Lots of people will tell you that the whole prequel trilogy was preplanned despite all of the evidence in the films and the making of docs that they were made up on the spot and the scripts never even got a second draft.
Wasn't the first one at least basically the original draft of the Star Wars script rewritten to fit into the established canon? I remember that script being found/leaked and it seemed to hit a lot of the same specific story beats that Phantom Menace did in a way that the original Star Wars did not. If nothing else it clearly reused ideas that George Lucas had that hadn't made their way into his other movies yet.
I don't remember the specifics, but that much is plausible - George himself said that ANH was only 40% in line with what he originally had in mind.
it clearly reused ideas that George Lucas had
My favorite example of this specifically is that an early treatment of ANH had a scene with Luke and co racing in Beggar's Canyon, which was cut early in production and never filmed. But George really likes racing and he got to make the scene he always wanted to be there in TPM.
The original Beggar's Canyon scene survives in the BBC Radio Play version of Star Wars!
Lots of people will tell you that the whole prequel trilogy was preplanned despite all of the evidence in the films and the making of docs that they were made up on the spot and the scripts never even got a second draft.
Wasn't the first one at least basically the original draft of the Star Wars script rewritten to fit into the established canon? I remember that script being found/leaked and it seemed to hit a lot of the same specific story beats that Phantom Menace did in a way that the original Star Wars did not. If nothing else it clearly reused ideas that George Lucas had that hadn't made their way into his other movies yet.
I don't remember the specifics, but that much is plausible - George himself said that ANH was only 40% in line with what he originally had in mind.
My favorite example of this specifically is that an early treatment of ANH had a scene with Luke and co racing in Beggar's Canyon, which was cut early in production and never filmed. But George really likes racing and he got to make the scene he always wanted to be there in TPM.
The original Beggar's Canyon scene survives in the BBC Radio Play version of Star Wars!