Geoge Lucas Claims Han Solo DID NOT Shoot First!!

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Read what Lucas has to say after the jump!

New Behind the Scenes Video from George Lucas' "Red Tails"

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Super Tough!: George Lucas, Remastered

Trailer for George Lucas' Tuskegee Airmen Epic, "Red Tails"

Plot:

1944. World War II rages and the fate of the free world hangs in the balance. Meanwhile the black pilots of the experimental Tuskegee training program are courageously waging two wars at once — one against enemies overseas, and the other against discrimination within the military and back home. Racial prejudices have long held ace airman Martin “Easy” Julian (Nate Parker) and his black pilots back at base — leaving them with little to do but further hone their flying skills — while their white counterparts are shipped out to combat after a mere three months of training. Mistakenly deemed inferior and assigned only second-rate planes and missions, the pilots of Tuskegee have mastered the skies with ease but have not been granted the opportunity to truly spread their wings. Until now.

As the war in Europe continues to take its dire toll on Allied forces, Pentagon brass has no recourse but to reconsider these under-utilized pilots for combat duty. Just as the young Tuskegee men are on the brink of being shut down and shipped back home, Col. A.J. Bullard (Terrence Howard) awards them the ultimate chance to prove their mettle high above. Undaunted by the prospect of providing safe escort to bombers in broad daylight — a mission so dangerous that the RAF has refused it and the white fighter groups have sustained substantial losses — Easy’s pilots at last join the fiery aerial fray. Against all the odds, with something to prove and everything to lose, these intrepid young airmen take to the skies in a heroic endeavor to combat the enemy — and the discrimination that has kept them down for so long.

The film is set to be released on January 20, 2012.

Super Tough!: Vintage Photo of Kate Capshaw, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Harrison Ford on the set of "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom"

Super Tough!: George Lucas... Without the Beard!

George Lucas Remembers Irvin Kershner

As you all may already know, the director of The Empire Strikes Back, Irvin Kershner, passed away today at age 87. He directed the most famous and revered film of the Star Wars saga and will truly be missed. George Lucas issued this statement:

"The world has lost a great director and one of the most genuine people I’ve had the pleasure of knowing,” says Lucas. “Irvin Kershner was a true gentleman in every sense of the word. When I think of Kersh, I think of his warmth, his thoughtfulness and his talent. I knew him from USC — I attended his lectures and he was actually on the festival panel that gave the prize to my THX short. I considered him a mentor.

Following Star Wars, I knew one thing for sure: I didn’t want to direct the second movie myself. I needed someone I could trust, someone I really admired and whose work had maturity and humor. That was Kersh all over. I didn’t want Empire to turn into just another sequel, another episode in a series of space adventures. I was trying to build something, and I knew Kersh was the guy to help me do it. He brought so much to the table. I am truly grateful to him. He was a friend as well as a colleague. He will be missed."

Super Tough!: Trick or Treating as Geroge Lucas Comic Strip

Super Tough!: 10 Things You Didn't Know About "The Empire Strikes Back" from "The Making of The Empire Strikes Back" Book

Yoda was originally named Buffy.

No, really. In George Lucas' earliest outlines for the sequel, Luke meets a supernatural entity named Buffy, or Bunden Debannen. Here's how Lucas described it:

"Buffy very old — three or four thousand years. Kiber crystal in sword? Buffy shows Luke? Buffy the guardian. 'Feel not think.'"

And Lucas concludes by saying Luke will become the chosen one, "the human Buffy." In later drafts, he thought of Yoda as a kind of small frog, and Yoda had a full name: Minch Yoda. In the earliest script draft, Minch has the immortal line: "Skywalker. Skywalker. And why do you come to walk my sky, with the sword of a Jedi knight? ... I remember another Skywalker."

Lucas considered having a scene where Luke's face gets injured.

Mark Hamill was injured in a car accident in 1977, and his face had to be reconsctructed — so for a while, George Lucas planned on including a sequence where Luke's face is damaged, and we see it getting patched up by a droid. This got as far as filming — there's a set picture showing the droid bandaging Luke's face — but was cut out of the movie.

Luke's journey to becoming a Jedi Knight would have had a lot more bumps.

One idea that got tossed around a lot in the early stages of planning ESB was the notion that

Luke's light saber had a crystal hidden in the hilt, with secret encrypted information on it — including the coordinates of Minch Yoda's planet. And Luke would have been "humiliated" when he couldn't use the Force to stop an attack by a bunch of ice monsters on the rebel's Hoth base. (With Han telling Luke, "You're not a Jedi knight, and you never will be." Meanwhile, Darth Vader senses that Luke used the force to destroy the Death Star and there's a new wannabe Jedi in town — so Vader uses telepathy to choke Luke in his spacecraft, nearly killing him — except that R2D2 jumps the ship into hyperspace and takes it to Yoda's planet.

We could have visited other planets.

