ATMachine

Bumping just to say that I suspect that Lucas originally intended Madmartigan and Sorsha to get much more seriously injured in the final battle than they actually do on film.

Madmartigan, I believe, would have lost his left arm in battle against King Kael, but he manages to kill Kael anyway. This is a nod to the original idea for the Luke/Vader duel in ESB, where Luke loses his left arm at the elbow but keeps on fighting with the saber in his right hand.

In the finale Madmartigan would have been seen with a golden prosthetic hand, much like the silver hand of the legendary Irish high king Nuada. This is also a reused idea from ESB--Luke's new arm was originally to be a golden droid arm like Threepio's.

Sorsha, meanwhile, would have been in a lot more trouble when she confronted Bavmorda. Bavmorda would have conjured several stone gargoyles into life (a Ray Harryhausen homage) and there would have been a fight scene.

Unfortunately swords can't cut statues, so Sorsha would pretty soon be beaten senseless--only to be saved by the arrival of Fin Raziel, whom Bavmorda had locked out of the room earlier.

When Madmartigan (minus an arm) came in at the end to embrace Sorsha, she'd likely have an eye swollen shut and a broken nose. Afterward, in the finale, we'd see that she'd actually lost the eye, leaving it milky white.

The idea of having Sorsha scarred up is a combination of several ideas. First of all, there's inspiration from Mad Max's damaged eye in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, which resulted from his eye being swollen shut in the previous film.

As well, in the third draft of SW 1977 Princess Leia (who was then a blonde, like the original half-elf Sorsha) was apparently going to end up with an eye swollen shut after being tortured by Darth Vader.

And there's also the original idea for unmasked Vader in ROTJ, who was supposed to be blind in one eye. After all, Sorsha is in many ways modeled on Darth Vader and his 1974 antecedent, Prince Valorum. Valorum's own predecessor, General Tadokoro in The Hidden Fortress, also received facial scars from a beating.

Madmartigan was apparently much more closely patterned on Mad Max in the early outlines: instead of the final film's roguish womanizer, he was an honorable but embittered knight who went into self-imposed exile after killing the bandits who killed his wife and infant child. Sorsha's eye injury--resembling Max's in The Road Warrior--signifies that she is Madmartigan's soul mate.

The motif of the one-eyed hero also recurred in the original TV versions of the Young Indy Chronicles, featuring eyepatched Old Indy.

Oh, and in the early outlines for Willow, we were going to see Sorsha topless earlier in the film. It was actually a plot point, as she wears a royal medallion from her father's kingdom as a necklace.

Quite a lot of family-unfriendly stuff here. Most of it recycled from early SW ideas. I guess Lucas really wanted to reuse the old ideas but ultimately caved into his own Disneyesque reputation.

In the 1974 rough draft, the spaceship which the heroes steal from the Aquilae spaceport is parked vertically in an underground hangar. Although the spaceship itself is standing on one end, the internal structure features a corridor running down the length of the ship horizontally, apparently using artificial gravity oriented 90 degrees out of kilter with the planet surface.

A similar subtle use of a 90-degree reorientation of gravity is seen on the gun turrets of the Millennium Falcon in the final film.

The spaceship being parked vertically, with its engines pointing downward, is obviously evocative of the Apollo moon rockets, although its hangar is more reminiscent of a Cold War missile silo, complete with cover plate.

Various making-of books for TPM suggest that Lucas originally wanted to feature an underground city on the desert planet in the first film. Presumably this actually refers to the subterranean spaceport of the rough draft.

I just checked the film and yes, they do show Indian sepoy troops in the final scene. Good for them at least being realistic in that regard.

I do think that Temple of Doom is certainly problematic in terms of racial issues. But let's be honest, that's also far from the only issue TOD has.

Kate Capshaw, for one. Gratuitous violence, for another (which was apparently toned down significantly from what Spielberg originally wanted to do).

darth_ender said:

That really would have helped.  I wish Paramount would release the deleted scenes for a faneditor to work on.  In any case, the heroic British Army had Indian soldiers, and this was the reality of the day: the British Empire owned India, and Indian soldiers were part of the Empire's military.  Who else would drive off the Thugees, who, for the sake of the story, were necessarily Indian?  It makes logical sense.

