It could have been worse

We should probably take it easy on Disney for creating SJW Wars. Sure, they irretrievably and unnecessarily ruined the epic space opera franchise, but what most people don’t know is that George Lucas was going to ruin it anyhow.

The two-time best director Oscar nominee confided his vision to none other than James Cameron, who interviewed Lucas for “Space,” the second episode of his recent six-part AMC series “James Cameron’s Story of Science Fiction.” A transcript from their talk appears in the companion book of the same name, published by Insight Editions on May 18. In it, Lucas reveals that he would have turned his gaze from the cosmos to what can be viewed only under a microscope.

“[The next three ‘Star Wars’ films] were going to get into a microbiotic world,” he told Cameron. “There’s this world of creatures that operate differently than we do. I call them the Whills. And the Whills are the ones who actually control the universe. They feed off the Force.”

Elsewhere in the conversation, Lucas admitted, “Everybody hated it in ‘Phantom Menace’ [when] we started talking about midi-chlorians.” In terms of his storytelling, Lucas regarded individuals as “vehicles for the Whills to travel around in…And the conduit is the midi-chlorians. The midi-chlorians are the ones that communicate with the Whills. The Whills, in a general sense, they are the Force.”

Say what you will about Soylo and Space Leia and Ninja Pixie Force Princess and the Magic Negro Stormtrooper, but even the sum total of those unmitigated disasters still isn’t as bad as The Fantastic Star Wars Voyage: Free Whillies would have been.

This following video, however, is pretty cool. It’s a collection of 3D animation clips based on Ralph Mcquarrie’s original concept art for The Star Wars. When I was a kid, I had a collection of these concept sketches that were sold printed in color on oversized glossy paper.