Chen G.

Not what my research would suggest: Throughout the entire series, the DNA of Burroughs, Smith, Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe, and to a lesser extent Richie, Herbert, Tolkien, Ford, Coppola and Bettelheim are appearant. That's not an accusation of plagiarism, mind you, nor - and this is where Nick's comment is very well taken - meant to shape the way people see the films. A film, much less a series, is not merely the sum of its influences. It should be understood from the experience of watching it, first and foremost. But, by the same token, taking Lucas at his own word as to the high-mindedness of his endeavour and his influences, is likewise a trap, and one that, if used as the key to engaging with his films, would only make us miss the forest for the trees. Indeed, I think if someone had the misfortune of first hearing Lucas speak, and take his attempt to present himself as Joseph Campbell's high-priest at face value, and proceed to go into his film expecting some deep, scholarly meditation of the mythological phenomena and its psychological and cultural significance, they'd be disappointed. In fact, HAD Lucas truly ever made a film like THAT, I think it would have in all likelihood been an extraordinarily unsuccesful and impenetrable work, and certainly one that wouldn't be as popular as Star Wars or Indiana Jones of whatever. A good example is the irony that, The Ewok Adventure notwithstanding, Star Wars is by FAR the most fairytale-like Star Wars film, even though Lucas discovered Bettelheim's writings on fairytales when most of the elements for the film were already in place; and when Lucas tried to very self-consciously channel Bettelheim in Return of the Jedi, it was mostly to the film's detriment. Indeed, the success of Star Wars compared to much of the prequel trilogy was that it was an unpresumptous adventure serial - what I call a "B-movie" - and NOT a sprawling, oft-gloomy, Machiavelian piece. Sure, you can make parallels to the Pieta, or to Greek mythology or whatever, but there's a difference between making a poetic parallel, and saying its something Lucas had in mind and modelled his scenes around. Frankly, when I see Shmi expire in Anakin's arms - and by and large this is a scene I think is done quite well otherwise - I don't see Michaelangelo, I see a cartoon: "I lov..." *head drops*

Seems like an appropriate place to put this:

I just find the attempt to relate Star Wars to more high-brow/erudite sources to always be a little...suspect, lets say. Obviously, there's some of that in there, but by and large, it plays like a B-movie, with the slight exception of The Empire Strikes Back and to a lesser extent Revenge of the Sith. And, unsurprisingly, when one really goes into what inspired George Lucas, it comes out overwhelmingly to be B-grade movies and picaresques, and mostly in its own genre of space opera/planetary romance/space fantasy. I don't think that's demeaning: if anything, I think the attempt to make Star Wars seem very high-minded and literate is doing it a disservice.

In this case, I don't think Lucas ever made the connection to the Pieta to begin with. Its the same train of thought (no offense, Herr Schilkeman) as the Kubrickians who look at the background of the conference room in 2001 and decide it has the same aspect ratio as some famous painting and that there's some sort of concealed statement in there...

Right. Surprise surprise, I don't buy it.

They might. The fact Eowyn is narrating it might allow them to get away with it, I suspect…

Sure. But if you look at enough illustrations of Dejah Thoris, you can see where the Slave Leia outfit came from. Actually, the entire Jabba "short."

Right. They beefed up that role some. But we know Haleth and Hama ARE in this, so she's not taking their place. I personally was always intrigued by Helm's daughter: its her wedding that Helm botches, so...

I mean, Philippa lives literally across the lawn from Jackson and Walsh. She did say she uses them as a springboard for ideas: the name for Helms' daughter, Héra, was appearantly Walsh's idea. She also says they were "hugely supportive" of the project, and certainly Jackson reacted extremly enthusiastically over his Facebook account. Of course, a lot of "his" people are working on it: I hear Weta has scoured their archive for the models and any artwork - used or not - of Edoras and the other settings. Demosthenes from TORn had what I think is a very intriguing and illuminating talk with Philippa a while back. I'm especially taken by these passages: You know, we hadn't REALLY had a major human antagonist in these stories before. So I'm very curious and very taken with the idea of Wulf as potentially a sympathetic, Hagen-like figure. Also, even though I typically believe a film series should have the same conflict driving it all throughout, it is encouraging - at least in terms of focusing a 120-minute film - that, both according to this interview AND interviews from later at Annecy, Philippa insists they didn't try to sandwich Sauron into the story of the film.

