Very cool stuff! I love studying the history of SW and the “when was Vader made Luke’s father” debate is one of my favorite topics to research. I’ve done a lot of analysis on the topic (based off of both the discoveries of other people, a few discoveries I’ve made myself, and the confirmed documented SW history like the Lucasfilm books and the public older drafts) and as of now I personally believe that Lucas is genuinely telling the complete truth that he had the Vader=Anakin twist fully conceived in its entirety by the third draft of ANH and just briefly considered scrapping it during ESB’s writing. I’ve gathered a lot of evidence to back this up, which I’d be happy to share with you guys if you’re interested.
I highly doubt Marcia’s claim is real. In that same interview that she said that, she said so many other things about SW’s history and her role in stuff that’s just blatantly not true; An example includes her saying “I never even knew there were two stories” which is obvious nonsense because the second ANH draft ends with a sequel teaser, Lucas said to Foster in December 1975 he planned two sequels and a prequel, and Mark Hamill said the actors were all signed on for a trilogy and Lucas mentioned an Episode IX to him in 1976, and I highly doubt George wouldn’t have told his own wife and editor about these plans especially since he already asked her for help with story related stuff multiple times before. Other examples include Marcia saying she suggested to Lucas to cut the Luke and Biggs scenes when Rinzler’s book says Marcia fought to keep them in, Marcia saying the idea of killing Obi-Wan was entirely hers when George said in a 1977 interview (which is years before the divorce so there’s no bias there) that he was already considering the idea of killing Obi-Wan at the time Marcia suggested it, and more. So for now I’m taking Marcia’s claim with a grain of salt because it doesn’t seem like Marcia’s recollection of SW’s history in general is very accurate or unbiased.
@Tosche Station, I’ve read through your posts on both here and the Jedi Council forums on this topic, and I just want to say I really admire your research and theories; you’ve come up with some fantastic and really well ideas and takes on this topic that I never even thought of. I would like to know though where this “google search link” where you found this alleged Kurtz quote is located; I copied and pasted the contents of your quote into Google multiple times and nothing came up. It sounds very intriguing and I’m curious to see it myself. But even if it’s real, it seems to make very little sense to me for two reasons:
The idea that Lucas had Vader being Anakin planned in the third draft, but then completely dropped it by the fourth draft, is pretty hard to believe because as far as I know, almost nothing about Vader and Anakin actually changed between the third and fourth draft. The only thing that changed was mention of Luke being raised by Anakin as a young kid being removed, but we know that was still Lucas’s intention even after it was removed from the script because Lucas told Brackett in the ESB conferences that Anakin was the one who brought Luke to Owen and Lucas also said in an interview in 1979 “The prequels are about the early life of Luke’s father when Luke was a little boy”. We’ve also got things you mentioned like Anakin being a pilot and being killed by Vader being mentioned in the fourth draft for the first time, but I think that’s likely just a result of Lucas deciding Luke shouldn’t know his father is a Jedi and Ben telling Luke about him, which was decided by a random note as shown in Rinzler’s Making of Star Wars book.
I found a video showing a clip where Kurtz is interviewed where he mentions that he doesn’t believe Vader was always intended as Luke’s father, and he mentions nothing about a “Anakin killed Vader” version of the twist at all. It’s shown in the youtube video “how to watch Star Wars: the George Lucas sequel trilogy” by Rick Worley at 1:40:51
Hi, Avimo! I’d be interested in your research!
I agree totally with you and your take regarding Marcia Lucas.
Whether or not Kurtz said what was in that quote I found via a google search - which btw I’m no longer able to find - I think that the idea did exist as a rumor circa 1980, 1981. I also happen to think it’s possible that the rumor was generated by a leak from LFL to the sci-fi/fantasy community. Meaning, I think there was an original version of the twist planned by Lucas during the writing of the first film*, STAR WARS(ANH). The leak may have been deliberate obfuscation or a genuine, unplanned leak. Like you, I also find it hard to believe that the twist would have been completely dropped by Lucas around the time of writing the fourth draft, after having been part of the submerged deep story underlying the third draft. I think that the “we find out who Darth Vader is at the end of the second book (sequel)” statement by Lucas back in December of 1975 during a production/story meeting, is referencing a twist of some kind involving Vader being Luke’s father or tied to him in some way, rather than part of the Vader-killed-Luke’s father version which anyway didn’t appear in script form until several months (almost three) after this December 1975 statement from Lucas.
