THE PREQUELS (NEWS & RUMORS)

WHAT'S IT ABOUT?

11/24/97 - Another new informant was able to definitely, 100% confirm that there is a water battle in the new films! Cool! That's about it for now. Stay tuned.

9/17/97 - Apparently, from people who have read the script, the prequels have an excellent storyline! There are also going to be scene stealing, mind blowing effects! What's the catch, you say? Well, word on the street is that the dialogue is medicore, i.e. on par with the last three films. Take that as you will.

We have also been told that the scripts are being closely guarded! Only a few people have full scripts, and they are watched carefully! Most of the people on the set only get one or two pages of their scenes and have absolutely no idea what is happening with the rest of the storyline or how it fits into the big picture. Sounds like a great idea to me! I want to be surprised, too!

9/3/97 - From the Prequel Watch Chat with True Fan:

Q: I doubt Lucas will make the films serious. All his major films are funny ones: Star Wars tril, Indy tril, Willow.

Garindan: Ep1 and 2 are not completely serious and are said to be a like ANH and ESB, respectively, but Ep3 pretty much will be a "dark" film.

Shistaven: There is a big gap between humor and cheezy humor( Jedi)....let us hope there is no burping in the Prequels...

TrueFan: Actually.....these films are going to be alot more dramatic than people think. On an E! special...Lucas said that all three films are very dark and disturbing

7/31/97 - Concord Dawn! Concord Dawn! Everyone wants to know about Concord Dawn! Is it in the prequels? Is it the site of a major battle? Those are the questions on everyones mind. While we can't tell you one way or the other about it, we can give you some history on it. If you'll look on the Main Prequel Page, we told you to go back to old drafts of Star Wars to see what was in the prequels. Did you? No? For shame! I'm telling you the prequels are there laid out for you! Also, an early mention of the mysterious planet is there....maybe. Check out what Jay Majer dug up. It is a mention of a planet called 'Condawn', possibly related to Concord Dawn?:

The "Condawn" mention is indeed in the third draft of Star Wars. Here's the excerpt (this is the early version of the scene in Ben's hut; very interesting):

BEN
When a creature dies, the force it generated remains. The Force is all around us. It can be collected and transmitted through the use of a Kiber crystal. It's the only way to amplify the power of the Force within you.

LUKE
Don't you have a Kiber crystal?

BEN
I had one, but it was taken at the battle of Condawn...

LUKE
That's where my father was killed.

BEN
Yes. It was a black day. One of my disciple's took the crystal and became a Sith Lord. It was a black day. The few crystals that remain are in the possession of the Sith Lords on Alderaan. That's how they've become so powerful.

LUKE
Do the Sith know the ways of the Force?

BEN
They use the Bogan Force.

LUKE
Like Bogan weather, or bogan times. I thought that was just a saying.

BEN
There are two halves of the Force of Others. One is positive and will help you if you learn how to use it. But the others half will kill you if you aren't careful. This negative side of the Force is called the Bogan, which is where the expression came from, and it is the part that is used by the Dark Lords to destroy their opponents. Both halves are always present. The Force is on your right, the Bogan is on your left. The Kiber Crystal can amplify either one. The Crystal Darth stole was the last one in the possession of the Jedi. When he joined the Sith, the power of the Dark Lords was completed.

Interesting, eh? The next mention of 'Concord Dawn' came in the book Tales of the Bounty Hunters. It was in a Boba Fett story by Daniel Keys Moran. In it, Concord Dawn is the name of the planet where Journeyman Protector Jaster Mereel was exiled from for murder. Who's Jaster Mereel? You might know him better as Boba Fett.

Concord Dawn again appeared in the Young Jedi Knights novel Diversity Alliance (pg 127 & 128). It was mentioned as a planet where cheating was a capital offense. The guy who was caught cheating there was promptly eaten by a wolfman, but I digress. I asked KJA where he came up with that name, if he had found it in the Lucasfilm archives, and if it would be in the prequels. Here's his reply:

"Concord Dawn was first created in the Boba Fett novella in BOUNTY HUNTERS, and I just used it (I needed a planet, so why not take one that already existed on one of the stories I edited?). I very seriously doubt Lucas has any intention of using it in a film"

Well, that's about all we know about Concord Dawn up to this point. Well fill you in as we get more details.

