Ron declares he is working on a new Monkey Island

I simplify things ignoring everything, since Ron contradicts himself, too :blush:

That’s a very savvy and healthy approach to this specific case and to fandom theories in general.

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We know how Guybrush got his name but how about LeChuck? I’d say francized version of Chucky (Chuck ,Charles etc.), from Caribbean French influence but still is there any more info about it?

This is wise. Whilst the temptation is to take the word of god as the gospel truth (so in this case; the word of Ron as definitive, objective fact), the reality is that creators have a tendency to be revisionist towards their own history and recollections.

George Lucas is a classic example; all this talk of how he always envisioned the Star Wars series as 6 movies (alternatively sometimes 3 movies, sometimes 9 movies, depending which week you ask him), or how Jabba was always meant to be a giant space slug and the reason they cut his filmed scene from the original Star Wars was because the technology simply wasn’t there to place a stop motion creature over the stand-in actor… well, it’s all revisionist nonsense.

The movies weren’t mapped out in advance (for example, Vader being Luke’s Father wasn’t thought of until the process of writing The Empire Strikes Back and ditto with Leia as Luke’s Sister in Return of the Jedi) and the original Star Wars wasn’t envisioned as a single act of a 6 act narrative (heck, the subtitle of “Episode IV: A New Hope” wasn’t even added to the movie’s title crawl and poster until an altered print was released to cinemas, AFTER the movie was a huge hit). As for Jabba’s cut scene from the original Star Wars; the actor in question was outfitted in full costume and they had Harrison Ford walk around him at one point, which isn’t something one would do back in '76, if their plan was to place a stop motion creature over the top.

To circle back to the topic at hand; despite George Lucas’ own revisionist statements, I’m not accusing Ron Gilbert of telling porky pies, but rather pointing out that the human memory is a fickle thing and 30 odd years after the fact, recollections have a way of becoming warped and/or inaccurate/fabricated, whether purposefully or by accident.

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An excerpt from an interview at The Art of Point-and-Click Adventure Games book:

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Could you please post the link to that interview?

BTW… almost 700 posts in less than one month. We haven’t seen a similar activity in the forum in ages, not even when Delores came out.

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Checking forum activity just for fun, I found out that the topic with the most replies is Tell me your dreams, which according to @PiecesOfKate was inspired by this post:

Well, now I expect this to be the starting cutscene.

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George is completely full of it about the idea that he always had a vision for three or six parts. That’s always been his story and it has never passed the smell test and even those in his inner circle have said it’s BS.

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Thank you. I remember reading this somehow. What’s the source of the interview ? The books looks great BTW.

Indeed. I remember J.J. Abrams talking about how he had a private discussion with George Lucas and the latter was asking the former about how he devised the complete story for Lost and Abrams admitted that “we made it up as we went along”. George lent in and whispered to J.J. “this is a secret, but so did I.”

I think Lucas revises his own history behind the creation of Star Wars in order to make its production all the more mythological and grandiose in the eyes of the public; that the original ‘79 movie wasn’t simply conceived as a homage to the old 1936 Flash Gordon serials, but that it was always intended as an epic space saga, spanning multiple movies. Whilst disingenuous, that kind of revisionist showboating is fine enough, from a theatrical point of view but it’s irksome when fanboys take Lucas’ word at face value and perpetrate the myth as fact.

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What most people seem to misunderstand is the difference between having the plan of making a trilogy from the start and having the full story and major beats for each part in mind from the start.

Stating you always planned or had the idea to make something a trilogy or 9-part story may still be true while the other parts are simply empty or 1-2 lines to pace story arcs.

Part 3: “finish with a bang!”

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Oh no, not at all. As someone who is well versed in the practicalities of creative writing and the evolution of creative concepts, I fully understand that Lucas may well have had a vague thought of a larger story for Star Wars. My point was that in his own interviews, he tends to claim that said story was vastly more mapped out in advance than it ever was in reality (“I had an entire 9 act story, so I just isolated the 4th act and made that into a movie”).

Also, as I said, he is incredibly revisionist towards the movies which he did make; such as claiming that Jabba was always intended as a giant space slug and that the Special Edition alterations were always what he had intended, but technology simply didn’t allow it (which is obvious BS - he always intended for Greedo to shoot first? Equally, he always intended for Darth Vader to shout “Noooooooooooo” as he picks up Palpatine in Return of the Jedi? Did he bollocks).

