guess yeah though he did speak on a point that i think a lot of fans often bring up which is they want the relationship that george had with star wars of the film so we had the original trilogy with empire and jedi where he was kind of in the back seat guiding the story but he speaks directly to he's just not capable of doing that because he's so hands-on yeah you know and you know the
arguments i've heard it before this is like oh yeah the best star wars movies the ones that he didn't direct it's like well he was there like every day you know he was he was you know someone else's name is the director for the movie but like you know that doesn't mean he wasn't there next to the director with his hand on their shoulder as they did their job right and like that's kind of the whole the whole point like why he did the prequels in the beginning it's like well he he
originally didn't want to didn't he approach spielberg and some of the directors they all said spielberg got what i remember the quote was like george you do it yeah yeah well this guy i think still spielberg knows george a lot like he knows him well right like he knew that if george hired somebody else he would still be just as involved anyways and you know at least this way he wouldn't be kind of bumping heads with anybody yeah right like he would get the authentic story that he
wanted and you know that's like that's all right it's just a lot of work you know for one guy right it is yeah which is why you have to be good at delegating right yeah and i think that's why a lot of those older films are successful because he found like talented people to delegate you totally uh okay so here's the next section here it's called the chosen one george lucas says when writing the movies i tried to make
sure that the aliens and the droid that got killed but not the people uh paul duncan says a lot of stormtroopers died and george lucas says that's right but you didn't know that there were people uh we did kill three humans and that was unfortunate i was always bothered by it paul duncan says uh when was that and george says on the death star when han and luke go into the prison when chewy uh with chewy to rescue leia they shoot three imperial guys and the guards
drew their guns and fired first but it's still a shame paul says really and george said yeah we very consciously didn't kill the aliens and the droid that got killed but not the people very many humans in those movies paul says uh what about the stormtroopers they look they're rebels what about the stormtroopers they look robotic but they're not and george says how do you know what they are and uh paul says did you have a different idea of what they were and george says
yeah they started out as clones once all the clones were killed the empire picked up the recruits like militia they fought but they weren't very good at what they did that's why they kept missing uh paul says yeah and george says yeah that's what that's why they kept missing then after the rebels won there were no more stormtroopers in my version of the third trilogy that i had planned for the first trilogy to be about the father and the second trilogy to be
about the son and the third trilogy to be about the daughter and the grandchildren episodes seven eight and nine would take ideas from what happened after the iraq war okay you fought war you healed everybody now what are you going to do rebuilding afterwards is harder than starting a rebellion or fighting the war when you win the war and you disband the opposing army what do they do the stormtroopers would be like saddam hussein's uh baathist fighters that joined isis
and kept on fighting the stormtroopers refused to give up when the republic win they want to be stormtroopers forever they go to a far corner of the galaxy start their own country and their own rebellion there's a power vacuum so gangsters like the huts are taking advantage of the situation and there is chaos the key person is darth maul who had been resurrected in the clone wars cartoons he brings all the gangs together paul says was darth maul the main villain and george says yeah
but he's very old and we have two versions of him one is with a set of cybernetic legs like a cybernetic leg and the other is with a set of cybernetic legs like a cybernetic leg and the spider and then later he has metal legs and he was a little bit bigger more of a more of a superhero we did all this in the animated series he was in a bunch of episodes darth maul trained a girl darth talon who was in the comic books as his apprentice
she was the new darth vader and the most of the action was with her so these were the two main villains of the trilogy maul eventually becomes the godfather of the crime in the universe because as the empire falls he takes over the movies were about how leia i mean who else is going to be the leader is trying to build the republic they still have the apparatus of the republic but they have to get it under control from the gangsters and that was the main
story it starts a few years after return of the jedi and we established pretty quickly that there's this underworld there are these offshoot stormtroopers who have started their own planets and that luke is trying to restart the jedi he puts word out so out of like a hundred thousand jedi maybe 50 or 100 or left and the jedi have to grow again from scratch so luke has to find two and three year olds and train them it'll be 20 years before you have a new generation of jedi
by the end of the trilogy luke would have rebuilt much of the jedi and we would have the renewal of the new republic with leia senator organa becoming the new jedi and then we have the supreme chancellor in charge of everything so she ended up being the chosen one there's a lot there that happened yeah i'm just thinking that i don't know there's there's a lot to unpack there because there's there's even stuff i don't agree with right or like i'm not
quite sure is kind of the direction i would have wanted to go but i think as a because star wars is political so i think it's good to make it but you know when he's talking about it always it always takes inspiration from you know real life events and it's like a twist it's like that space right star wars um so i think the stuff he was saying about you know like our current wars and rebuilding i think that is a really good idea and would have made for a very interesting and like
yeah yeah because you never see that in the sequels you don't really see the rebuilding of you know that you only just see like when they question that it's like oh where do we go from here and then all of a sudden the next movie like everyone just shows up like ready to go i think we're starting to see more of that now in the mandalorian era but in the sequels themselves not really though they did steal the fact that the stormtroopers went off and created their own
kind of country or whatever yeah yeah they did they did take that so i really like it like you don't have to have all three of the sequels be you don't have to have all three of the sequels be like you don't have to have all three of the sequels be we're rebuilding for all three you know if it's a bit slow maybe a bit dry yeah but in the same way um i think the phantom menace felt very different like it's not like the phantom menace was extremely
