Some people at Lucasfilm were apparently wanting to do a BSG-style series about the other X-wing pilots, the ones who weren't the Jedi. Ones like Wedge, whom you see just being a calm and excellent flier in both SW and ROTJ. Basically that whole squadron, the ones who come in, leave, some are killed, some stick around. You'd have gotten to see today's FX technology doing X-wings fighting TIE fighters and Star Destroyers.
If I got to see ILM's current tech doing a hardcore space battle with X-wings, I'd be off the couch with my mouth open, staring.
Lucas said no. He loves his Revenge of the Phantom Clone Menace wooden characters and boring political dialogues. He really thinks that's good, it's why he did that Clone Wars animated movie that completely bombed. As one critic said, they'd never seen anyone so willing to completely destroy their own legacy.
There's so many good stories coming out of other authors, in other mediums. There's another new novel out by Michael Reaves, Death Star, that is quite good. It's all the people behind the scenes that you never saw, their stories.
Ever wonder at stuff that's believable, like whether the port and starboard turbolaser crews on a Star Destroyer are akin to real Navy crews, whether they compete to see who can return a "ready to fire" to the bridge the fastest, and keep a board of their times? Or what a gunnery chief with a perfect record would think when told he was being assigned to what he called "The biggest gun ever built", or the horror when he has to pull the lever that destroys a world, but does so anyway? That's all in there. So is the story of a doctor who doesn't want to be there, a double-ace TIE pilot, a designer who knew about the exhaust port, even the owner of one of the thousands of contract-hired cantinas on board. The writer takes you through such fascinating things as what it's like to be part of a TIE launch, vivid imagery from the cold air to the smell of chilled lubricants, and how the pilots know that, despite what the commanders say, the fighters aren't all the same, a nick here, a scrape there, a slightly tighter way of turning that lets them know which is which in the rotations. It made me smile, because it made it real.
It took a movie from 1977 and expanded upon its events in a wonderful manner. You know what that blockade runner is that Vader's destroyer interdicts over Tatooine, you don't need to be told. You see the events that led up to that interception, finally. You learn how the plans got where they were to be stolen. The original dialogue is heard in parts, and then the conversations before and after it.
And Lucas would never allow it to be brought to the screen.
