Star Wars producer Gary Kurtz tells us what went wrong

Klingon Hamlet

LA TIMES article:

The original idea was that they would recover [the kidnapped] Han Solo in the early part of the story and that he would then die in the middle part of the film in a raid on an Imperial base.

The discussed ending of the film that Kurtz favored presented the rebel forces in tatters, Leia grappling with her new duties as queen and Luke walking off alone “like Clint Eastwood in the spaghetti westerns,” as Kurtz put it.

Kurtz said that ending would have been a more emotionally nuanced finale to an epic adventure than the forest celebration of the Ewoks that essentially ended the trilogy with a teddy bear luau.
He was especially disdainful of the Lucas idea of a second Death Star, which he felt would be too derivative of the 1977 film. “So we agreed that I should probably leave.”

:eek: that woulda rocked as a climactic movie.

evil-monkey

Great read. I can see where Kurtz is coming from, but without toys, without the additional revenue generation that they brought, the franchise would never have reached the heights it has in turns of what it gives us in books, comics, collectibles and video games, particularly the latter.