Star Wars the Force Awakens Mystery Cache
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Star Wars the Force Awakens
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Now this cache as you can see is another of the Star Wars themed caches that I have placed out over my time as a Geocacher and I think we can agree that it is a pritty awsome franchise I mean it like this that is has given us memrable characters like Darth Vada,Yoda, Luke Sykwalker and so many more. It has also given us things like the lightsabers, wookes.
History Before Star Wars Although George Lucas had made a name for himself among some industry insiders for his work at USC, it was not until the release of American Graffiti in August of 1973 that he reached stardom. The film grossed over $115 million at the box office and was dollar-for-dollar the most profitable film in the history of Hollywood at the time. Lucas' profit participation in Graffiti earned him over $7 million. Lucas was now a millionaire and one of the most sought after young directors in the world. Alan Ladd, Jr., then the head of Twentieth Century Fox, saw a smuggled print of American Graffiti before it was released in theaters and was determined that Fox was going to be the next studio to profit from Lucas' genius. Lucas would later profit from an upcoming star in that movie: Harrison Ford. Star Wars would further place Ford higher into stardom. Conception Influences Star Wars poster Poster art for Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope Many different influences have been suggested for the Star Wars films by fans, critics, and George Lucas himself. Lucas acknowledges that the plot and characters in the 1958 Japanese film The Hidden Fortress, directed by Akira Kurosawa, were a major inspiration. Lucas has said that the movie influenced him to tell the story of Star Wars from the viewpoint of the humble droids, rather than a major player. It also played a role in the conception of Darth Vader, whose trademark black helmet intentionally resembles a samurai helmet. George Lucas has often said that his original idea for the project that evolved into Star Wars was to remake the Flash Gordon movie serials from the 1930s (a "serial" is a movie shown in weekly installments of about 10-20 minutes each). The license wasn't available, so Lucas moved on to other ideas, beginning with Akira Kurosawa's film The Hidden Fortress and then Joseph Campbell's The Hero With a Thousand Faces. Despite the plot changes the Star Wars films are still bursting with influences from the Flash Gordon movie serials, including the Rebels vs. the Imperial Forces, Cloud City and even the famous "roll up" which begins the movie. The second major direction for Star Wars (used in the 1973 synopsis) was to use the Flash Gordon "vocabulary" to create an outer-space version of the Samurai films of Akira Kurosawa, primarily Kakushi toride no san akunin (The Hidden Fortress, 1958), Tsubaki Sanjûrô (Sanjuro, 1962) and Yojimbo (1961). Joseph Campbell's The Hero With a Thousand Faces eventually gave Lucas a third and final major story direction, but many elements from Kurosawa's work remain, including the two bickering peasants (who evolved into the droids), and the queen who often switches places with her handmaiden. The Darth Vader-like evil general who has a change of heart at the end wears a kamon (a Japanese family crest) that looks very similar to the Japanese Imperial Crest. Lucas had already written two drafts of Star Wars when he rediscovered Joseph Campbell's The Hero With a Thousand Faces in 1975 (having read it years before in college). This blueprint for "The Hero's Journey" gave Lucas the focus he needed to draw his sprawling imaginary universe into a single story. Campbell demonstrates in his book that all stories are expressions of the same story-pattern, which he named the Hero's Journey or the monomyth. Lucas has often cited The Lord of the Rings series as a major influence on Star Wars. Lucas learned from Tolkien how to handle the delicate stuff of myth. Tolkien wrote that myth and fairytale seem to be the best way to communicate morality - hints for choosing between right and wrong - and in fact that may be their primary purpose. Lucas has also acknowledged in interviews that the Gandalf and the Witch-king characters in the Lord of the Rings influenced the Obi-Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader characters respectively. The screenplay There are many myths surrounding the writing of Star Wars, many perpetuated by Lucasfilm and George Lucas himself. Author Michael Kaminski tried to set the record straight in his book The Secret History of Star Wars, as did Jonathan Rinzler in The Making of Star Wars, both released in 2007. Lucas' original concept was a swashbuckling space adventure movie. He says "the film was a good concept in search of a story." He first tried to have a child buy the rights to remake Flash Gordon, but was unsuccessful. In 1971, United Artists agreed to make American Graffiti and Star Wars in a two-picture contract, though they would reject Star Wars in its early concept stages. Graffiti was made first and when it was completed in 1973, Lucas set to work on making his space adventure movie. In early 1973, Lucas wrote a short summary called "The Journal of the Whills", which told the tale of the training of apprentice C.J. Thorpe as a "Jedi-Bendu" space commando by the legendary Mace Windy. Frustrated that his story was too hard to understand, Lucas then wrote a 13-page treatment called The Star Wars, which was a loose remake of Akira Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress. By 1974, he had expanded the treatment into a rough draft screenplay, which added elements such as the Sith, the Death Star, and once more had the protagonist as a young boy, named Anakin Starkiller. For the second draft, Lucas made heavy simplifications, and also introduced the young hero on a farm, with his name now Luke rather than Anakin. Luke/Anakin's father is still an active character in the story at this point, a wise Jedi knight, and "the Force" now became a supernatural power. The next draft removed the father character and replaced him with a substitute named Ben Kenobi, and in 1976 a fourth draft had been