Lucas has said in several interviews that Chewbacca had grown too important
to just make him "another wookie" in a large battle (he actually also said
that his original first Star Wars script had a large wookie battle, but I've
read all revisions availible online, and didn't see any of this). That's why
he had to invent a creature similar to him, and his motivation for going
small was something like "it's always the little bunny who gives the magic
wand to the wizard" (can't remember the exact wording).

/Robert

Ps. Yes, I used to be a Star Wars geek, before the prequels. :)

Ds. I thought Lucas wrote all of the Star Wars scripts... must investigate
this mysterious woman you mention.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Dan Pinal" <danp--massmedia.com>
To: <<Address Masked>>
Sent: Tuesday, December 16, 2003 12:45 AM
Subject: Re: Off-Topic Re: Interesting...


> At least nobody's defending the prequels. :) Jedi has about 20 minutes of
> nice story that is done very well. The original story was not to be set on
> Chewbacca's Wookie homeworld. Lucas somehow claimed they couldn't afford
> to do this?! Or perhaps they couldn't afford to miss the opportunity to
> market Star Wars teddy bears. Lets see. They hear a nice bedtime story
and
> then about a 100 decide to go out and throw rocks at battalions of elite
> Empire troops and armor that apparently run on nitroglycerine, 'cuz one
tap
> and kablooie. I also hated the cheezy burning wires when speeder bikes
hit
> trees.
>
> I was lucky enough to see Empire at a film festival with Kirshner who
> talked about the film and did a Q&A. Empire was written by an actual
> sci-fi writer that understood sci-fi and fantasy. She died with 90% of
the
> script complete, Kasdan gets equal billing but just finished it as a favor
> to Lucas -- he detests sci-fi. The director also understood fantasy and
> deliberately insured several themes were preserved. In fantasy symbolism,
> the losing of a hand means the loss of feeling, and in particular the
right
> hand signifies the fall from grace and inability to feel goodness and the
> taint of evil. Luke is deliberately shown to feel pain with his
artificial
> hand at the end, giving hope of his ability to return to the good side.
>
> I think age has a lot to do with it. I work with and am amazed at people
> who saw and liked the original Battlestar Galactica series as children.
Oh
> wait, that's another off-topic topic.
>
> DanP
> I'm sorry, this is a no-smoking execution facility. Altoid?
>
>
>
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