political and not like you only get the war at the end right right but it made the galaxy feel a lot more complete like you have you get to see the jedi doing their peacekeeping missions it's more about like how the republic functions right yeah why the democracy is corrupt and why it's really hard dealing with trade routes and blockades yeah and that is like insanely good world building um and although i
think a lot of people make fun of it because it's political and maybe not the most exciting i think there's a lot of the older audience that is like pretty jazzed to see that kind of stuff yeah yeah it's funny all three of those movies don't have to be like that just just the first one right and then you can get into some more of the uh bread and butter lightsaber you know like like action and you know betrayals yeah probably more of the same thing but yeah i think it's a lot more
of the stuff with darth maul or that you know then maybe in the second movie we get that like reveal of you know some sort of first order the stormtrooper nation you know that's coming back yeah right so it it it would escalate basically yeah yeah yeah and i think that that'd be pretty good flow then you get a good kind of twist reveal at the end and cliffhanger i think this leia becoming the uh chancellor was it a cool idea i like that a lot i think i
i think it's a good idea i think it's a good idea i think it's a good idea i think it's a good idea i believe that was actually in colin trabaro's episode nine script you know interesting uh when the leaks came out about how that story would have worked out i believe that's that would have been a thing if carrie fisher hadn't obviously passed away right yeah that complicated a lot of things yeah uh there's a novel as well was was leia in line to be more of a political leader
until they found out she was darth vader's daughter was that a thing yeah you're talking about bloodline um so that that book takes place kind of between episode six and seven and there's a big scandal that comes out because of that right and that's one of the few things i guess that kind of leads her to go on her own and become the resistance leader as opposed to stay within the new republic in those politics right
so that that book described that pretty well i don't think it sounds like a bad decision though right you you're outed as being related to an evil dictator so you leave and raise an army yeah it doesn't look so great no one else is gonna do it right yeah yeah yeah but but you see how that yeah like how it comes off pretty poorly yeah you're like you're pretty much making an extremist organization within you know the government that you built you're you're like the yeah you are
yeah i don't know what you tried to fight against you're kind of just the warmonger almost yeah but although i really i actually really like the book because it's like that because that makes so much sense like who would allow you know old adolf schmittler's daughter to be chancellor like yeah right i don't know how you could be it's fear right fear fear that they'll become their their parent or whatever yeah you'd be a saint and i think people still
would be like i'm not sure about this yeah like yeah i um you know what you what you were just saying blake about the the various different types of continuities that we have now at this point there's a few right there's there's the there's the canon there's the old eu pre-disney there's uh the infinities continuity which is its own thing in the comic books that's a lego no it's in the it's in the comic books they did like a what if situation like white darth vader yeah yeah yeah
so they did that and then uh and then now obviously we have these sort of what would have happened if george had not sold the company right so there's there's a couple kind of different continuities taking something from the eu like darth talon and making that sort of a main villain in george's story something that he really liked a lot it's not the first time he's done that uh he's actually done that before he really loved ala secure he has got a thing for twelix
uh he really loved ala secure a lot when he saw her on a comic book and so he put her in attack of the clones that was the whole reason why she existed in attack of the clones was she was in a comic book first yeah and he's like yeah um i like that i'm gonna put that in my movie that's pretty cool so i thought originally because the first time i saw it was like in the video games i think it was in battlefront 2 like the 2005 version well that was way after
attack of the clones yeah yeah and that's the first time i'd seen her so i thought that wait you've seen her attack of the clones i i think i didn't notice her attack of the clones is what happened because i recognized i noticed her right away because i dentister because i definitely i definitely noticed her revenge of the sith right uh yeah yeah so i mean you know he he's done this before right like he's taken he's
taken a character from the eu used into his thing uh quinlan voss is another another great example but uh you know to take such a weird sort of strange story from from a completely different time frame within the eu right and then bring it into his story i thought was very curious yeah actually raises a good question we should touch on that because what what is the the time difference because it's a lot right like it's like we're talking skywalker it's like okay hundreds of
years yeah yeah it's um he's he is the grandson of luke okay isn't it great isn't great is a grandson or is a great grandson because luke's long gone at this point yeah it would have been luke and then luke has um ben and then ben has kate i'm pretty sure there might be one more actually he might be a great the great grandson yeah i think i think i think gullen has uh what is the other skywalker called oh maybe i'll have to look it up but i think there's there might be three generations
yeah i think there's there's something yeah because i i had the feeling that kate skywalker was like a hundred years after it's like kai skywalker some kids go right it's like i think it's like it's like a hundred years after return of the jedi i think that sounds about right yeah it's like the whole the whole comic series kind of that was like the thing it was like 99 years after the battle of endor or something you know it was something Is that pre or post Yuuzhan Vong? Oh, post.
Okay. It's like during the rebuilding era. Yeah. Okay. So like most of the EU that most people are familiar with all kind of happen way before this event. Right. And then Cage Skywalker is like, that's his story. Darth Talon is a villain in that story. Yeah. And I was like, whoa, like to move a character's timeframe, like back by like a hundred years. Because she looks cool. Yeah. Just because she looked cool. I was like, okay, well, that's interesting.
But then also to be forward planning in the sense that Darth Maul was going to be the villain, like the new Palpatine sort of thing. Right. I think that's the most interesting part to me, both because we're kind of are, well, we were sort of seeing it, but more so in the early post prequel era where he is the leader of multiple crime syndicates. Yeah. I was just actually watching Clone Wars. That Clone Wars arc? Like last night. Oh, wow.