- *Iow, the twist was NOT invented ex-nihilo during the writing for EMPIRE(ESB), despite what offical LFL ‘orthodox’ and the ‘general consensus’ among fans and moviegoers say. The original Vader-father twist was either: Option A - Vader was a clone of Luke’s father, and killed Luke’s father due to believing that he (Vader) was the ‘real deal’, and because of that genuine belief, he told Luke in EMPIRE that he’s his father. Option B - Vader had an affair with Annikin/Anakin’s wife, Annikin really did die, and thus Vader was Luke’s true biological father. Option C - Luke’s father Annikin killed the first, original Darth Vader sometime during the back-story, then took on his identity and became the Darth Vader we know in the original trilogy. This version of Vader would then try to make things right at the end of EMPIRE or beginning of JEDI, asking Luke to help him. In this version, he became Vader for more noble reasons. edit: The final, ‘canonical’ version of the twist revealed in ROTJ, was actually created/written during the development and scripting phase of JEDI, not for that of EMPIRE. Edit: I’ve noticed that in the 1983 documentary “From Star Wars to Jedi: The Making of a Saga”, Lucas only said that Vader being Luke’s father and the helmet/mask coming off were part of the ‘original story’ that he had already as subtext of the first film ANH, but he doesn’t say that the redemption angle for Vader was part of that story. I find that omission a little interesting.
- I watched the Rick Worley video. To me, Kurtz is giving the ‘agnostic’, producer and audience orientated ‘surface’ perspective of the first film, where Vader being the father is not an obvious part of the surface plot. I think that came from a Q&A session Kurtz did around 2004 or so. I agree with Worley that Kurtz’s mid/late 90’s-early 2000’s narrative about Lucas ‘tossing’ out the ‘original outline’ that was written for JEDI doesn’t make sense, as Kurtz wouldn’t have been around when Lucas wrote his story treatments and drafts for JEDI in late 1980/early 1981. So that would leave the time-frame of when EMPIRE was in development and production, an implication which would raise more questions - Lucas already having an outline for JEDI while EMPIRE was not even half-way finished(?).
IF I am right about the existence of the original twist(s) that may have been planned by Lucas - starting with SW and only being modified or completely changed with ROTJ - then it wouldn’t be out of bounds in my opinion to surmise that perhaps upon Kurtz leaving LFL, Kurtz and Lucas made a mutual agreement never to openly discuss this particular matter, except only in what can be described as contradictory accounts that are only half-truths at best.
Alright, cool! I’ll share it in a separate reply later today or tomorrow.
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(2) That’s a very interesting theory. My main problem with the “Originally Annikin killed Vader” theory is that the idea seems too unnecessarily complicated; If Lucas originally wanted to reveal that Vader-who-is-really-Annikin was a good guy spying on the Empire, he could accomplish this without having there be a “real Vader” who Annikin killed and impersonated. What exactly would the purpose of there having been a real Vader in the past be? Also, the “Vader killed Luke’s father” thing first appeared just a few days after Lucas’s meeting with Foster; it’s in the original fourth draft of ANH (https://www.starwarz.com/starkiller/star-wars-the-adventures-of-luke-starkiller-as-taken-from-the-journal-of-the-whills/).
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Yep, I think the idea that the twist never occurred to Lucas before ESB’s second draft is by far the most unlikely possibility. These are all cool theories! I agree that Lucas changed something about Vader’s backstory in ROTJ’s writing (in fact, there’s proof he did–ROTJ’s writing is confirmed to have been when Lucas changed Vader’s turn from after Luke’s birth to before), but personally I don’t think the twist itself ever changed apart from the brief ESB period Lucas considered cutting it out completely. Option A doesn’t make too much sense to me because if this was the case, why would Obi-Wan not want to tell Luke that? Option B is possible, but pretty unlikely to me for two reasons: The first is the fact that the details in ANH that can be interpreted as foreshadowing to the twist (e.g. The similar lightsabers, Owen’s “that’s what I’m afraid of” and “Obi-Wan died at the same time as your father” lines, Obi-Wan’s hesitant look, etc) only work if Vader is Anakin. Second off, Lucas’s second draft of ESB has Vader saying to Luke before the twist that the Force is strong in the Skywalker family. If Luke was not actually a Skywalker, why would Vader say that? And yeah that omission is intriguing, but Lucas did say in later decades that the redemption was always part of the story and I’ve found evidence indicating Lucas is very likely telling the truth which I’ll share along with the rest of my evidence.
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That’s fair. As for Kurtz’s claims about ROTJ and the sequels, for a while I also believed that Kurtz’s claims were nonsense, but then after studying some things I found some evidence that indicates that he may have partially been telling the truth all along. First off, Chris Taylor once questioned Kurtz on his claims and Kurtz responded that they were indeed from a ROTJ outline made during ESB’s development (https://mashable.com/archive/star-wars-myths-gary-kurtz). While normally I’d agree with you that this doesn’t make sense, there’s actually evidence that Lucas was indeed working on ROTJ during ESB’s writing. Howard Kazanjian and Lawrence Kasdan have claimed in interviews before that Return of the Jedi was the original title for the film, but they told Lucas it was a weak title, so he made it Revenge of the Jedi. However in Lucas’s interviews with Alan Arnold from 1979, Lucas explicitly states “The next chapter is called Revenge of the Jedi”. So if Kazanjian and Kasdan indeed told Lucas to change ROTJ’s name, that had to have happened during ESB’s writing.