What makes me laugh is the fact that no one complains about the treatment of the Germans or the Soviets in the other Indy movies.  They were clearly bad guys with their fair share of idiots.  But they were white evil idiots, and you can't be racist against white people.  Are folks aware of the fact that there were many good and noble men conscripted into the Nazi war machine, often against their will, often in ignorance of the nature of the crimes of their own fatherland.  But I enjoy the movies for what they were, in spite of the stereotypes against the Germans.

Do we actually see Indian soldiers in the British Army in the film, though? I honestly don't remember.

Conan the Barbarian (1982), directed by John Milius

Not a straight adaptation of Robert E. Howard's literary Conan, but still a very enjoyable film. The influence of two Howard stories in particular--Queen of the Black Coast and A Witch Shall Be Born--is very evident in the plot.

There's also a surprising amount of Wagnerian imagery, which I found quite cool. Apparently several critics took issue with it, presumably thinking that anything remotely Wagnerian automatically equates with the Nazis, but I don't agree with that.

As well, I can't help but wonder if director John Milius got some of his casting ideas from his old USC film school buddy George Lucas.

We have the title character, played by Arnold Schwarzenegger; his friend and ally (invented for the film), a Mongol thief named Subotai; and the villain, Thulsa Doom, played by James Earl Jones.

This is quite similar to the casting ideas I suspect Lucas had in mind for the 1974 SW rough draft.

There the principal hero, Annikin Starkiller, was to have black hair and blue eyes, like Robert E. Howard's literary Conan; the hero's mentor, General Luke Skywalker, was apparently Japanese; and the villain, Prince Valorum, was likely meant to be cast as black.

In fact, James Earl Jones may have got the nod for Thulsa Doom precisely because of his turn as Darth Vader--the successor character to Valorum.

But getting back to Milius's Conan: very good. A surprisingly pagan film for 1980s America, too.

8 out of 10 broken swords.

DuracellEnergizer said:

I read that the dinner scene in TOD was supposed to indicate that the people living in Pankot palace were heretics -- mainstream Hindus wouldn't eat monkeys, for instance -- and there was a scene filmed where Jones addressed this, but for some unwise reason the scene was cut from the final film.

You're absolutely right, and it would certainly have helped the film to leave that in.

Of course that still doesn't solve the film's biggest problem: that it's basically a remake of Gunga Din starring Indiana Jones.

Something of the racism and imperialism of that earlier film carries over into Temple of Doom--as we see with the heroic British Army riding in and shooting down the troublesome natives.

Now, I don't have a problem with enjoying old films like Gunga Din (I do love the Conan stories of Robert E. Howard, after all), but they're definitely products of their time.

Any modern adaptation really has to get rid of the racism in those old works, but I don't think Lucas and Spielberg tried very hard to do that, as evidenced by the dinner scene.

Tobar said:

Might wanna check your monitor settings. That robe is dark brown not black. =P

 Yeah, I'm pretty sure Qui-Gon wears that robe in the actual film.

I just noticed something in the fourth-draft script of ESB that becomes rather interesting when cross-checked against JW Rinzler's Making of ESB book.

During Luke and Vader's lightsaber duel in Cloud City, we get this exchange:

The wind stops and the fighting becomes even more intense. The deadly buzz of the laser swords reverberates through the vast power shaft. An alarm sounds and the public address system inside the control room crackles.

ADDRESS SYSTEM
Fugitives heading for transport Platform Southwest-One. Secure all transport.

VADER
Your friends may escape, but you are doomed.

LUKE
Not yet.

Luke slashes at Vader again, renewing the fight. Luke’s sword whistles past Vader and the young warrior is thrown off balance, his guard down. Vader’s light saber flashes out with deadly skill and cuts Luke, almost forcing him over the edge. He can barely stand. He wipes the tears from his eyes, but still can barely focus on his massive opponent.

The scene then cuts to Leia, Lando, and the others trying to unlock the door to the Millennium Falcon's landing pad. After Artoo gets jolted by the power terminal, we cut back to Luke's duel with Vader.

