George Lucas reveals more details on his Star Wars sequel trilogy plans

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

Even before George Lucas sold Lucasfilm to Disney for a cool $4.05 billion, the seeds of the future of the STAR WARS franchise were slowly emerging, with Lucas even considering directing the first film himself. Included in the sale of Lucasfilm were the creators own ideas for where the sequel trilogy could go, but Disney ultimately chose to go in a different direction and craft brand-new stories. Over the years, bits and pieces of George Lucas' original ideas have emerged, but new details from a companion book for James Cameron’s Story of Science Fiction reveal that the sequel trilogy could have dived deeper into a scientific explanation for the Force, which Lucas himself admits that fans would have hated.

In the same interview, George Lucas added that "If I’d held onto the company I could have done it, and then it would have been done. Of course, a lot of the fans would have hated it, just like they did Phantom Menace and everything, but at least the whole story from beginning to end would be told." Given how fans reacted to the reveal of midi-chlorians in THE PHANTOM MENACE, I can only imagine how they would react to a whole other level of microscopic organisms behind the Force. Back when George Lucas was first crafting the STAR WARS universe, those first drafts went by the title of THE JOURNAL OF THE WHILLS, and the Whills were referenced in ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY when Chirrut Îmwe (Donnie Yen) and Baze Malbus (Jiang Wen) were said to be Guardians of the Whills.

As much as I'm extremely curious to know where George Lucas would have taken the sequel trilogy (I'm sure we haven't heard the last of it) had he remained in charge, I can't help but think that devoting so much time to explaining just how the Force works wouldn't have gone over all that well. I'm not going to lie, it's potentially interesting stuff, but I can understand why Disney decided to tell their own story.

What do you folks think? Would you prefer to have seen George Lucas' original plans for the STAR WARS sequel trilogy?