Comment by chaostheory
1 month ago
Maybe if Campbell was still alive in the 1990s, he would have been able to help Lucas with his scripts for the prequels?
We now know Lucas wasn’t really a good storyteller. He was just really great with visuals, but was surrounded by great storytellers. His first wife Marcia and people like Irvin Kershner and Campbell were the ones who were able to convince Lucas that the story mattered more than the visuals. They were noticeable absent in the prequel production.
While I generally subscribe to the idea that the editors of A New Hope helped a lot with the final product, it's massively unfair to say that Lucas wasn't a good storyteller, Campbell didn't help directly with a New Hope and it was scripted by Lucas - ie it's his story.
Lucas got a lot of feedback from people over several years as he revised his initial concept. https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/The_Star_Wars_rough_draft The first version was not very Campbellian and did not have "Use the force." He also didn't come up with the "I am your father" story arc until after finishing the first movie.
When I took my son to see Dune, he said it was a major Star Wars rip-off.
Dune (the novel) was published in 1965.
1 reply →
Wait till you read "Voyage of the Space Beagle"!
https://www.amazon.com/Voyage-Space-Beagle-van-Vogt/dp/07653...
A New Hope was innovative visually, but it was also the weakest story wise in the initial trilogy. Lucas’s strength is primarily with visuals.