prepared for principal photography. The film was titled "Adventures of Luke Starkiller, as taken from the Journal of the Whills, Saga I: The Star Wars." During production, Lucas changed Luke's name to Skywalker and altered the title to just "The Star Wars" and finally "Star Wars". At this point, Lucas was thinking of the film as the only entry that would be made — the fourth draft underwent subtle changes that made it more satisfying as a self-contained film that ended with the destruction of the Empire itself, as the Death Star was said to achieve; possibly this was a result of the frustrating difficulties Lucas had encountered in pre-production during that period. However, in previous times Lucas had conceived of the film as the first in a series of adventures. The second draft contained a teaser for a never-made sequel about "The Princess of Ondos", and by the time of the third draft some months later Lucas had negotiated a contract that gave him rights to make two sequels. Not long after, Lucas met with author Alan Dean Foster, and hired him to write these two sequels — as novels. The intention was that if Star Wars was successful — and if Lucas felt like it — the novels could be adapted into screenplays. He had also by this point developed a fairly elaborate backstory — though this was not designed or intended for filming; it was merely backstory. "The backstory wasn't meant to be a movie," Lucas has said. When Star Wars was successful, and not just successful but the biggest hit ever made at that time, Lucas decided to use the film as a springboard for an elaborate serial, although he considered walking away from the series altogether. However, Lucas wanted to create an independent filmmaking center — what would become Skywalker Ranch — and saw an opportunity to use the series as a financing agent for him. Alan Dean Foster had already begun writing the sequel as a novel, but Lucas decided to disregard that for filming and create more elaborate film sequels; the book was released as Splinter of the Mind's Eye the next year. At first Lucas envisioned an unlimited number of sequels, much like the James Bond series, and in an interview with Rolling Stone in August of 1977 said that he wanted his friends to take a try directing them and giving unique interpretations on the series. He also said that the backstory where Darth Vader turns to the dark side, kills Luke's father and fights Ben Kenobi on a volcano as the Republic falls would make an excellent sequel. Later that year, Lucas hired sci-fi author Leigh Brackett to write "Star Wars II" with him. They held story conferences together and in late November of 1977 Lucas had produced a handwritten treatment called "The Empire Strikes Back." The story is very similar to the final film except Darth Vader does not reveal he is Luke's father. In the first draft that Leigh Brackett would write from this, Luke's father appears as a ghost to instruct Luke. During this period, Lucas had now had time to attach a numeric figure to the amount of sequels — he revealed to Time magazine in March 1978 that there will be twelve films altogether. This was then revealed in the official Star Wars fanclub newsletter, Bantha Tracks. The figure of 12 was likely selected due to its tradition in serial episodes. Brackett finished her first draft of Empire Strikes Back in early 1978; Lucas has said he was disappointed with it, but before he could discuss it with her she had died from cancer. With no writer available, Lucas had to write his second draft himself. Here Lucas finally made use of the "Episode" listing in the film — Empire Strikes Back was Episode II. As Michael Kaminski argues in The Secret History of Star Wars, the disappointment with the first draft probably made Lucas consider different directions to take the story in. Here he made use of a new plot twist: Darth Vader says he is Luke's father. According to Lucas, he found this draft enjoyable to write, as opposed to the year-long struggles of the first film, and quickly wrote two more drafts in the same month — April of 1978 — which both retained the new Vader-as-father plot. He also took this darker ending farther by imprisoning Han Solo in carbonite and leaving him in limbo. This new storyline where Vader was Luke's father had drastic effects on the series. Michael Kaminski argues in his book that it is unlikely that this was a plot point that had ever seriously been considered before 1978, or even thought of before then, and that the first film was clearly operating under an alternate storyline where Vader was separate from Luke's father; there is not a single reference to the Vader-as-father plot point before 1978. After the second and third drafts of Empire Strikes Back where Lucas first introduced this point, he reviewed the new backstory he had now created: Annikin Skywalker is Ben Kenobi's brilliant student, has a child (Luke) but is swayed to the dark-side by the Emperor (who was now a Sith and not just a politician), battles Ben Kenobi on the site of a volcano and is wounded but resurrected as Darth Vader; meanwhile Kenobi hides Luke on Tatooine while the Republic becomes the Empire and Vader has hunted down the Jedi knights. With this new backstory, Lucas decided to film this as a trilogy — moving Empire Strikes Back from Episode II to Episode V in the next draft. Lawrence Kasdan, who had just completed writing Raiders of the Lost Ark, was then hired to write the next drafts, and was helped by additional input from director Irvin Kershner. Kasdan, Kershner, and producer Gary Kurtz saw the film as a more serious and adult film, which was helped by the new, darker storyline, and brought the series far away from the light adventure roots it had existed as only a year earlier. Lucas had also around this time developed a third trilogy as well, which took place twenty years after Episode VI. By the time of writing Episode VI — Revenge of the Jedi, as it was then known — in 1981, much had changed. Making Empire Strikes Back was a stressful and costly work, and Lucas' personal life was disintegrating. Burnt-out and not wanting to make any more Star Wars films, he vowed to be done with the series, as he makes explicit in a May 1983 interview with Time magazine. Lucas' 1981 rough drafts