Possibly including a "water planet," with an underwater city, and a "city planet," with the whole planet built over. And at one point, Lucas considered having a visit to the Wookiee homeworld (some of which ended up in the Christmas Special), and Ralph McQuarrie did some concept art of a young Chewbacca. (Also, Lando Calrissian's home would have been the planet Hoth — not the ice world, but another planet named Hoth — and there might have been a whole alien race living there. And in one early draft, Lando was a clone warrior, one of the many clans of clone fighters left over from the wars.) Here's the concept art of Young Chewbacca, plus a Beast of Burden from Chewbacca's home world, both of them dating from November 1977, or early in the process:

Darth Vader would have had a castle.

And it would have been an evil fortress — in some versions, it's surrounded by lava, and full of gargoyles who are Vader's pets.

Vader wasn't Luke's father at first.

In Leigh Brackett's first script draft, Luke meets his real dad, who says he sent away Luke and his secret sister for their own safety. (Luke's sister has been training to be a Jedi knight in secret, just as Luke has.) And Papa Skywalker administers the oath of a Jedi Knight to Luke, in which Ben, Minch, Anakin and Luke cross lightsabers, and Luke swears to "dedicate my life to the cause of freedom and justice."

The Luke-Leia-Han love triangle is a much bigger deal in earlier drafts of the script.

It's at the root of Luke's struggles for self respect and his humiliations. When Darth Vader is trying to win Luke over to the Dark Side in the second draft, written by Lucas himself, Vader says, "You're in love with Leia. You don't want to lose her to Han Solo... But you will, if you lack the courage to use the strength that's in you. A strength as great as mine, Luke." And then at the end, Leia flat-out tells Luke that he's not the one she loves, because she's into Han. Also in this version, Han doesn't get frozen in carbonite — instead, he just flies off to take care of business, leaving Luke and Leia watching the Millennium Falcon disappear.

The film posed unique challenges for special effects and model work.

Darth Vader had a new Star Destroyer, which was supposed to be 16 miles long! And they built a full-size Millennium Falcon, which was 65 wide and 80 feet long. Also, ILM had to start a new stop-motion animation department just to make the Imperial Walkers and tauntauns work. (They tried a man-in-a-suit tauntaun, with "hilarious if not film-worthy results.") And then there's the challenge of Yoda, they considered everything from a monkey in a mask to a small child or little person to play the Jedi sage, before deciding to go with Frank Oz's puppetry.

Stanley Kubrick nearly killed the movie.

Empire was sharing studio space with The Shining, and there was a huge fire that burned down Stage 3 at Elstree Studios, destroying The Shining's sets. That meant that Empire had to give up some of its own studio space, and The Shining went way over schedule, especially as Kubrick used the delay as an excuse to rethink his own movie. "Timewise, it is doubtful the picture will recover," one crew-member wrote at the time.

Miss Piggy had a cameo in one of Yoda's first scenes in rehearsal.

When Mark Hamill first met Frank Oz, he asked him to do a brief Miss Piggy cameo during rehearsals on set, as a practical joke — but when the time came much later, it caught even Hamill off guard. During one scene, Yoda tells Luke to follow his feelings. Luke protests that he has followed his feelings — and suddenly, Frank Oz whips out a Miss Piggy puppet, saying "Feelings? You want feelings? Get behind the couch and I'll show you feelings, punk. What is this hole? I've been booked into dumps before, but never like this. Get me my agent on the phone!"

Super Tough!: Spielberg's 1977 Congratulation Ad to George Lucas

After Star Wars overtook Jaws in the box office, Steven Spielberg took out an ad in Variety Magazine congratulating George Lucas and Star Wars. Its pretty tough so check it out and stay up!

George Lucas Guest Stars on "Star Wars: The Clone Wars"

Behind the Scenes Photos from Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

Captain Eo Returns to Disneyland

Aiight, cuzzo. As a tribute to the late great Michael Jackson, Disney has announced that they are bringing the Captain Eo 3D Movie attraction is returning to Disney theme parks! They're not sure if its returning to Disney World in Florida but the announcement to bring it back to Disneyland California is being made at D23 (Disney's version of Comic-Con for Disney fanboys).

The film, written and produced by George Lucas, follows a motley crew of space travelers, led by Jackson as Captain Eo, who are captured by the oppressive leaders of a remote planet and sentenced to a century of torture. Captain Eo responds with a demonstration of the power of rock music, staging an impromptu concert that revitalizes the barren planet and transforms the evil aliens into beautiful, peace-loving humanoids.

I haven't had the chance to experience the Captain Eo attraction but I've seen the movie and I absolutely loved it. Check out the trailer below. If you haven't seen this 17 minute movie, peep it and also check out the making of it. It demonstrates Michael's creativity and passion to the fullest and I'm glad they're bringing it back in memory of the King of Pop. Good looks Disney. Stay up.