6/22/97 - A lot of you have heard that the prequels will involve something about a 'good mother, bad mother' relationship, right? But how many of you know where that came from? Well, we asked jom, a loyal reader, the exact same question. Where in the world did that come from?! After hours of snooping, pleading on the newsgroups, and searching the library, jom had success. He found the article! It came from an interview with George Lucas in the June 1983 issue of American Film. jom sent us the bit that was of intrest from the article:

"Star Wars," he goes on, "came out of my desire to make a modern fairy tale. In college I became fascinated by how culture is transmitted through fairy tales and myths. Fairy tales are how people learn about good and evil, about how to conduct themselves in society. Darth Vader is the bad father; Ben Kenobi is the good father. The good and bad mothers are still to come. I was influenced by the dragonslayer genre of fairy tale-the damsel in distress, the evil brothers, the young knight who through his virtue slays the dragon."

There will be another trilogy, of course, which takes place before the current one. It deals with the young Darth Vader and the young Ben Kenobi. The good and bad mothers will play their part, as will the robots-R2D2 and C-3PO-the only "actors" who will bridge the trilogies. At the end of the first trilogy, Luke Skywalker will be four years old......"

Well, that was the article. jom followed up the quotes with some comments of his own: "You will notice that the first paragraph is mostly quoted to GL whereas the second is just the writer of the article. GL IS quoted as mentioning the "good and bad mothers come next". An interesting note here is that they mention Luke will be four years old at the end of the first trilogy. You'll notice though that it was the writer of the article who inferred this, not GL's direct quote. I personally don't think Luke will be any more than a newborn by the end of the trilogy."

Our thoughts? Well, it seems possible that George Lucas told the author that Luke was 4 at the end of the prequels. Maybe the author did not quote him directly. It would also make some sense that Luke would be around 4 in the prequels. Remember on Dagobah in ESB, he said, "There's something familiar about this place. Like something from a dream." My earliest memories are from around the time I was 4. Maybe we'll see Luke with Yoda as a four year old? And also remember, Leia remembered her real mother in ROTJ. So she'd have to be old enough recall all that, too. Therefore, we know that Mrs. Skywalker was alive and well when Leia was a young child. Do you think the prequels will end without telling us what happened to Mrs. Skywalker? I don't think so. So it seems likely that we'll see Luke and Leia as young children in the films, but that's just my opinion. What do you guys think?

5/29/97 - We just talked to our source today. They said that in the first film, young Anakin Skywalker will do amazing things well beyond his age that blow everyone away. They did not elaborate. But for those of you who went to Sunday school, they likened it to young Jesus in the temple courts. "Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers. When his parents saw him, they were astonished..." Luke 2:47-48.

5/27/97 - Bas-Jan Walwijk found an article in the Dutch Magazine SUM (Specifiek Universitair Magazine), vol. 7, no. 3. that had an interview with Rick McCallum. Bas-Jan noted that it said the following:

* The prequels themselves: "The story begins around *45 years* before episodes 4, 5 and 6. [..] In this movie ["The Beginning"] we see Anakin Skywalker grow up from a small boy to a Jedi Master. When he becomes a great hero during the Clone Wars, pride, delusions of grandeur and selfishness come to posess him and he decides to turn towards the Dark Side and become Darth Vader. The movies will be darker and more complex in nature than the current trilogy. We will meet Luke's mother, and many familiar faces will return, such as Obi-Wan, Yoda, Jabba, R2D2, C-3PO. The third episode ends with Luke's birth."

* There are currently no plans for episodes 7, 8, and 9, but according to McCallum: if George and he are still standing after the prequels, and if the public enjoyed them, who knows... He also said that he knew what the sequels would *approximately* be about, but if he'd tell, it would be on television in eight weeks' time, "like a kind of Battlestar Galactica or something. People rip you off, it's as simple as that. It's not to be secretive, it's just that we live in a world in which you can't afford to be too open."

5/8/97

This was pointed out to us by Allan on RASSM. It comes from Film Threat Weekly.