Luke is still wielding his lightsaber, but he finally stops swinging out of sheer exhaustion. This is the point at which the script calls for dialogue Insert B, featuring the revelation that Vader is Luke's father.

However, there's no mention of Luke losing a hand in this entire scene. And the special dialogue page, Insert A, which would presumably mention it, is not called for anywhere. So we can assume that, for whatever reason, this idea was temporarily dropped from the fourth draft script.

But we do know what Insert A said in the third draft, because JW Rinzler quotes it in The Making of ESB:

Vader’s light saber flashes out with deadly skill and cuts Luke's arm off at the elbow! Luke's forearm flies away in the wind as the boy himself almost goes over the edge. He can barely stand. He wipes the tears and blood from his eyes, but can still barely focus on his massive opponent.

The implication of this dialogue's apparent place in the script is that Luke's loss of his left arm at the elbow was not the end of the duel. Luke still had his lightsaber in his right hand, and kept fighting for a while until he was simply too exhausted to continue.

In the final scene of the third-draft script, Luke gets a new left forearm that has "metal struts and electronic circuits similar to Threepio's." Apparently this is the precursor to Anakin's droid-like prosthesis in the prequels.

Interesting that Luke should retain his father's sword while still losing an arm. I guess Lucas ultimately decided that Vader should cut away Anakin's sword as well as Luke's right hand (as opposed to his left arm), to heighten the tension (and the symbolism) further.

I also suspect that Lucas originally intended to have an echo of this early conception of the ESB duel in Willow--with Madmartigan losing his left arm to King Kael in the final battle, but still managing to kill Kael with the sword in his right hand.

I do think Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is generally underrated. Not because of the script, which is a simple rehash of Raiders, but because the cast clearly had an absolutely great time making it and it shows in their performances.

Sean Connery steals every scene he's in, and even Denholm Elliott and John Rhys-Davies (Flanderized though their characters may be) are obviously having fun.

The tank chase could have done with a much leaner edit, though.

Conversely, I think that Indy fans tend to massively overrate Temple of Doom, which I find a poorly paced and quite frankly racist movie, with a completely unlikeable leading lady who was only hired because of Steven Spielberg's boner.

It also doesn't help that the numerous scenes deleted from that film explained a crucial chunk of the plot.

TheBoost said:

ATMachine said:

Black Angel (1980)

A bit of a stretch to call this a "movie," given its length, but still.

Fantastic visuals--the Black Angel and the fay-woman accompanying him are superb, with a strong Excalibur vibe. Also the protagonist's costume and his burned-out castle seem to have been a big influence on Robin Hood Prince of Thieves.

4 out of 5 plague-ridden peasants, with one deducted for the cliché ending taken straight from Ambrose Bierce.

 Where did you see that? Is it out now?!

It's available on iTunes right now for $3, as I found out from this very forum.

darklordoftech said:

JediZombie said:

midi-chlorians are horrid

I would say that midichlorians are the worst aspect of the prequels because they change the rules of the Star Wars galaxy. "Do you want to learn how to use The Force?" is replaced with "Are you Force-sensitive?"

Sadly, this idea isn't new--it shows up as far back as Splinter of the Mind's Eye, where Princess Leia complains about not being Force-sensitive.

I like BTTF2 precisely because it explores the pitfalls of time travel, in a darker way than the original.

Conversely, I dislike BTTF3 because it feels too much like a simple period film; aside from the wonderful finale on the train it's really just a comedy Western.

All of which I guess means I just agree with Bingowings.

Oh, and the original idea for the plot of BTTF2 was apparently that Marty goes back in time to Woodstock and prevents his parents from having the sex that led to his conception. Which would really have been derivative of the first film.

Black Angel (1980)

A bit of a stretch to call this a "movie," given its length, but still.

Fantastic visuals--the Black Angel and the fay-woman accompanying him are superb, with a strong Excalibur vibe. Also the protagonist's costume and his burned-out castle seem to have been a big influence on Robin Hood Prince of Thieves.

4 out of 5 plague-ridden peasants, with one deducted for the cliché ending taken straight from Ambrose Bierce.