Second off, Kurtz’s descriptions of what the original ROTJ and original PT were about does seem to line up with certain things. The first episode originally being about the origins of the Jedi makes sense because Lucas said in an old interview “The first episode takes place so far back that even Darth Vader wasn’t born yet”. Leia being crowned queen at the end makes sense because Leia being crowned queen was featured in the rough and first drafts of ANH, and it was also originally planned to be included in the second draft as shown in the notes Rinzler describes (And likely was going to be in the Princess of Ondos sequel since Lucas said the idea of sequels resulted from him splitting a big script into parts, and that statement does seem to line up with Rinzler’s note). Han dying was smth Lucas had in his Episode VII he sold to Disney according to Harrison Ford, and Lucas also told the EU writers it was okay to kill Han off, so it’s plausible that Lucas may have initially been more open to killing Han off in ROTJ before deciding ROTJ would resolve everything and subsequently want to give it a “fairytale ending”. In addition, Kurtz presents an alternate version of the story in the Taylor interview-contrary to what he said in 2010 about Lucas having Han die until toy sales made him change his mind, Kurtz says that it was his own idea as well as Ford’s for Han to die and Lucas simply took it into consideration, while the toy sales thing was just an assumption/theory on Kurtz’s part. So it seems like Kurtz just exaggerated when he talked about the original ROTJ/sequels and didn’t completely lie.
Lastly, Kurtz’s claims about the sequel trilogy were 100% correct and there is actually CONCRETE PROOF of this that’s been under our noses the entire time. Around a year ago, I found an alleged Lucas quote from a random forum that would prove Kurtz’s claims about the ST are real, which the user who posted caimed came from Star Wars Archives 1977-1983 by Paul Duncan. At the time I thought it was probably fake, but just to be sure, I bought the book, and to my surprise, the quote was right there. Duncan presents in his book an expanded version of the Lucas-Brackett ESB conferences that were shown in Rinzler’s Making of ESB book, and in it Lucas says to Brackett (and these are the exact quotes) “Don’t introduce sister for about three more films”, and “The Emperor has to go for at least three more episodes after Vader-he’s got to last a lot longer”. So that 100% proves that what Kurtz said about Episodes VIII and IX were at true at some early point. In fact, it seems like Kurtz’s claim that he was there when Lucas scrapped that plan is also true, because Lucas said in a May 19th 1980 interview that the last three episodes were about the rebuilding of the republic, which means Lucas scrapped the original ST plan at some point between 1977 and 1980. Idk why Rinzler omitted that part of the story conferences from his book, I assume he just never found it or smth.
It’s honestly beyond me why almost no one seems to know that this 1977-1983 Archives book exists. Tons of people have read the 1999-2005 Archives book and shared all it’s interesting info, but I’ve barely ever seen anyone acknowledge all the new info the 1977-1983 book reveals. And btw the revelation about Kurtz’s ST being real isn’t the only new info this book has; There’s a ton of other interesting things Duncan discusses with Lucas in that book. One interesting thing is Lucas revealing to Duncan that had Obi-Wan been sent Leia’s message without Luke’s involvement, Obi-Wan still would’ve picked up Luke and made him come along. Another interesting thing is the expanded Lucas-Brackett story conferences Duncan shows contains the discussion about Luke’s father that Rinzler mentioned but didn’t include, and contrary to what believers of the Kaminski narrative thought at the time, it does NOT have any secret info proving Vader wasn’t always Luke’s father which Lucas covered up; It’s literally just Lucas repeating to Brackett the same story he told Rolling Stone in August 1977, where Vader and Luke’s father and Ben are all friends and Vader kills Luke’s father right before the duel with Obi-Wan, except with a little bit more detail as well as it being a nuclear reactor instead of a volcano, which Bouzerau already mentioned was a thing at one point in his Annotated Screenplays book. Lucas later mentions to Duncan (when talking about the Brackett conferences) in the Archives book that “I don’t really tell everything in the story conferences because by then I knew that people were scrounging all over garbage cans to try and find out everything, and I wanted to keep some things a surprise”, which also lines up perfectly with Lucas’s earlier statement to Bouzereau that he didn’t tell Brackett about the Vader twist because he wasn’t sure if he wanted it in ESB or ROTJ yet. In fact, the entire “George Lucas is a liar who runs a secret cover-up plot to hide SW’s true history” theory (which started out as the speculation of random forum users on a random thread), is largely debunked by that Archives book because in the book, Duncan notices how Leia wasn’t Luke’s sister in the plan he told Brackett, so Duncan deduces some things weren’t entirely planned and points that out to Lucas. And Lucas in response doesn’t deny this at all and outright says smth like (paraphrasing here because the actual quote is really long) “I don’t have the entire thing planned out like some directors do, it’s not my nature. I do nothing but rewrite, even in the editing room”.
That doesn’t sound like something someone who wanted to cover up not having things planned would say. -
That’s possible, but why would Lucas or Kurtz want to sign such an agreement to never talk about it? What would they get out of it?