And I was like, which is hilarious that we're talking about this now. Yeah. Because it's just total coincidence where you get the reveal that Darth Maul is controlling multiple crime syndicates, even though this, the episode was kind of from the view of the Pikes. Yeah. And he's playing them against each other. And then in Solo, we see he's like the head honcho of Red Dawn. I think is the name, right? Crimson Dawn. Crimson Dawn. Crimson Dawn. Thank you. Yeah. That's right.
So it's interesting that what George talked about happened, but through, I guess, the Dave Filoni animated stuff. When is, when does he talk, when does his interview? This interview took place before the publishing of the book. So this, this interview was probably prior to 2020, I would say 2018, 2019, something in there. So I think something to keep in mind is this interview is coming out as he's had time to think about this.
It's also coming out before episode nine, Disney's episode nine hit theaters. Right. But like, I guess I'm like, does, did he have all, is this, do you think this is how he thought the sequels would be like before he sold? This is, yeah, this is what he's saying to Paul as to what he would have done. And I think he was under the expectation that Disney was going to complete the story with his scripts. Yeah. Right. I guess I was just thinking like, how much of this has he kind of thought?
As he's been seeing all of the, right. How much is what they've done to star Wars right now? He's like, you know, he's had years after selling star Wars to be like, Oh, I totally would have done this. And I totally would have done this. And he's like, you know, putting more thought and time into it. Yeah. Then he's doing the interview and he's able to. Yeah. So I feel like maybe he's, he is kind of developing more or thinking more about what he would have done. That is interesting.
Especially with. The quote saying he wanted to take time away from it, but when you're, your life has been around it so long, probably it's hard to let go. Yeah. And so you're still, you still, if it was me, I would feel like as it's coming out, I would be doing exactly that. I'd be thinking, Oh, I would have done this. Yeah. You can't, you probably, he probably couldn't help himself, but then, you know, be like, dang.
Yeah. I want to like actually put more effort into like what I, what this could have been. If that makes sense. I was just kind of rambling there. Yeah. No, it does make sense. Cause yeah. Based on when this came out or sort of based on what he's saying, it almost, he's making it seem as if this is something that he had planned.
Yeah. But that being said though, you know, you get me thinking because he's had a lot of times now, like analyze the full trilogy of films and it makes me wonder, like, you know, he's a retired guy raising his kid. I mean, you know, everyone's got a hobby. Like, well, what are the, what's the building a museum? I mean, well, yeah, he's, I mean, he's not physically building the museum. He's like, no, he's there brick by brick. I think, I think Chicago until they canceled it.
So you had to be here to haul the bricks. Is that why it's taking so long? George Lucas single-handedly making the weight of this museum on his shoulder. No, I mean, I mean like, what are the, what are the chances though that he's got like a rough, you know, like he's just sat down and written these movies. I mean, it's like in. His drawer and no one knows about this. He just did it for him, you know, it's possible.
I could see myself doing that if I was in his position, but I also know that that wouldn't be like a healthy thing to do, but you're trying to distance yourself from it. I mean, like, yeah, sort of, right. But, but maybe it's just, it's just for him, right? Like maybe it's just like, he's got an idea in his head. It's a bug. He's got to get it out on the page, you know, you know what I'm saying? Like, he's, he's just like to, to, to get that sense of completion.
It's like, okay, I do have an idea to do these stories. I want to get them out of, you know, out of my, my head kind of thing onto a complete sort of manuscript in a way as to like, this is what would have happened. And this is what I would have done. And no one needs to know that, but me, but that's. We know he's okay with that. Cause you, after the prequels, he talked about making movies for himself. Yeah, exactly. Man, I'd love to see some of those though.
I would love to rummage through his desk drawer. His filing cabinet, three hours in his house and you're just ripping it apart. Yeah. Same thing. Yeah. You know, it's, it's kind of crazy to think that, that these, these movies just, you know, were a possibility once upon a time and then just never happened. But I mean, like, I don't, we don't know how, how far into this stage and into the writing they were right. Like, you know, these were outlines, if any, you know, story treatments, couple.
Pages each, like not much to go off of, but it's something. So I'm not sure if it came out somewhere else, but I know there's always been talks that George had planned 12 from the beginning. Yeah. From that was before he did episode four. Yeah. Cause he had, there's a paper, a photo or something of pages says it has like numbers one to 12. Yeah. Yeah. That was before he did episode four, but then he condensed it down to nine. Right. And then, and then six.
Well, was that after the original trilogy though? Because I think when he, when he hit empire strikes back, it was going to be six because he, you say that, but, but he had put episode five in the, in the opening crawl when empire came out. Yeah. So like he already knew, Oh, I'm going to do three before a new hope. And I'm going to do one more after this one. One of the editors for empire. Strikes back and return to the Jedi.
I was watching a video earlier today to kind of prep for some of what we're talking about. And I forget which editor, but star Wars theory was interviewing him. And he said the editor that George had planned nine. This is during empire Jedi. He, uh, yeah. And I think that, that definitely kind of goes back and forth because I have also seen interviews with Mark Hamill where he is sort of asking George about it.