AntcuFaalb said:

Fang Zei said:

We already heard Roger Christian say that his movie (forgot the name of it) might be included in said digital extras.

This reminds me: Black Angel (1980) is already on iTunes. Has anyone here deDRM'd it?

Black Angel is out already? Instant buy.

I just realized that the scene in Titanic where Kate Winslet poses nude for Leonardo DiCaprio, wearing only a fabulously valuable necklace, has an extraordinary similarity with a rejected idea for a nude scene in Willow.

In that film, in the scene where Madmartigan enters Sorsha's tent and falls in love with her, she was originally going to be sleeping naked, and would likely have been seen bare-breasted, with a royal medallion on her chest.

The medallion was going to be from her father's kingdom, the hidden Elf city of Tir Asleen. Sorsha was a half-Elf and the kingdom's lost princess, and the medallion was a sign of her heritage. (Insert your own Spaceballs joke here.)

The idea for seeing Sorsha bare-breasted in turn comes from the 1974 SW rough draft, where Leia Aquilae runs around topless during the climactic escape from the Death Star.

The royal medallion derives from the same source. Annikin Starkiller takes it off Leia's neck when he escorts her to safety early in the script.

In the final film Lucas settled for just giving Sorsha Leia Aquilae's red hair--which also passed down to Kate Winslet.

Funny to think about James Cameron reusing George Lucas's more adult ideas once Lucas had determined on "family-friendly" filmmaking.

It's very fortunate that John Boorman made Excalibur instead of his earlier project: a one-film adaptation of Lord of the Rings so bad its plot has to be read to be believed.

The four hobbits get high on mushrooms during their journey to Rivendell.

Elrond is bearded.

The backstory of the Rings of Power is told via a kabuki dumb show with jugglers.

Arwen is 13 years old. Aragorn ends up marrying Eowyn.

The Fellowship escape the snows of Caradhras by entombing themselves in giant ice blocks and floating down the River Anduin until they melt.

Gandalf doesn't know the Dwarven language [that's right, instead of Elvish] well enough to open the gates of Moria. So the Fellowship dig a pit, put Gimli in it, cover him with a cape, and beat him up until the right word emerges from his ancestral memory.

Frodo has sex with Galadriel.

When Boromir dies, he is buried under a tree.

Much of the Rohan subplot is cut out entirely.

After Eowyn is injured killing the Witch-King and lies on the battlefield, Aragorn heals her by lying down on top of her and pressing his body against hers.

Denethor kills himself with a knife, which he presses against himself as Aragorn embraces him in friendship.

Saruman is the Mouth of Sauron.

And to top it off, they had the gall to specify in their script that Tolkien himself (who was still alive at the time) should provide the opening narration.

It hits me that the total number of trappers (nine) who capture and defile Princess Leia in the rough draft is actually another LOTR reference--to the symbolism of evil associated by Tolkien with the nine Nazgul, the fearsome Ringwraiths who are Sauron's chief lieutenants.

However, the trappers' appearance as described in the script is more reminiscent of Tolkien's Orcs: "although they appear slightly human, they are slimy, deformed, hideous looking creatures."

Also, the basic plot of the second draft (i.e., Luke sets out to deliver the magical Kiber Crystal to his father) can quite nicely be summed up as a three-way fusion between these three books:

-Lord of the Rings (the hero needs to take a powerful magic artifact he inherited to someplace far away--in the case of the One Ring, in order to destroy it);

-Robert E. Howard's Conan novel The Hour of the Dragon (the hero needs to find and deliver a powerful magic artifact to the forces of good, so it can be used--in the case of Conan the Barbarian, the long-lost Heart of Ahriman);

-and William Morris's The Well at the World's End (the hero needs to rescue his father from the forces of evil--as Ralph of Upmeads does at the end of the book by saving King Peter's realm from a horde of invading brigands).

Hooray!

OK, I'm going to go out on a serious limb here--I'm going to postulate that Lucas likely read William Morris's 1896 fantasy novel The Well at the World's End. It would have been easy for him to get ahold of, as there was an Ace paperback edition released in 1970.

Morris's story opens with King Peter of Upmeads, who asks three of his four sons to go out into the wider world, so that they might learn skills and prove their valor, and so he might see which one is worthiest to succeed him.