of Revenge of the Jedi had Darth Vader competing with the Emperor for possession of Luke — and in the second script, the "revised rough draft", Vader was turned into a sympathetic character. Lawrence Kasdan was hired to take over once again, and in these final drafts Vader was explicitly redeemed, and finally unmasked. This change in character would provide a springboard for the "Tragedy of Darth Vader" storyline in the prequels. After getting a divorce in 1983 and losing much of his fortune, Lucas had no desire to return to Star Wars, and had unofficially cancelled his Sequel Trilogy by the time of Return of the Jedi. However, the prequels, which were quite developed, remained fascinating to him. After Star Wars became popular once again, following in the wake of Dark Horse's comic line and Timothy Zahn's Thrawn Trilogy novels, Lucas saw that there was still a large audience. His children had begun to grow older, and with the explosion of CG technology he was now considering returning to directing. By 1993 it was announced, in Variety among other sources, that he would be making the prequels. He began outlining the story, now offering that Anakin Skywalker would be the protagonist rather than Ben Kenobi and that the series would be a tragic one examining his transformation to evil. He also began to change how the prequels would exist relative to the originals — at first they were supposed to be a "filling-in" of history, backstory, existing parallel or tangential to the originals, but now he began to see that they could form the beginning of one long story: beginning with Anakin's childhood and ending with Anakin's death. This was the final step towards turning the franchise into a "Saga". In 1994, Lucas began writing the first screenplay, titled Episode I: The Beginning. At first it was planned to write and then film all three prequels at once, but this was changed, possibly because the writing process took much longer than first thought. Although Lucas initially planned on having others write and direct, he kept writing on his own, and eventually decided to direct the film as well. In 1999, Lucas announced he would be directing the next two films as well, and began working on Episode II at that time. The first draft of this was completed just weeks before principal photography, and Lucas hired Jonathan Hales, a writer from the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, to polish up his draft. Unsure of a title, Lucas had jokingly called the film "Jar Jar's Big Adventure." By now the backstory had undergone large changes — Ben Kenobi had discovered Anakin as an adult in Episode I's first draft, but he was changed to be a young student, and Anakin a child, and in Episode II the Clone Wars were decided to be a personal manipulation of Palpatine's. At the time of the original trilogy, Lucas had many ideas for this war: in Empire Strikes Back it was decided that Lando was a clone and came from a planet of clones that caused a war, but later a different version was decided wherein "Shocktroopers", including Boba Fett waged war against the Republic from a distant galaxy but were then repelled by the Jedi knights. Lucas began working on Episode III even before Attack of the Clones was released, offering concept artists that the film would open with a montage of seven Clone War battles. As he reviewed the storyline that summer, however, he says he radically re-organized the plot. Michael Kaminski, in The Secret History of Star Wars, offers evidence that issues in Anakin's fall to the dark side prompted Lucas to make massive story changes, first revising the opening sequence to have Palpatine kidnapped and Dooku killed by Anakin as a first act towards the dark side. Lucas' first draft was written in 2003, and is largely similar to the film, though much simplified. After principal photography was complete in 2003, Lucas made even more massive changes in Anakin's character, re-writing his entire turn to the dark side — he would now turn out of a quest to save Padmé from dying, rather than the previous version where that was one of many reasons and genuinely believed that the Jedi were evil and plotting to take over the Republic. This fundamental re-write was accomplished through editing and many new and revised scenes filmed in additional pick-ups in 2004. George Lucas has often exaggerated the amount of material he had written for the series, most of these exaggerations stemming from the post-1978 period where the film grew into a true phenomenon. Lucasfilm often indicated that he had written twelve stories to be filmed, and Lucas was quick to tell how Star Wars was always Episode IV that was meant as a middle-chapter. Lucas also began to claim that Darth Vader's parentage of Luke and redemption was always a major part of his plan from early on, and even that this was his very first script or treatment. As Jonathan Rinzler and Michael Kaminski show, this is demonstrably false. Kaminski rationalizes that these exaggerations are part publicity device and part security measure — with the series and story radically changing throughout the years, Lucas would emphasize that its current embodiment was the original intention; with the series previously existing as different and often contradictory forms, this makes audiences view the material only from the perspective that Lucas' wishes them to view the material, and it also may protect against outrage that such a popular storyline was being changed post-release after being cherished by so many.
Information on the screenplays comes from many sources. Most of the drafts of Star Wars were leaked to the public in 1977 and have circulated since then. 1987's Annotated Screenplays thoroughly documented the early drafts of the trilogy, and Rinzler's Making of Star Wars supplemented this info with even more detail, including drafts which had not yet been publicly leaked, as well as Lucas' personal notes. Information on the prequel scripts is comparatively more scarce, but a number of making-of books give insight into the writing process and early drafts. The prequels drafts are largely similar to the final films due to Lucas exploring ideas in the art department rather than on paper. 
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