And, you know, and he has said like, Oh yeah, like, Hey, what, like, how do you feel about doing, you know, a story like episode seven, seven, eight, nine, like with Luke and his later life. And that was like way back in the eighties when, when he had this conversation. So I think he's, he has gone back and forth internally, you know, just to himself, like whether or not he wanted to do that. Yeah. And, you know, in that process, a lot can change. Right.
But before he sold this company, you know, it really, uh, I think what also kind of drove him to get a bit more creative with sort of how these stories would have come out on, on screen is having treatments for episode seven, eight, nine boosted the value of the company because all of a sudden now they were projects in production.
Right. So like, I, I hate to say that as a sort of excuse for like some of these ideas being like, you know, if you think they're like kind of half-assed or like maybe they don't work or whatever, you know, but I wonder though, I wonder if maybe, you know, some of these ideas that he had were just kind of around in his head forever, or if they were just drummed up kind of like in that early process, like, Oh, do I want to sell?
He's also had the benefit of seeing what worked in, in the sequel trilogies. Right. Cause obviously he, and, and he, he did give input obviously, because the first order is like, you know, it's a, it's, it's the empire. They left, they made their own nation. They're coming back. There is a lot of like rebuilding for the Republic going on, but he's had the benefit of also seeing that, that, that part of the sequel trilogy kind of worked. Yeah. And the benefit of the entire EU being kind of there.
Right. Like, like he did work very closely. Closely with, well, I don't know how closely, but like, you know, he was kind of the guy when Timothy Zahn was making his heir to the empire trilogy. Right. Like he was the guy that, you know, you talk to all the time was George. Right. So, uh, yeah, it makes me, it makes me wonder like what, what has inspired him to kind of come up with some of these ideas for, for his movies.
Something missing in this quote though, which correct me if I'm wrong, uh, in the Cliff Rose, does his interview. Is that right? Charlie Rose. Charlie Rose. Thank you. Uh, doesn't he talk about midichlorians playing a big, big role? Yeah, he does. Yeah. He talks about how, um, and he doesn't mention that in this book.
Um, but on the Charlie Rose interview, he does talk about how those stories would have gone into, and I quote a micro biology or micro bio, uh, something, something or another world. Yeah. Well, they all get shrunken down and go into a bloodstream. Yeah. I don't think it was magic school. It could have been. You don't know. Because. He's sharing his good ideas, right? He's not going to, he's going to leave out the weird stuff that he thought about.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He's like, ah, Chewbacca becomes a robot. He becomes an android. But he keeps his hair. Yeah. Well, I think like in him saying that is probably sort of, you know, it's a, it's got a deeper meaning to it. It's like that it would have explored that in the lore, right? Like it would have kind of dived into the wills a little bit more. And that's something that he wanted to do. There's another section here. Which will, it's like a third section, which I'll read in just a moment.
But that might sort of touch up on it a little bit as well. Before we get that, I do want to talk. If we, if you guys like the idea of Darth Maul being the head honcho, the new Palpatine and being a leader of the underworld. No. No. Do you like, and maybe compare that to Palpatine coming back. It's kind of tough because like Palpatine. Palpatine is pretty integral part of both the prequel and the sequel and the original trilogy.
But there, I think the main villain, right, is it, it's really tough because I feel like you do need a villain that is not featured in your new trilogy that you're making. In the same way that I'm not really huge on them doing, if he was doing another trilogy to make it like just a few years after Return of the Jedi. Yeah. Yeah. I think you need. You need a Snoke, a Snoke of some kind, you know, someone in the shadows.
I want to see a trilogy about the next generation, just like, just like in the sequel trilogy or the prequel trilogy, what trilogy was a different generation. It was Obi-Wan Kenobi's generation, right? Yeah. And then the next one is Luke's generation. And I want to see the next one. I want to see the kids. Right. And I want to see a different villain because I want that like separation where I'm like, this is a new trilogy. I feel like when you're only doing it.
A couple of years after it feels like it's kind of tied in. So you want, you want the Count Dooku of the sequels, essentially someone who you know, no mention of him at all in, in the original trilogy. Someone who was new at the time. Maybe he's like alluded to, maybe he's like a kid in, in the original trilogy or something like that. You're describing what could work would be Plagueis because he's mentioned. You also, you is he is Palpatine's master and he can control. Yeah. Like, like, right.
And then you go to featured. And in and around the original trilogy. But I think that's why he makes a good villain. And he's not forced users. So feels different. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah. And I think it's the same reason I'm not huge on the sequels is because it. Because when it features so many. Kind of characters, it doesn't doesn't feel like its own thing. Feels like it's a continuation. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's just my thoughts. I don't mind it. You know, every time.
Ever since they brought Maul back in the Clone Wars. I always wondered at the time because, you know, of course. Episode. Seven, eight, nine were just not a reality at the time. Right. Like this was we're talking about a time period where George was still head honcho of Lucasfilm. Right. It was him and Dave making Star Wars stories at Lucas Animation. And they decided to bring Maul back. I'm curious if that was Dave's or George's idea. That was George's idea. Okay. Because Dave talks about that.
Okay. He's like, we're bringing Maul back. Figure it out. I'm like, and Dave's like, uh, what? Am I finding that George specifically calls out the spider legs and then the extra large human legs? Because this is exactly what happens in Clone Wars before his interview. Yeah. Well, because, because it, you know, it happened a long time ago. Like these, um, these, uh, these, these moments, these, these Clone Wars stories happened, uh, like 2000.
And, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, eight, 11, 2010. Okay. A couple of years before he considered selling. Yeah. Uh, cause Maul comes back at like the end of, they alluded to it in season three. And then he's like for sure back in season four. Right. Okay. So that was, and it went for five full seasons until they were halfway through season six production wise. And then it got canceled. So like it was before they sold the company easily.
right rebels was not a thing you know maul hadn't died yet solo hadn't been made or manufactured or thought of in any way whatsoever but the scripts from the end of the unreleased clone wars were considered canon that seems to be what dave filoni that's always been the case that's always been the case like clone wars has always been canada george so it's been canada his story so um and and therefore also to disney and and their continuity as well so like i think you know it's definitely
worth noting it's like yeah george did did bring him back like before doing this interview before disney bought the company before any of that like he had planned to bring him back so like it it sort of gives him that predecessing like you know candidacy i guess like to be that villain you know whether whether it's a good fit or not like you know it's like okay well if they didn't make him the villain what would have they done with the character because like now that we have season
seven like fully fleshed out out and everything like that um the scripts for those are kind of done up around the same time that the company was sold because the writer brent friedman has gone on the record by saying like there's going to be eight seasons of the show all the scripts are done and they'd got they'd had audio recordings all the way through season seven and uh you know it was it was good to go
like that's that's part of the reason why after the show was canceled they did things like the dark disciple novel the son of dathomir comic you know they released the proxy animation episode of the show and they did things like the dark disciple novel the son of dathomir comic episodes for things that they hadn't finished yet things like that right um because like those stories were already kind of manufactured in a way it's just not released right so um i think there
was a plan to keep maul alive like at the end of the clone wars and then the real question is like where would it have gone from there and uh you know it's somehow that before rebels kind of wrapped yeah before well before the company was sold in the first place it's like where where would they have taken maul's story you know if clone wars had finished its eight season run with george lucas at the helm and dave filoni and like where would have they gone from there right
did darth maul was he already killed by obi-wan in rebels by the time this interview took place yes yeah okay yeah i believe so or very very close very close timing yeah so it'd be interesting if the if the guy questioning george was self-aware enough to bring that up i think that'd be an interesting question that would have been an interesting question yeah i don't want to say he squandered the interview but like like i don't know like i think i think all
of us would have our own like fanboying out our own questions that we would have been like longing to know is mace windu alive yeah but no i'm like i'm okay with it i'm okay with it i think like done and done in the right way um i think maul would have been all right but you know darth talon i think is the weirder one for me i think like is that just because she looks like him like the tattoos like oh well i feel like she had to have been inspired by maul
with her her tattoos from the original because like we know we know maul was like raised and this is like alluded to us in the clone wars too like maul was kind of raised as like a young boy you know sith apprentice under palpatine you know as like a you know as evil as can be from as early as possible right so maybe maul kind of did that maybe he like took on darth talon when she was just like a young slave girl something at the time who knows raised her to kind of be in his image
and then that's how she gets all the tattoos and everything like that so i think that's a good point like that looks like he does and you know keeps going from there probably because i guess they're like sith tattoos or something yeah something like that or was it like for for the death of mary it's like a cultural thing to have all those facial tattoos but like you know but someone like color is not no yeah yeah i don't really know why she's red um yeah have we ever seen a red twi
lick no no i don't think so yeah i think george is just he likes a hot jedi every now and again yeah he likes nice nice uh a nice twi lick yeah good set of lake you want have you seen quinlan voss hey kenobi all right here's the next section it's called hope and faith uh george lucas says the midichlorians started the birth process in anakin's mother the wills communicated the command to the midichlorians which activated the dna that germinated the egg and that's why anakin doesn't have a father
he was in a bizarre and metaphorical way touched by god but this in this case uh they happen to be one-celled animals paul duncan says it reminds me of perseus and hercules and the other heroes of mythology who received their powers from the gods usually because zeus fathered them zeus is an absent father the theme of fatherhood or lack of it runs through the saga quiagon doesn't quite become a father figure for anakin i don't think but he's certainly somebody in authority who
he then loses then obi-wan becomes a father figure and later palpatine and the theme continues with luke and even django fett the calvin owens are making all these clones of him and yet he asks for one to be unaltered so that he can raise him george lucas says django was a father to thousands but he wanted a son that wasn't altered to be obedient he wanted him to have his own personality and his ability to be self-sufficient paul says uh did the other characters quiagon obi-wan and
palpatine have that fatherly feeling also and george says i think so i think ultimately they want to mentor someone to pass on their knowledge and training to someone else and that's a part of fatherhood i don't know whether you'd call it fathering but it comes very close mentor and father are pretty much the same issue yeah paul says palpatine acts in a fatherly fashion and george says he's acting as a father but what he's trying to do is recruit anakin to be his trainee
and he's doing that because he knows that he has a high midichlorian count so he could be a powerful sith lord even more powerful than he is it's like he's trying to build a better spaceship or a better gun more than it is he's trying to be a father he sees him as a weapon for the dark side and paul says so he's a false father wanting to control him obi-wan becomes more of an elder brother and george says he's like the reluctant elder brother saying
you're not leaving me you're not leaving me you're not leaving me you're not leaving me you're not leaving him with me i don't want to babysit anymore i want to go out and do something good paul says almost like a han solo george says except obi-wan has a character that takes responsibility han solo would have left him out in the desert planet somewhere paul says when i first saw the films i undervalued obi-wan because i followed anakin's story but obi-wan
