Welcome to a look inside The Holocron. A collection of articles from the archives of *starwars.com no longer directly available.

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The Star Wars Trilogy

George Lucas discusses the genesis of Star Wars

“When I created the original Star Wars I was very interested in creating a modern myth to take the place that had been occupied by the Western. The Western was sort of the modern American mythology that helped the mores and the values and the way things worked in our society, which mythologies had done through time. I started working on this and realized that it had to be somewhere outside people’s known realm of awareness. That is where the Westerns were.

Greek mythology, or mythology from any country, often takes place in an unknown area but one that is believable to the audience. The only area we have now that is like that is outer space. So I decided outer space was a good idea. Actually I’d been contemplating this for a long time. I also was a big fan of Saturday morning serials, and I’d been playing around with the idea of doing a Saturday morning serial kind of film with an archeologist who was a treasure hunter. And so I was working in that area and put my interest in adventure serials together with my interest in trying to do something that was a modern myth.”

Why the Special Edition?

When George Lucas was making the first film of the Star Wars Trilogy, there were some scenes and sequences that did not turn out as well as he had hoped and one scene that he had to leave out completely. The scene involved Han Solo and Jabba the Hutt, which in the rush to get the film finished did not really seem necessary because it involved characters and incidents that did not appear until later episodes. So, due to time and budget constraints, George Lucas decided to leave the Solo/Jabba scene out. When he finished The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, he became interested in putting the scene back in Star Wars. The technology pioneered by Industrial Light and Magic made it possible to combine footage from 1976 with a digital character created in 1996.

To celebrate twenty years of Star Wars, George Lucas has finally released the film he originally intended. He has always said that Star Wars never achieved his full creative vision. After years of watching on a small screen, the trilogy can finally be seen again the way it was meant to be seen: in theaters, on a big screen, with fantastic sound.

George Lucas discusses the Star Wars Trilogy Special Edition

“The original inspiration for bringing the films back to the big screen was the twentieth anniversary of the original release of Star Wars. Occasionally, we have shown the trilogy as one movie for various fan conventions. So, I said why don’t we try to release all three films, as a trilogy, within a few weeks of each other, so that people can see them like the Saturday matinee serials they were originally meant to be. I thought that would be a very appropriate way of celebrating the twentieth anniversary.”

“At the same time, I had an ulterior motive that I had been thinking about for a long time — actually ever since the films were finished. There were various things, especially in the original film, that I wasn’t satisfied with — special effects shots that never were really finished, scenes that I’d wanted to include that couldn’t be included for some reason, mostly money and time. I really wanted to fix the films and have them be complete. A famous filmmaker said, ‘Films are never completed, they’re only abandoned.’ Rather than living with my abandoned movie, I really wanted to go back and complete it. Empire and Jedi didn’t gnaw at me quite the same way as the first one did, because the first one was done under extreme conditions. It was very low-budget, and it was very challenging to get it done in time, considering we had to invent a lot of new technologies and do all kinds of things that had never been done before. The envelope of perfection had to be stretched way beyond what it had been on the other films, and there were a lot more things that I was really anxious to have fixed.”

The Characters

Yoda
The Jedi Master Yoda was over 800 years old when he first met Luke Skywalker. For much of his life Yoda served as mentor and teacher to Jedi Knights. His origins were steeped in mystery. Yoda spent his last years hiding from the Emperor Palpatine on the swamp planet Dagobah.

Obi-Wan Kenobi
Ben (Obi-Wan) Kenobi was a hermit and recluse who lived on the planet of Tatooine when he met young Luke Skywalker. Ben Kenobi once went by the name Obi-Wan, and served the Old Republic as a Jedi Knight. Kenobi studied under the Jedi Master Yoda, learning the ways of the Force. Kenobi was a general in the Clone Wars fighting alongside Bail Organa of Alderaan and the young pilot Anakin Skywalker. Kenobi decided to train Anakin as a Jedi. After Anakin Skywalker’s fall to the dark side and his alliance with the evil Palpatine, Kenobi helped hide Anakin’s children to protect them from Palpatine and from Anakin who took on the name Darth Vader. Kenobi remained near young Luke Skywalker waiting for the right moment to reveal the young man’s destiny to him.

Princess Leia
Princess and Senator from the planet of Alderaan, Leia was a key leader of the Alliance to restore the Republic, the Rebel Alliance. While on a two-fold mission for the Alliance and her foster father, she became involved in the events that would lead her into the company of Luke Skywalker and Han Solo.

Luke Skywalker
Luke Skywalker was raised on a moisture farm by Owen and Beru Lars, whom he called uncle and aunt. They lived on the twin-sunned world of Tatooine. While Luke saw his future in the stars, Owen Lars kept him firmly at work on the farm and turned down his repeated requests to join the Academy. When Uncle Owen purchased a pair of droids from a group of Jawa merchants, Luke became wrapped up in the smaller droid’s quest. This led him to Obi-Wan Kenobi, a Jedi Master living as a hermit in the barren and treacherous Jundland Wastes. Together with Obi-Wan and the two droids, Luke embarked on the adventure that would lead him to become a Rebel hero and Jedi Knight.

Darth Vader | Anakin Skywalker
Darth Vader epitomized the Emperor’s New Order. Standing two meters tall and dressed in flowing black robes and black body armor, Vader was a tangibly evil symbol of the Emperor’s doctrine of rule through fear and terror. Vader was once Anakin Skywalker, expert pilot and disciple of Obi-Wan Kenobi. He had been a Jedi Knight waging the battle of the light side of the Force. Impatient with the slow learning method of Kenobi and the Jedi, Anakin turned toward Palpatine and was drawn by the power of the dark side. Kenobi tried to dissuade Anakin and draw him back. Corrupted and seduced by the dark side, Anakin would soon come to be known as the dreaded Darth Vader.

Han Solo
Many tags can be applied to the Corellian-born Han Solo: starship pilot, smuggler, pirate, and even Rebel hero. He became involved in the Galactic Civil War when he took on a simple transport job in a cantina in Tatooine’s Mos Eisley Spaceport. After jettisoning Jabba the Hutt’s cargo of spice to avoid an Imperial blockade, Han needed to raise enough credits to reimburse the crime lord. For seventeen thousand credits, he agreed to ferry Ben Kenobi, Luke Skywalker and two droids to Alderaan in his highly-modified stock light freighter, the Millennium Falcon.