For those who’ve never seen it; here’s the original deleted scene of Jabba from A New Hope…

Anyone who knows anything about film production in the 70’s will tell you; it’s absolute nonsense for George Lucas to claim that he had always intended to replace the Jabba actor with a stop-motion creature in post-production.

  • First of all, if that were the case, they likely wouldn’t have used a stand-in actor at all. Did Ray Harryhausen paste his stop-motion skeletons and other creatures over stand-ins for the likes of Jason and the Argonauts or Clash of the Titans? No, he didn’t because having a stand-in would be a hindrance to what he was attempting to achieve, given the available technology at the time (it would have been an element which he would have needlessly had to ensure that he pasted his effect over, in order to cover it up).

  • Secondly, if they did use a stand-in actor, they wouldn’t have had Harrison Ford touching him and walking behind him. Good luck masking around those kind of interactions with the available technology of the 70s!

  • Thirdly, if they were going to use a stand-in, then they wouldn’t have hired a professional actor (Declan Mulholland) to play the part, if their intention was to scrub over his performance anyway and replace his dialogue with alien dialect.

  • Fourthly, the actor is outfitted in full costume. Why would they do that, if the intent was to paste a stop-motion creature over the top of the stand-in? Furthermore, why use an overweight stand-in, if your intent is to place an effect over the top of him? That’s just further real estate which one has to hide.

  • Fifthly, Han says “you’re a wonderful HUMAN BEING, Jabba” (a line which was dubiously retconned to be a facetious quip from Han, in regards to Jabba’s species, for the Special Edition release).

Ergo, Lucas is talking BS when he claims that the intent was always for Jabba to be a space slug creature and that’s how he envisioned it from the start and only a lack of technology resulted in that scene being cut from the original release. It’s revisionist nonsense. The truth is that all of the information communicated within that deleted scene had already been communicated via the scene between Han and Greedo within the cantina, so the Jabba scene was excised out of the fact that it was surplus to requirements.

However, because Lucas wanted to push the narrative that the saga was largely mapped out from the beginning, he claimed that the scene was only deleted due to a lack of technology and that the Special Edition release represented his true vision, due to the advent of CGI technology during the 90s. Again; revisionist nonsense.

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I should have clarified: most people that aren’t on this forum. I have seen you making the exact point (in better wordings) as I was, @St_Eddie
On several occasions.

Luckily Ron will tell in interviews after RMI releases that the ending of that game was not part of a big scheme but rather something he came up with in 2021 (so no revisionist BS there)… which will probably enrage a whole new generation of people who DEMAND to know the (original) secret! :sweat_smile:

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I bet Ron wouldn’t replace the original secret even if a better one occurred to him :slightly_smiling_face:

It’s no longer a matter of making the best possible game… That secret must have acquired a symbolic meaning for him that goes beyond mere game quality :smiling_face_with_tear:

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+1 i agree

Also this quote

“I think with games in general—and the Monkey Island series in particular—it has always been a bit autobiographical,” he said. “We always are injecting a little of ourselves—not necessarily our past, but our present—into these games. And the first one we did as fresh designers starting out on a new career is about Guybrush starting out on a new career.”

sprung a possible story for the game in my mind based on this “new career”.

Potential spoiler ahead! Only time will tell. Bookmark and read after playing the game and tell me whether I was right or not.

Yeah, I guessed you would be curious. You know what happened to the cat?
Still here?
Ok, here goes:
When little Guybrush and Chuckie exit the carnival, and Chuckie’s eyes glow… it was the evil spirit of LeChuck that possessed the brother of Guybrush and freed himself from this fantasy/ride into the “real” world. Chuckie was a brat, but not an undead pirate. Now he’s possessed by the spirit of one, though. Years pass and Guybrush works as an inspector at a theme park. Guybrush discovers the old e-ticket or another McGuffin that convinces him it wasn’t purely a dream/fantasy and that he needs to return to Monkey Island in order to save his brother who was swapped with LeChuck by the voodoo spell.

Also:

I hope the actual story is better and more inspired :smirk:

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One thing I noticed from my playthrough of MI2 is that Voodoo Lady calls Big Whoop something like “a key to a new world” (I forget the words and I’m playing in Italian anyway).

So… maybe Guybrush was not a kid, but it’s really a spell by LeChuck.

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