became more important to me the more i re-watched the movies and george says he changed the course of history because if he hadn't done battle with anakin anakin would have become very powerful and would have probably gone on to be the emperor of the universe and paul says at the end of the duel obi-wan is so personally attached to anakin that he couldn't kill him he couldn't bear to see him die and george says he's human
the jedi are not superheroes they're regular people just like the rest of us we all have many chlorians we all have the force within us we can all do what the jedi can do but we're not trained and the secret is training you need somebody to train you because it won't come by it by its own you don't say oh gee i think i can see the future now it's a fallacy that you can get something for nothing if you have the talent and you work hard then you'll achieve something
but if you have the talent and you don't work hard you won't uh that kind of makes you think of sabine you know like we're not going to be able to do that recently in the ahsoka series like we we talked about this a lot you know it's like whether or not like it's a good decision story-wise to have sabine become a force user so quickly and just kind of hearing the way that george like talks about it it's like it's very evident you know
his plan was always that so long as someone's disciplined enough to like be open to feeling the force like in the story you know someone would be capable of doing that right but the mini chlorine is like a gateway like the more you have like the more potential you could be you know more powerful right uh any thoughts on that like i find uh interesting that he specifically calls out that if obi-wan had done what he had then anakin would have taken over everything yeah
something i hadn't really considered but because i guess because we've always known darth vader to be darth vader it's hard to picture him at his full potential yeah like an alternate reality in which anakin killed obi-wan he becomes the most powerful sith lord in the galaxy yeah more powerful than palpatine which for us is hard to believe because palpatine is so strong there's no invader to be his underling right needing help to overthrow palpatine yeah yeah because he's not physically
capable anymore right that's kind of tough it's like can i envision a universe where anakin's you know the chancellor or like at least the head i don't know if anakin has like that sort of um leadership ability yeah leadership or or like um like intrigue of like kind of sneakiness to like plan and scheme right he's much more of a uh me smash you know right i think so and i think maybe that's the difference though maybe like he wouldn't like be all the sneaky he would like
be all anakin about it and just take it by force you know by pure power like he would overthrow the emperor and then you know find people in command and you know like he would like to be at that point to like do the rest of the jobs right he could be compared maybe to like a genghis khan yeah i feel like the galaxy would be much more in flames yeah if uh if anakin was yeah because everything could be brute force yeah yeah wouldn't be all can i be very cool to think about
yeah yeah definitely how do you think um if if george's original trilogy happened how do you think you know he was speaking a lot about um having a like like the fatherhood kind of father figure theme throughout all the uh the movies how do you think that would continue on to to like his original trilogy i think that's another key element as to like what he would have done right like you know what he said earlier about how it would have been
about leia and their kids and stuff you know very similar to eu yeah very similar to the eu where where it was it was about that you know and and you know that started with the thrawn trilogy you know it was about george to develop a story there and even though it wasn't george's story like it was kind of ideas peppered in there by him yeah i think leia's pregnant in that one i don't think she has a kid are they aren't they born at the end of that trilogy maybe they are something like
she gives birth to uh jason and jana yeah solo and then um in a later book series anakin was born anakin solo because you had that they have three kids right and then anakin dies at some point and then jason turns to george and he's like i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know the dark side and becomes darth cadis yeah and then and then jana luke and mary jade have been right yeah luke and mary jade have been ben skywalker mary jade's from the thrawn trilogy
so that might have been george's idea as well yeah yeah right i don't know enough about that necessarily to speak on that behalf but yeah i mean like it's it's a it's a wonder is like whether or not some of these ideas like were his right like when it comes to that kind of thing he thought up like a lot of like when you were speaking of the the triplets right like i think it um it's interesting to see the kind of father figures that were in the eu because even
when you mentioned jane i'm like oh yeah it's very interesting because uh boba fett actually is a big part of her story and he ends up training her jana solo yeah right yeah uh and eventually trains her to fight cadis right so she she ends up killing cadis um but like it's very interesting to be like oh like boba fett ends up actually i don't really know this but maybe it even sounds like he's a bit of her mentor like father figure after you know i'm not sure what han solo's out
doing but he something that scallywag it was up to jj he'd be racing right if it were up to jj he'd be dead oh wait uh yeah there's uh there's not much more of this um i don't think it's worth reading the rest of it because there's nothing that relates to kind of his his movies necessarily his next his next couple any interesting pictures over there i can't see not really it's well yes yes and no i mean it's all episode three uh pictures but yeah it's quite
uh it's quite a cool quite a cool book but that's that's it that's like the tidbits that he kind of unveiled in the star wars archives episodes one through three uh you know i recommend a lot of people go and watch that that charlie rose interview to kind of get a bigger picture on like this whole thing um and that's definitely more like recent to when he sold the company because this was like yeah it was like almost two years later
maybe yeah year and a half two years later yeah yeah because i i recall it was after it was before force awakens came out before yeah yeah it was before okay because is there around this around a similar time because i i recall watching the interview and being curious of what george had originally written compared to what jj did yeah so how does knowing this information affect what we your view on what we have now does it change it at all is this like is this helpful or like
