Saturday, January 22, 2005

Star Wars Episode VII : Attack of the HUH-WHUH?!

Nefarious Neddie and Simian Farmer both link this purported Q&A session with George Lucas. It's interesting reading, but I just don't buy that this is Lucas at all. Some of the answers seem genuine, but others stand starkly at odds with other things that George Lucas has said, specifically with regard to possible Episodes Seven through Nine, which would be made sometime down the road (obviously) and whose stories would take place after the events of Episode VI: Return of the Jedi.

1. Call me crazy, but the site seems to imply that Lucas answers reader-submitted questions on an almost-daily basis. I find this very hard to believe. Can Lucas really have that much time on his hands right now?

2. Lucas seems to offer a surprising amount of details for the plots of any such episodes, which surprises me outright: Lucas has a long history of being very tight-lipped about plot stuff (although he's been a lot more forthcoming with Episode III), and since I know that Lucas is a very slow writer, I very much doubt that he has Episodes Seven through Nine ready to go in any appreciable form.

3. I doubt even more strongly that Lucas has Episodes Seven through Nine so developed that he knows the name of a major villain ("Spiden"), and that he would reveal the name of that villain so casually.

4. At one point, Lucas says that he plans to take a long break from Star Wars after Revenge of the Sith comes out. Fair enough, since he's on record as saying he wants to go back to exploring the kind of filmmaking he did when he started out as a recent filmschool grad. But then he says "The plot summaries should satisfy the fans for the time being." Again, releasing plot summaries for films that are not likely to exist for quite a few years, if ever, is not remotely in keeping with the way George Lucas has always done business.

And so on. Frankly, much of this site reads like a blend of fan speculation and easily verifiable things that Lucas has actually said in other interviews and venues. I just don't believe that these "interviews" are genuine.

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