The fourth and youngest son, Ralph of Upmeads, is the protagonist. Peter tries to keep Ralph at home, not wanting all his sons to leave him, but Ralph runs away to have an adventure of his own. It's no surprise that at the end of the story Ralph is the one crowned King.

As he travels Ralph learns of the Well at the World's End, a magical fountain in a far-off land that grants long life and strength of will to whoever drinks from it. He decides to seek out this Well.

Morris, like Fritz Lang, uses the Madonna/whore dichotomy in symbolizing his two principal female characters. The Madonna is the Lady of Abundance, a sorceress who is presented in terms of a Marian goddess figure. Ralph falls in love with her, but she is killed by a jealous ex-lover before they can consummate their relationship.

During his travels Ralph also meets a peasant girl named Ursula, who becomes infatuated with him. Initially he spurns her, still in love as he is with the Lady of Abundance. However, after the sorceress dies, Ralph dreams of her, and she tells him to seek out Ursula.

Ralph sets off in pursuit of Ursula, but soon learns she was captured and sold as a slave to the Lord of Utterbol. Ralph himself is enslaved by this evil lord, but manages to escape before long. Ursula also escapes her captors, having stolen a suit of armor. However, Morris later implies that she was raped by both the lord and his nephew during her captivity.

The two meet up and set out together for the Well at the World's End. Pursued by the troops of the Lord of Utterbol, they manage to traverse a barren maze of rocky paths that bars the passage over the mountains, guided by a wise man known as the Sage of Swevenham. After that they come to a pleasant valley. (Ralph and Ursula do not get to take revenge on the Lord of Utterbol; that honor goes to one of Ralph's friends whom he meets on the way.)

One day, while bathing in a lake, Ursula is chased by a hungry bear. Ralph sees her fleeing, naked, for her life and kills the bear. Afterward, Ralph admits that the sight of Ursula naked made him realize that he loves her. Soon thereafter they find a village of "innocent folk" who marry them in a pagan rite.

Before they reach the Well at the World's End, they must cross a vast desert. In the middle of this desert is the Dry Tree, an ominous withered tree with poisoned water about its roots. The tree's evil magic bewitches men into drinking its water; Ralph is only saved by Ursula's warning.

The duo finally find the Well at the World's End (sunken into a coastal cliff, it is only revealed at low tide). They drink and feel themselves imbued with new vitality.

The remainder of the book concerns Ralph's journey home to Upmeads, where he routs a gang of bandits that have taken over the kingdom in his absence. His father Peter, recognizing Ralph as the best suited of his sons to rule, abdicates, and Ralph and Ursula become the new king and queen, living for an extraordinarily long time.

This story was obviously a major inspiration for J.R.R. Tolkien--and not just in The Lord of the Rings; the Silmarillion narrative of Beren and Luthien also owes Morris a hefty debt. Things like Frodo's captivity in Cirith Ungol, and the Scouring of the Shire, have their origins here.

Lucas likely also read Morris's novel; its influence shows in several of his works.

The gang-rape Leia Aquilae goes through offscreen in the 1974 rough draft is strikingly similar to what happens to Ursula--mediated, of course, by the prism of Tolkien, who also borrowed from Morris in this regard. Lucas follows Morris in applying his rape narrative to a woman, as opposed to a male hero like Tolkien did. But Lucas borrowed from Morris in other ways as well.

Consider the Dry Tree: a poisonous tree in the midst of a vast desert wasteland. This image appears to have recurred in early story concepts for Willow, where a sinister tree apparently sat in the middle of a vast desert. In Lucas's version, the tree was sinister because it marked the entrance to the cave of a hungry dragon.

The idea of a barren rocky maze--in Willow surrounding the lost castle of Tir Asleen--likewise appears to owe something to Morris. Fin Raziel, the sorceress, assumes the function of the Sage of Swevenham in leading the main characters safely through the stony labyrinth.

As well, Willow's Madmartigan first falls in love with Sorsha when he sees her sleeping in her tent--and originally she was meant to be sleeping naked. (The final film put her in a nightgown.) This is reminiscent of Ralph first realizing that he loves Ursula when he sees her running naked from a bear.

