Current Events > How come George Lucas made the OT first?

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You'd think showing the backstory of Vader and Obi Wan would take precedence.

I was so confused when I went from episode 3 to 4 and was like why does everyone look so different, this movie looks old, the special effects aren't there yet.
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I'm trying to imagine a 1977 version of The Phantom Menace.

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https://www.looper.com/179186/the-real-reason-george-lucas-started-star-wars-with-episode-4

The answer is a lot simpler than its accompanying questions suggest. Author Michael Kaminski writes in The Secret History of Star Wars that Lucas decided to start with the fourth episode "due to technical and storytelling reasons." He further explained, "Lucas had a massive, expensive epic on his hands, and divided the story into three separate films. He had also developed a backstory for his elaborate tale, which together totaled six chapters, and sought to make Episode IV first, due to technical and storytelling reasons.

Lucas himself has corroborated this claim, stating, "The Star Wars series started out as a movie that ended up being so big that I took each act and cut it into its own movie [...] When I first did Star Wars, I did it as a big piece. It was like a big script. It was way too big to make into a movie. So I took the first third of it, which is basically the first act, and I turned that into what was the original Star Wars."

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Original film was just a rebel story with space setting. Next film was a sequel to set up a trilogy. Then the conclusion.

LightningAce11 posted...

You'd think showing the backstory of Vader and Obi Wan would take precedence.

Nah, because Star Wars was originally just Luke's story. He didn't think of doing prequels until later.

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