Hmm... I was going to say its probably nothing, but then again Attack of the Clone is as John Carter-like as any entry in the series: Geonosis is even more Barsoom-like than was Tatooine, and there are Burroughsian flourishes in Kamino, as well. Still, I'm having a hard time buying that, in filming a scene in 2000, George Lucas had in mind a paperback illustration he used in 1973. Yes, Barsoom and the Lensmen continue to influence the series, because they're at the very core of the series: Star Wars is essentially "Lensmen on Barsoom." But in terms of specifics? Lucas tended to be influenced by things that were a little closer at hand.

I mean, its sooo different in premise, scope, medium...I'm having a hard time believing any similarity to the show will crop-up. The show went for the Full Middle-Earth ExperienceTM, so you HAD to watch (checks list) Orcs, Dwarves, Elves, Hobbits, Wizards, Men, and the odd Monster. Rohirrim does have cursory appearances from Orcs and a Mumak and - I'm willing to bet good money - Saruman. But its not cutting across five storylines all across Middle Earth, and doesn't have any of the metaphysical nonesense of that show: its a story of Rohan, being invaded by Dunlendings, and them being expunged with great loses. It also doesn't have that visual identity crisis of "Well, we want to do a prequel to the Peter Jackson film, but we legally can't, so we'll make it kind-of a prequel and kind of not." If the choice is between the real deal, and the look-alike...

Meanwhile, I found out what one of the pictures Lucas submitted with his story treatment in 1973 was. Rinzler says it included: "A skull-faced, muscular man holding a dead woman, pietà-like." Well, as it turns out - and certainly true to form, especially with regards to the early drafts - that's the cover of the 1970 edition of John Carter of Mars: There was also what sounds like a McQuarrie painting (for a then-concurrent, soon-aborted project with Lucas' friends), and other stuff I can't be sure of. The rough draft was also appended some comic-art, again not identifiable.

The character of Mace is pretty terrible, too.

I think the second Ewok film, much more so than Temple of Doom (which was first conceptualised when Lucas' marriage was only starting to unravel), is influenced by Lucas' personal crises. Its amazingly macabre for a TV film for little kids. Bizarre.

Its funny, but that series reminds me more than anything else - in premise and sluggish pacing - of Attack of the Clones.

They're pretty much a dry-run for Willow. We have short people on a quest, all while protecting a young girl, fairies, a village seer that provides them with magic artefacts before they set out, and then in the second entry we have a lady-witch, shapeshifting galore, and finally an attack on a castle frightfully similar to the one in Willow. Its funny to hear Lucas bandy-on about his interest in myth and fairytale, where the most fairytale-like of all his Star Wars films is the first Ewok movie, and even that movie is less Bruno Bettelheim and more JRR Tolkien: a group of Ewoks (Dwarves) and a boy (Bilbo) set out to defeat the evil Gorax (Smaug) who lives under a solitary peak. There's a "mystic" Ewok, and even wolves and a giant spider! In the second Ewok film, Wilford Brimely plays a Gandalf clone even more blatant than Alec Guinness', replete with a pointy hat and staff!

Ultimately, even with the extensive behind the scenes look we have, there's only so much we can peer into Lucas' psyche in terms of why he made any number of very perplexing calls that he did for Return of the Jedi. I think stuff like the reprised Death Star, or the half-arsed way the "Other" thread (or Boba Fett, for that matter) are wrapped-up, do tend to point towards a kind of...lets say, a creative low-ebb. I will however say, for somebody supposedly "tired" of Star Wars...well, lets just say nobody forced Lucas to almost immediately proceed with not just one but two (!) Ewok TV-films!

Whatever the case, in no version of Return of the Jedi committed to paper, did Lucas have the ground battle ON Coruscant: the Rebels and Ewoks would fight Imperial forces on a forest moon circumnavigating the capital. Like I said, even Luke's confrontation with Vader and the Emperor was to take place in the Emperor's underground throne room. So, we were only going to see a few glimpses of the cityscapes, at best. But I think @Nick1Ø66's point is well-taken that, strictly speaking, Coruscant was achievable in some form or another: Lucas just didn't have the energy (moreso than necessarily the budget) to go into it.