Lastly, there's the fairy-tale motif of the youngest son having to prove himself the equal (or better) of his older brothers. This shows up markedly in the 1975 second draft of SW, where Luke is one of the youngest sons of the Starkiller family of Jedi, and must prove to his father and brothers that he is a worthy son--in fact, fated to be the worthiest of all.

And in the third draft, although Luke's large family is gone, Luke runs away from his home and his foster parents to seek adventure in the wider world, much like Ralph does.

I have to say, I have a newfound respect for Lucas, sheerly in terms of literary scholarship, seeing that he pursued Tolkien to his sources like this. Not many people would have made the Morris connection in the 1970s; few more do now.

Actually, now that I think about it, young Biggs and Windy's adventures on Yavin more closely resemble those of Merry and Pippin in Fangorn Forest.

Merry and Pippin are captured by Orcs at the beginning of The Two Towers, but as the Orc army is traveling to Isengard it is attacked by the Rohirrim, and in the chaos the hobbits escape into Fangorn. There they meet Treebeard, leader of the Ents, a "shepherd of the trees."

Treebeard entertains the duo, telling them Entish stories and giving them drinks of the marvelous Ent-draught, which causes them to grow taller.

When they arrive on the jungle planet of Yavin, Biggs and Windy (the names are even similar--Windy is actually short for Windom, like Meriadoc Brandybuck or Peregrin Took) are kept safe in the house of Owen Lars. Owen is a human settler and anthropologist who studies the Wookees.

Owen and his wife Beru feed the two young boys generously during their stay. Unexpectedly, Imperial troops invade the house and capture them all, but as they are heading back to their base with their captives, the Wookees set upon them and free the hostages.

And, of course, the heroes' rousing of the Wookees to fight against the Imperial troops and take over their base is highly reminiscent of the Ents' attack upon Isengard.

More disturbingly, the one element of Leia's ordeal I neglected to mention in the last post--the use of electric-shock torture on her by General Darth Vader--is likely drawn from the Orcs' use of a whip on Frodo in Cirith Ungol.

The 1974 rough draft shows signs of an additional influence on George Lucas, which I've as yet left unremarked: that of The Lord of the Rings.

General Skywalker is described as having white hair and a short silver beard, and dark eyes. In Tolkien's book (but not the film) Gandalf has dark eyes and a white beard.

There's also the matter of Leia's two young brothers, Biggs and Windy, who have an adventure of their own on Yavin when they are captured by stormtroopers. Since these two children are so young (aged seven and five), they would be very short--reminiscent of Tolkien's hobbits, particularly the duo of Frodo Baggins and Sam Gamgee.

While writing the third draft, Lucas would later toy with the idea of casting all the inhabitants of Tatooine, including Luke Skywalker and Ben Kenobi, as little people, something which he admitted was inspired by Tolkien's book.

This impulse ultimately led Lucas to make Willow--for which the early story concepts apparently featured two Nelwyns, Willow and Meegosh, as opposed to having Willow be the sole Nelwyn/hobbit on screen for most of the film.

Additionally, there's the storyline of Frodo and Sam on their journey to Mordor. At the end of The Two Towers, as Sam watches helplessly, Frodo is captured by Orcs and taken to the fortress of Cirith Ungol, from which Sam ultimately rescues him. A point omitted in the film adaptation is that, in the book, Frodo is naked when Sam finds him; Tolkien implies that the Orcs sexually abused Frodo.

Even back in the 1970s people were suggesting that Frodo and Sam were a gay couple. (Not without good reason--Tolkien modeled their storyline on that of William Morris's novel The Well at the World's End, a quest narrative featuring a heterosexual couple.)

So it's no surprise that Lucas likely took the Frodo/Sam storyline as a model for writing the climactic scenes with Annikin and Princess Leia in his 1974 rough draft. Like Frodo, Leia is stripped, sexually abused, and captured by evil Imperials; like Sam Gamgee, Annikin tracks her down and liberates her from her prison.

