I think the origins of “Father Vader” are probably even simpler than Kiminski’s theory once you take what we know of Star Wars’ development into account.
The Star Wars that hit theaters functions mostly as a standalone story, Lucas having “stolen the ending” of the two-parter he’d had in mind and ending up with a movie that in the broadest strokes resembles what’d become the overall trilogy in condensed form, and there’s really only a few major plot points it didn’t cover, two of the biggest ones being:
- The hero’s cyborg father makes a heroic sacrifice
- The “black knight” villain turns against the empire and saves the heroes
Hi Barfolomew,
The thing with the “stolen the ending” part is that, looking at Rinzler’s ‘Making of Star Wars’, I can’t seem to find a draft or synopsis of the first film where there WAS NOT going to be a final space battle involving the Imperial battle station. I know that supposedly FOX wanted Lucas to consider cutting that from the ending…
Hi, I appreciate your response, especially your taking the time to look into this! It’s been a while since I reviewed all the info of the drafts, I recall that there are at least one or two that end with the escape from the floating prison complex in the skies of Alderaan, climaxing in a battle, though not with the Death Star (or equivalent).
I’ll see what I can find. It’d certainly be something if none of the drafts actually conform to this, because it really seems “split the movie in two” and “stole the ending from the second half” are near-axiomatic in Star Wars behind the scenes lore (also the way Empire + Jedi together look very conspicuously like an elongated two-part retelling of Star Wars would seem to support it, but hey maybe he just decided to repeat the whole darn thing regardless, lol).