A little bit. Apocalypse Now was out by this point, and I think Lucas definitely took notice of what his big bro Coppola was doing. I even see it in the Emperor confrontation: Luke must not slay the Emperor, or he becomes like the Emperor, which is exactly the tension mechanism the Kurtz scenes ride on. But, I think the unambitious scale of it owes more to the technological limitations of the time: Lucas tried to have a city planet in Star Wars and failed. Tried to have it in The Empire Strikes Back (its easy to forget Cloud City is a kind of mini-Coruscant) and failed - the cityscape shots are all Special Edition embellishments, and so he was cognizant of the limitations going into Return of the Jedi, and was never going to REALLY have Coruscant in it beyond glimpses. Ultimately, the Ewok "episode" (like the Gungan one years later) owes more to Edgar Rice Burroughs than to Vietnam. John Carter proves himself to the Tharks (Wookies/Ewoks/Gungans), befrieds Tars Tarkas (Wicket/Jar-Jar), reconciles them with the Heliumities (the Naboo) and leads them on an offensive against the technologically superior Zodanga (Empire/Trade Federation)... To stress the Vietnam parallel too much would be to give in to Lucas' "high-brow" narrative too easily, especially seeing as there's an EXTREMLY Burroughsian episode early on, in the guise of the Jabba "short." You can thank Bruno Bettelheim, fraud "psychiatrist" for that. Lucas really got into his book before Return of the Jedi, and more than anything tangiable in the scenario, the sugary tone of it all is mostly the influence of Bettelheim's writings on fairytales.

Right. That was in a lot of the early drafts, of course, but alongside the Death Star, not in its place. At one point, Lucas even added a second Death Star, which is pretty dumb in itself. Another idea was the Rebels would turn the Death Star ON Coruscant and blow it up, which I think would have been too macabre. Also, clearly Lucas was cognizant of how difficult Coruscant's landscape would be to render onscreen in 1981, because no sooner do Vader and Luke land there, do they go underground into the Emperor's throne room. The Rebel action was to take place on a moon orbiting the planet. But your comment does throw light on a much more troubling concern: inasmuch as I do think that Return of the Jedi DOES wrap everything up, at the same time, as the grand finale, it IS a little jaded that the Empire was defeated...in this little skirmish in some literal neck of the woods...

Don't forget the "Death Star Tech" on the Star destroyers in The Rise of Skywalker, or even (though that one is stretching the argument a little) on that battering ram in The Last Jedi. I don't particularly mind the setup of the Death Star in the prequel trilogy, though. That never felt too much in one's face. I do, however, mind it in Rogue One.

And its not just the Death Star: the opening shot is composed almost exactly the same as the original. Jabba's palace kind of conjures a similar atmosphere to the Cantina. Lucas' treatment literally says that Luke uses the Mind Trick on Jabba's aide "like Ben did in SW I." The Sail Barge attack is all bits of scoring from the original, repeated verbatim, and again at the end, etc... Its very hard for me to explain why, in Lucas' mind, remaking so much of the original in the third outing would appeal to him this way. I think the best explanation is yours: he was just a little ragged, a little bored, uninspired.

You do know, by the way, that that's how Lucas pretends the second Death Star came about? i.e. it was one long script with an attack on the Death Star at the very end. Then, when he divided it into thirds, the first third didn't really have a compelling ending by its lonesome, so he took the ending from Return of the Jedi, and put it in Star Wars, and so when he finally got around to Return of the Jedi, he had to repeat the ending... I'm constantly amazed by how dumb Lucas thinks his fans are.

I haven't even thought of that, but you're right. Also, the whole "Leia's my sister" bit would be EVEN MORE eyeroll-inducing in a single film. Also, in terms of the throughline of the story, most of the original film is pretty much redundant. If you plotted the classic trilogy on a three-act diagram, act one would end something like halfway through The Empire Strikes Back!

That would actually be a fun exercise, but I haven't the expertise, inclination or machinery required to do so.