STAR WARS PREQUEL BASED ON JAPANESE FILM

Star Wars prequel rumors are running rampant on the net as the May 1999 opening date for the film approaches. The working title for episode one is confirmed to be "Balance of the Force." Expect the title to change just before the opening. Lucas changed the title of "Return of the Jedi" from "Revenge" to foil bootleg merchandisers. But for now, "Balance" will do. Liam Neeson is reportedly cast as leader of the Jedi knights, Bail Organa, who will turn out to be Princess Leia's adoptive father. Also, the story seems to be a pretty simple one. The first "Star Wars: A New Hope" was loosely based on the Japanese film "The Hidden Fortress". Episode one appears to be based on "The Seven Samurai." Better rent that one and check it out.

What do we think of this? Well, the Seven Samauri thing makes a little sense knowing about Lucas' love for the Japanese films. However, the 'Bail Organa' as a Jedi Knight thing does not make sense. We know Bail Organa was alive at the time of A NEW HOPE, but Tarkin said Vader was the last of their 'religion'. Wouldn't he be dead if he was a leader of the Knights?

- "First three tells story of Anakin Skywalker. He's eight years old in first, twenty in second and around twenty-five in third. First two movies have happy endings (although second has 'a hint of gloom and doom'), third is supposed to be quite tragic." (Quote from Bruce Handy - TIME Magazine)

Also, here's a quote from the March 1997 issue of Disney Adventures. It's an interview with George Lucas (Sent by Gil Varod): Q: What can you tell us about Episodes 1, 2, and 3? A: The films will be about the young Obi-Wan- kenobi and the young Anakin Skywalker (Luke's father). The stories take place 40 years before the first Star Wars film. We've been working for about a year designing new environments, creatures, vehicles, droids, and special effects technology at ILM.

A Quote from George Lucas, "The new one's are more...I keep saying soap opera-ish because they're more the drama about who did what to whom and why, and where it strated from. So it's slightly different from the other ones, which were kind of the cut-to-the-chase part. I think it'll be interesting to people who are interested in the genre, the milieu, the stories behind all the stories." (Cinescape March/April 1997)

For more info on the prequels, see the Star Wars novelization, specifically the Journal of the Whills intro. Here's a quote from Lucas' foreward, "..the outline for the new trilogy of prequels is actually contained in the first two pages of this book, the prologue."

The Emperor may not go by the name Palpatine in the first few films of the prequel. It may not be revealed which character is the Emperor till later in the films.

Ben Kenobi may be more adventurous and Han Solo like in the prequels

Boba Fett will be unmasked in the New Trilogy.

We will see R2-D2 and C3PO being constructed in the new trilogy.

The look of the ships in the New Trilogy is said to be more 'curvy' like that of the old Sci Fii serials of the 50's.

A character will be frozen in carbonite in the first trilogy and will reappear in the third. Uh, huh. Maybe it will be Michael Jackson in his hyperbaric chamber?

Also see the 'Blast from the Past Rolling Stone Article below. It talks about how Anakin became Vader.

Blast from the Past - How Anakin became Vader

The following is an article posted by Ed Snow (edsnow@aracnet.com) from Rolling Stone. George Lucas himself describes how Anakin became Vader. Maybe this will give us some insight into the prequels!:

From the _Rolling Stone_ interview with George Lucas, August 25, 1977, p.46:

George Lucas: [describing why Darth Vader breathes so heavily] ... It was a whole part of the plot that essentially got cut out. It may be in one of the sequels.

Paul Scanlon: What's the story?

George Lucas: It's about Ben and Luke's father and Vader when they are young Jedi knights. But Vader kills Luke's father, then Ben and Vader have a confrontation, just like they have in _Star Wars_, and Ben almost kills Vader. As a matter of fact, he falls into a volcanic pit and gets fried and is one destroyed being. That's why he has to wear the suit with a mask, because it's a breathing mask. It's like a walking iron lung. His face is all horrible inside. I was going to shoot a close-up of Vader where you could see the inside of his face, but then we said, no, no, it would destroy the mystique of the whole thing.

Check out this article by a writer on Dana Cain's Star Wars Home Page. These are his theories about the new trilogy based on what has been told to us through the books and films. CLICK HERE!