Heilemann said:
DuracellEnergizer said:
ATMachine said:
TOSCHESTATION on the TFN forums pointed out that early on in the book, Rinzler digs up a snippet of plot notes by Lucas which appear to be "pre-Empire":
"The Emperor is the evil one - he kills Luke's father. Vader begs Luke to kill him - he does."
These notes would appear to come from the liminal stage between ANH and ESB, when Lucas was reconsidering both the backstory of Father Skywalker and the notion that Vader was a dyed-in-the-wool irredeemable villain. But the obvious solution--to combine the two ideas into Father Vader--hadn't quite gelled yet.
Hmm ... interesting. IMO, this only makes Georgey's failure to create complex villains for the PT all the more pathetic.
Eh, what!?
For awhile now, I've been operating under the assumption that Lucas' transformation of Vader from a two-dimensional villain to a complex character with redeemable qualities was a pure accident - that under normal circumstances - and with no one around to reign him in - he's only capable of creating flat, stereotypically evil villains like those in the PT.
Seeing evidence that Lucas actually had the foresight to start Vader down upon a path of three-dimensionality, though, before the whole Vader = Father Skywalker development, turns that all around; it shows that there was a point in time when he actually cared about adding depth to his villains, but has long since chosen to go down the quick and easy path, and that is just plain sad.