i you know i you know i'm still unsure what to think about it uh i i think i think all i can think about is i would have liked to have done something like that but i don't think i would have liked to have seen his movies right like that is that's the takeaway is just like oh i mean artistically i think compared to what we got there's good i think it's kind of what we talked about the whole podcast was good and there's bad i don't know again same as you
bryce i don't know how i feel about darth maul being the big bad it feels like a backup villain yeah he's he's the he's the uh enforcer yeah villain right i i've never thought of darth maul as a as a mastermind type villain like like palpatine he's more of a an enforcer like i wouldn't i'm not opposed to maul being back but there needs to be a bigger head honcho it just because if you're doing a trilogy to trilogy unless you can do
something completely different you can't just have another bad guy that's not bigger than the previous guy that feels weird to me i think what they've done with maul in like the current series um is it's like it's working i don't think it's the best idea but they've made it work like i don't think the current mall that we have i think it's a i think they've done pretty well yeah um and i do like it i do like um the merging of this like crime syndicate because i love having the huts be
more of a be more of the the issue and stuff i think that is a great idea and having like this conglomeration of crime families is a great idea are the huts not in the syndicate no no i don't think so no yeah because that was that was kind of like the thing in the clone wars like when maul tries to recruit them all uh he burns a lot of the huts yeah on the hot on now hudda because like they don't join him i thought they did and then they end up being coursed into it for a brief
moment and then they leave again okay but the rest of them all stay in it yeah i forget it's always confusing to me because it seemed like if in clone wars it fell apart and then all of a sudden it was there again in like solo uh yeah so so basically what happens is is he builds his shadow collective right in clone wars that all kind of crumbles when he takes over mandalore the first time and palpatine shows up kills
his brother savage the press takes him prisoner right then you read the son of dathomir comic book and he's in captivity yeah and he gets liberated by some of his uh loyalists some of his mandalorian super commandos one of them being uh i believe garth saxon and uh then he gets out right a bunch of stuff happens in that comic book and these are four adapted episodes into this comic book by the way and then he eventually kind of
he crawls back to his mother right mother talzin which we find out is his actual mother and uh she ends up dying gives her life for his grievous kills her and he gets away barely right and then when we pick things up in uh season seven he has now come back he's sort of from the ground up again brought together some of those old allies and they have caught mandalore in a very awkward place because he's killed satine at this point they're in shambles
you know like still and uh there's no republic protection still right so um so yeah so he he kind of reclaims mandalore and that's when bo katan comes after ahsoka for help yeah right uh and so on and so forth so again it's seven and that's when we get season seven that's when we get the siege of mandalore yeah and then and then order 66 happens you know maul gets beat by soka you know he gets away from the whole
order 66 thing you know and once again he's got nothing and he starts from scratch again but then he rebuilds the same thing rebuilds the same thing again yeah and and this is something that sam witwer has said in the interview he's like trying to push a boulder up a hill right he's like he keeps on rolling back down again knocking him over and so like the next time you see him again it's like his third attempt he's like trying to build his crime
syndicate with crimson dawn and you know this starts very early on with the solo story five years after episode three and uh then you know when you see him again in rebels all of that is supposedly gone yeah supposedly and we don't know how long because now he's he's been trapped on um what's the name of the planet yeah malachor malachor malachor five yeah because so like there's another story there's a missing piece
here because like none of us have read the the crimson dawn comic book and uh the hidden empire comic book it was like the stories that kind of followed i read it did you read it yeah oh maybe you can fill us in i don't remember oh there we go never mind all i know is it's all about kira right and she um i believe she finally decides to like act against the empire uh using like all the assets she she has oh so so she takes crimson dawn and kind of becomes part of the empire and
the rebellion pretty much she like at the end of the hidden empire series from what i can remember she um she actually does this huge strike on on the empire and she loses everything in the process but stops some sort of big imperial plot from okay happening um i forget i kind of forget why she has to do that because it's kind of like a um there there's there's some bigger plot going on that i'm not i'm not sure about that i'm not sure about that i'm not sure about that i'm not sure about that
not quite remembering but there there's a book coming out soon which sort of flows into all this because there's still kind of a missing piece between solo and um and rebels and then following rebels these comics which have kira and that sort of the uh you know the downfall of crimson dawn right or sort of what she rules over after darth maul's dead right and uh it's called crimson rain you know that's the name of the book and it's called crimson rain and it's called crimson rain
it's a book being published by ek johnson i believe a canadian author if i'm not mistaken and uh yeah it's supposed to be you know it's gonna be good i think i think it just came out recently so i think that might be the next book review that we do at some point uh but yeah it's it's uh it's gonna be i think filling in some of the gaps but yeah the new question being like you know where where the story's gone with maul right now like are we all happy with
where they took that character it felt like a fitting end him meaning obi-wan i will say that i'd agree there i do feel like they really they forced it a little because obviously they wanted him back fans wanted him back and i feel like they molded him into a plot they wanted but a plot that didn't necessarily fit for him and maybe and now that we know like from this like a plot that may have changed right like you know when when he came back
it was george's idea like maybe there was a different plan in place you know now all this stuff has to happen he's popping up in comic books popping up in rebels and you know i mean solo part for the course if fans love a character enough you know they'll accept anything that happened with boba fett and how prevalent he is and you know boba fett became jango fett you know look how important he is to the right yeah funny to bring that up though because boba fett also becomes a crime lord
