When Disney acquired Lucasfilm for $4 billion, we were told the plan was to base the new Star Wars sequel trilogy on George Lucas' story outlines. While the filmmaker wouldn't be behind the camera, this suggested his vision for a nine-episode Skywalker Saga would be completed.
Instead, the decision was made to head down a completely different route and the result...well, it was hit-and-miss. Lucasfilm went in with no definitive plan, essentially making the story up as they went. By the time all was said and done, we got three movies with the conflicting visions of J.J. Abrams and Rian Johnson.
In comments first published in The Star Wars Archives - Episode I - III, 1999 - 2005 (via SFFGazette.com), Lucas reveals what his trilogy would have entailed.
A New Threat Emerges
"After the Rebels won, there were no more stormtroopers in my version of the third trilogy. I had planned for the first trilogy to be about the father, the second trilogy to be about the son, and the third trilogy to be about the daughter and the grandchildren."
"Episodes VII, VIll, and IX would take Ideas from what happened after the Iraq War...the stormtroopers refuse to give up when the Republic win. They want to be stormtroopers forever so they go to a far corner of the galaxy, start their own country, and their own rebellion."
Power Vacuum And Maul's Return
"Gangsters, like the Hutts, are taking advantage of the situation, and there is chaos. The key person Is Darth Maul, who had been resurrected in the Clone Wars cartoons - he brings all the gangs together. One is with a set of cybernetic legs like a spider, and then later on he has metal legs and he was a bit bigger, more of a superhero."
"Darth Maul trained a girl, Darth Talon, who was in the comic books, as his apprentice. She was the new Darth Vader, and most of the action was with her. So these were the two main villains of the trilogy. Maul eventually becomes the godfather of crime in the universe because, as the Empire falls, he takes over."
Luke Skywalker's Mission
"It starts out a few years after Return of the Jedi and we establish pretty quickly that there's this underworld, there are these offshoot stormtroopers who started their own planets, and that Luke is trying to restart the Jedi. He puts the word out, so out of 100,000 Jedi, maybe 50 or 100 are left."
"The Jedi have to grow again from scratch, so Luke has to find two- and three-year-olds and train them. It'll be 20 years before you have a new generation of Jedi."
The Chosen One
"The movies are about how Leia - I mean, who else is going to be the leader? - is trying to build the Republic. They still have the apparatus of the Republic but they have to get it under control from the gangsters. That was the main story."
"By the end of the trilogy, Luke would have rebuilt much of the Jedi, and we would have the renewal of the New Republic, with Lela, Senator Organa, becoming the Supreme Chancellor in charge of everything. So she ended up being the Chosen One."
An argument could definitely be made that Lucas' version of the Star Wars sequel trilogy sounds vastly better than the one we got and, to an extent, it does. However, Lucas also planned to start exploring midi-chlorians and the Whills, so the good may well have become bogged down in some pretty weird mythology.
There are a lot of ideas here that would have worked well, though, including Maul's return and the introduction of Darth Talon. The storylines for Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa also sound like an improvement, particularly in the former's case.
Do you think Lucas' take would have made for a better Star Wars sequel trilogy? Let us know in the comments section.