Star Wars again, sorry...?

Question

yes Lucas, sorry, but my question wasn't clear, what I meant was, why did he CALL it Episode IV right from the start, when he can't have known if he would ever make any more? And it WAS called Episode IV, I remember wondering at the time how I'd missed the first three

Answer 1

As I understand it, Lucas always envisaged the series consisting of 9 episodes. He chose to start the filing at episode 4, as that allowed a significant and interesting back-story to emerge in 'A New Hope', and then move to resolution. This is why the first three films, in my opinion, are so poor. It is very difficult to enter at the "start" of an imaginery universe: you have to use the whole film to establish the story from scratch, and a Phantom Menace (the only one of the first 3 episodes I have seen) failed spectacularly to do this. I actually think episodes 6-9 might face a similar problem (how do you finally resolve the Empire v. Rebellion / Good v Evil question for all time?), but Lucas is no fool, and the spectacular failure of episodes 1-3 has burnt his fingers, and he now says the will never be made.

Answer 2

The first movie was called Star Wars and was re-named later to make the follow ups fit the chronological pattern.
This piece from Wikipedia should make it a bit clearer.

The first film was Star Wars (later retitled Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope), which was released on May 25, 1977 by 20th Century Fox. The film became a worldwide pop culture phenomenon, spawning two sequels subtitled The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Twenty-two years after the first Star Wars film was released, a prequel trilogy, set before the original trilogy, was released.

After the release of Star Wars, other writers developed the Star Wars Expanded Universe, which includes three spin-off films, five television series and an extensive collection of licensed books, comics, video games, action figures, trading cards, and other merchandise, all set within the fictional Star Wars galaxy. In 2007, the overall box office revenue generated by the entire Star Wars franchise (over the course of its history) is at around US$4.3 billion, making it one of the most successful franchises of all time.

Answer 3

If you every seen the history of Star Wars Lucas knew he was going to tell the story in 9 parts but then brought it down to 6 and he started with IV because he felt that at the time the technology wasn't there yet for 123. Hope this answers your question.

Answer 4

I still say BS... If he knew the technology wasn't there he would have started with 1, only because obviously when you progress in a story/time technology gets better. so then it would have been weird to see the first 3 look like crap and the last ones better. But that ended up happening anyways, lol. It was always STAR WARS, look at the original movie posters, no indication of any episode.

Answer 5

I thought the same thing when I watched it the first time at my friends house. He didn't know too. In fact, when SW: IV was in theaters in 1977 it was just called Star Wars.

But in one of my movie commentaries, Lucas said that he knew that there will be future movies on the events that happened before Episode 4.

Answer 6

The story I've heard is that when George Lucas began writing the script for Star Wars he wrote the entire thing. EPI through EP VI. This was, of course, too long for the first movie so he only focused and elaborated on the portion he referred to as EP IV and went from there. He didn't know the movies would take off as well as they did.

Answer 7

It was just Star Wars although he did have plot points for other films. When he was getting backing, the backers picked what is now episode 4 because it was the best stand alone of the "series."

Answer 8

Lucas thinks its cool/artistic.

I think its lame, what kind of an idiot would do that?

If he has the urge to make another he might have to call it "Star Wars 0.5"

Answer 9

Now you know the REST,,,,,,,,,,,of the story.. "Good day!"