Did the Star Wars movies start with a book?

Question

if so who wrote them? the origional ones?

Answer 1

Original plot.

Common theme.

Answer 2

Wow, you've actually got some people so far to give the right answer ... wrong reasons but the right answer.  Usually a question like this is a signal for all the idiots to test their comedy material on.  Anyways ...

No, The Star Wars Saga is one of the rare movie series, rare today anyways, that didn't start with a book.  Lucas began writing this script when he was in film school.  He first had 12 different episodes that he thought could be told in the same way that the old Flash Gordon series had been done.  He realized that would work so he cut it down to 9.  This is where the story of what was supposed to be and what we actually ended up with go in opposite directions.  The only one of the movies that follows what was "supposed to be" is ep IV:  A New Hope.  After that the story goes astray from the original.  When Lucas was writing the script for ep V its working title was "2 of 12" ... an indication that he hadn't cut the story yet.  Many fans have a dislike for the way Obi-Wan Kenobi "lied" to Luke about his father.  It wasn't a lie, the part about his father being betrayed and killed by his young student Darth Vader, until Lucas wrote the script for ep V.  That is when he made the decision to combine the characters of Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader into one.  After ep V Lucas had settled on the 9 episode series however, a decision he made while writing the script for ep VI sent that idea to the garbage can also.  When he got to the duel between Vader and Luke at the end of the movie he couldn't come up with a reason for Luke to attack his father in a dark side fueled rage.  To solve that problem he made Leia Luke's twin sister and had Vader threaten her.  That decision eliminated ep 7 - 9 that were to be about the "other Skywalker" that Yoda mentioned in ep V.  With that he brought the story to a nice neat closing.  Fans still wanted more and even more wanted to know how Anakin Skywalker fell to the dark side and became the monster Darth Vader.  That's why we have the prequels ... to tell that story.  It is mind boggling though that Lucas now says that was the way the story was always supposed to be told.  I don't know how he thought that people would not learn what the "original" plan for the movies was given how wildly popular the saga had become but that's just another of the "dark places" in the mind of George Lucas.

One thing to say about the novels for the OT (ep IV - ep VI) ... don't waste your time reading them.  They are so fill with errors, given what has been presented in the prequel movies and all the other books that have come out, that they are more confusing that helpful.  The first book about the movies, the one that became known as ep IV, was titled Star Wars:  From the adventures of Luke Skywalker.  The novel for ep VI:  Return Of The Jedi was wrong before the ink even dried on the printing of it and is the worst of the books to read.  I have always hoped that they would be rewritten to match the story as it is now but it hasn't happened yet.  It's ironic given the fact that Lucas has tried to bury the original story yet still keeps these books out there.

Even more ironic is that the story of Star Wars has been carried 5000 years into the past and 130 years into the future by books and comics.

The novel versions of the prequels are pretty much set with the movies but the book version of ep III is almost required reading if you want to understand all that goes on in the movie because there is a lot of stuff that just couldn't be shown in the movie because of time limits.

In the end the Star Wars saga has become one of the most incredible stories ever told and has done it despite the best efforts of Lucas to hide the changes he made.  It doesn't really matter because what we ended up with was such a great story but he demeans himself by saying the other stuff never existed.  

Sorry for the long rambling answer to a question that could have been answered with two letters ... NO ... but you know us Star Wars geeks ... when we get rambling it's hard to stop.

May The Force Be With You ...

Answer 3

Nope.  George Lucas created the story.

Answer 4

George Lucas wrote the original trilogy as one bumper screenplay. When he was told it would be too long to be a movie, he split it into three parts and then fleshed them out more.

Answer 5

The Star Wars movies were originally written as a movie by George Lucas when he was in school