The Empire Strikes Back (11/28/77 Story Synopsis Reconstruction)

As part of a personal project dedicated to delving into the script history of The Empire Strikes Back, I put together a loose reconstruction of the original 1977 story treatment by George Lucas. This involved combining information from a number of sources, chiefly JW Rinzler’s book but also supplements (including the whole of the first two pages) from Michael Kaminski’s “Secret History of Star Wars” and (to a lesser extent) “Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplay”. To my knowledge, this is the closest to the original story treatment that a non-insider can get.

You can find it here.

Let me know what you think (or if I’ve made any factual errors).

I enjoyed reading that mate - nice one 😃

It certainly wouldn’t be out of place up on the Starkiller – The Jedi Bendu Script Site.
 

oojason said:

I enjoyed reading that mate - nice one 😃

It certainly wouldn’t be out of place up on the Starkiller – The Jedi Bendu Script Site.
 

Thank you!

Do they take submissions? Best I can tell, there hasn’t been anything new there in years.

Such a fun read, thanks for putting that together!

What’s the source of this? Because Hoth was originally the name of the planet Cloud City was on, in the first draft of the script.

SparkySywer said:

What’s the source of this? Because Hoth was originally the name of the planet Cloud City was on, in the first draft of the script.

I list my sources on the last page of the document.

Judging from the notes in Rinzler’s Making of ESB, Lucas came up with two different lists of possible planet names around the same time. One of them IIRC features “Hoth” as the name for the Rebel base planet, but the other uses it as the name for the cloud planet. Lucas favored one set in the handwritten outline he produced during the story conferences, but evidently the other is what Leigh Brackett went with.