Of course, Tolkien's overall light/dark imagery (white for the good guys, black for the baddies) no doubt appealed to Lucas too. The influence of The Lord of the Rings would grow even stronger in Lucas's second draft, where Luke Starkiller has to carry the Kiber Crystal (a powerful Force artifact, akin to the One Ring) to his father on the faraway planet Yavin (i.e., Tolkien's Mount Doom).

TheBoost said:

Prince Valorum. Bad guy,

Not really--he ends up joining the heroes in the end.

Also, I think Dark Horse really missed an opportunity by not drawing Valorum as Samuel L. Jackson. But then again they also whitewashed General Skywalker, who in all likelihood Lucas meant to be Japanese.

Given that Valorum was probably meant to be black, it is worth at least a moment's notice that the rough draft's finale has Valorum and the white protagonist Annikin Starkiller breaking out of the Imperial space fortress alongside a topless Princess Leia. That might have ruffled a few feathers in more conservative circles.

Let's talk about a few other costumes from the rough draft, namely the Imperials:

The Emperor presumably wore a black military uniform, like his counterpart in Dune, Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV (who invariably was seen wearing a "gray Sardaukar uniform with silver and gold trim").

However, since the majority of Imperial officers would also wear black and gray uniforms, the Emperor would need something distinctive to set him apart on celluloid. Probably he would have worn a cloak or cape of some sort--likely gold in color.

As Emperor in Dune Messiah, Paul Atreides wears golden robes on formal occasions. This idea also shows up in Leigh Brackett's first draft script of ESB, where the Emperor is "draped and hooded in cloth-of-gold."

This costume would give the rough draft's Emperor an extraordinary resemblance to Emperor Ming in the 1940 serial Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe. In this serial Ming wears an elaborate military uniform with a cape (in the earlier Flash Gordon serials he wore relatively simple robes instead).

One thing the Dark Horse comic adaptation got right is that General Darth Vader would likely have had some sort of facial scar. This would echo the dueling scars frequently seen on fictional Nazi officers (a relic of real-life Prussian military culture).

Colonel Dietrich sports just such a dueling scar in Raiders of the Lost Ark; he serves as a brutal henchman and foil to the more refined Belloq, just as General Vader would have been to Crispin Hoedaack.

Although the rough draft describes Prince Valorum as wearing a "fascist black-and-chrome uniform," given his status as a Black Knight of the Sith, he presumably would have worn black robes, like the other Sith knight seen earlier in the script (and Darth Maul in TPM).

The black robes are a dark mirror of the earth-toned robes sported by the Jedi: a reflection of the Empire's perversion of a noble order of warriors.

Darth Maul's skin--mostly black, with red tattoos--reflects the idea Lucas probably had to cast Prince Valorum as an African-American.

Later on, Valorum is demoted in rank, and is seen wearing the uniform of a common stormtrooper. (At this stage the stormtroopers likely had black armor.)

I suspect that nobody would have been able to resist the temptation to add a black cape to Valorum's stormtrooper armor, just to make him stand out on screen.

(This is actually a Ralph McQuarrie concept of a Sith Lord from the third draft. But you get the idea.)

In the final scene at the end of the film, Valorum would undoubtedly have been shown wearing white robes, as a sign of his change of allegiance.

Oh, there's one additional thing I forgot to mention from Die Nibelungen.

As a condition for allowing Siegfried to wed Kriemhild, her brother Gunther asks Siegfried to help him win the hand of the fierce warrior woman Brunhild. Brunhild lives in far-off Iceland, in a castle on a high rock that is surrounded by a sea of fire.

The flames are prophesied to quench themselves at the approach of the world's mightiest warrior--and they do, as Siegfried approaches the castle.

This image is an obvious inspiration for Lucas's idea, seen in the first draft of ESB, that Darth Vader would live in a castle on a tall mountain surrounded by a sea of lava.

In the notes for the Journal of the Whills outline, Lucas's use of the names "Yoshiro" and "Brunhuld" as, respectively, the names of the good guys' and bad guys' planets (later to become Aquilae and Alderaan in the rough draft) is quite reflective of the sources these two names are derived from. Toshiro Mifune is a hero in Seven Samurai and Yojimbo; Brunhild is (in Fritz Lang's film, at least) portrayed as a villain.