all these failures of life you know become a crime again it's the same problem that that is the same issue i have with all being a crime lord is that they're not the kind of people that would seek that out is it yeah it feels like a changed character it seems like both of those people would be like above that they'd be like why would i lower myself to interact with this scum
yeah right yeah i buy it with maul a bit more than boba yeah but yeah i do but but not i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i see i see what you're saying though and i i do agree yeah because maul it's more about i'm using i'm using these people i'm not seeing them as an equal they're like yeah yeah he's trying to use that to attain eventually he wants to overthrow palpatine right that's really his goal i think it
goes to show his level of desperation though like he's desperate for sort of any sort of ground to try and crawl upwards right because he's got nothing they should have made him into like team rocket and at the end of every episode he gets like punted into space that's the true push i'll get you kenobi next time every episode he's trying to kidnap ezra so we can clone him evil clone ezra oh man and then and then oh this was the original plan because
then he has like darth talon that's the jesse right james yeah and then they just he just needs a little meow see that was that was yeah yeah exactly so so but like in clone wars he still had the crime syndicate kind of plan going on but at least it didn't happen like a third time with crimson dawn right at least he was like okay get some sense you know like let's lie low for a while you know raise an apprentice kind of like what my
master did wait till things blow over with his plan and then i'm gonna come and swing it we did that with savage yeah but that failed miserably because like palpatine came in he found out about right you like he put all his cards on the table way too soon like he took over a planet during his master's grand plan causing a bit of a problem for him so he's like oh you know what i'm gonna deal with this myself so he shows up personally kills
the guy and then takes his brother prisoner right it's like what you know like that didn't work out too well so um you know i think maybe after that he got some sense you know thankfully he survived but like you know maybe he would have had some sense and be like okay this time this time i'm gonna i'm gonna lie low and that being said though i mean clone wars season seven slash would have been eight at the time still written you know maybe we still would have had something
there with ahsoka and maul who knows what surrounding events would have happened around that but uh you know i think that was still bound to happen so he tries his luck again you know with the with the crime syndicate because he still got allies you know still it's still kind of a foundation there and until it all kind of goes to crap uh that was that was the plan and you know it's like okay now it's now what's he gonna do what's george gonna do with that
character now so like maybe that's why he was thinking like oh well i brought him back i'm gonna make him sort of what i intended his sort of character to be in the beginning which was like a sith lord in the shadows you know a phantom menace you know let's actually make him the phantom menace again but this time the focus is going to be on his apprentice because it's the next generation he's an old man now so like let's not make him the ray park flippy dippy
character that we first one becomes more wise right yeah with time and i think maul has that yeah he has that potential to to also be like that right yeah yeah i like his portrayal in rebels for that you know for that reason you know sam what we're did a good job making him like an old older man yeah yeah yeah recruit ezra yeah whenever you think of maul you think of the young ray park don't backflip to stuff but it's like they're different hey they're very different evolution
right and it's like it's a wonder to think like what this character would have been like given another you know 15 years wherever that time frame supposed to be for george's movies right like what would he been like then where has he been was this character gone through that's brought him to this point of now feeling ready that he can take over the galaxy you know like his master did like what's his plan all about so i think i think it does make me interested
you know a lot like the more i think about it the more i'm like you know what i like george's ideas i would need a lot of character growth i just think where we left off them all and becoming palpatine it just there's still too much of a gap but yeah yeah fair enough um cool well let's wrap this up uh good i feel like um we all have to come up with their own uh let's write our own script let's uh write our own sequels
of the of the original trilogy well apparently yeah well we have an episode planned uh for uh for a few weeks away which is all about alan dean foster's episode nine i think this is your idea in the podcast ideas channel in our discord server this script it was a really bad kind of like outline for episode nine and alan dean foster's written some star wars novels in his day and uh he wrote splinter of the minds
eye right like that that first star wars eu book ever the really weird one right yeah yeah so that was him so he wrote it he wrote just like a yeah try my try my luck episode nine you'll see how it goes right so if i remember this takes place after ryan johnson's episode eight this is just an alternate nine yeah it's just an alternate nine yeah okay yeah this is this happened after jay jay's version came out and he he had this like he wrote this i was like this is what i would have
done and it was really bad so we're gonna we're gonna read it and then talk about it sounds fun i think it i think it just goes to show that writing star wars is a lot harder than it seems it is it is it is very it means a lot of things to a lot of people it's hard to make everyone happy who knows maybe there's some things that we would have liked in there right like maybe there's some things in there that we're like oh that's actually a really
great idea but because we'll find out yeah stay tuned yeah stay tuned let's do it all right bryce blake good to have you back on as usual always a pleasure yeah it's a good time and we will see you in the next one we'll see you out there keep flying all right thank you so much to all of you guys who've tuned in thus far and if you want to reach us here at star wars escape pod you have all the ways to contact us in the description below our email is swescapepodcast@gmail.com
you can find us at star wars escape pod and we'll see you in the next one you can find us on twitter and instagram and youtube with the handle @swecapepodcast there's a link to our discord in there as well if you join that up that's where the chat is happening exactly i'm lying it's very quiet in there that's why we need you to join and uh talk about some star wars stuff so um if you have not checked out the latest episode of the podcast
prior to this one of course definitely do that our friend kyle from alky solutions came on chatted about his company chatted about lightsabers if you're into lightsabers which i'm sure you are it's for you we'll see you in the next episode star wars escape on main force be with you