yotsuya said:
When you investigate where the name came from, it is almost impossible to ignore Dark Father and the implication that he was someone’s father from the very beginning.
No.
If you want to go from the very beginning, in the original outline Vader isn’t even part of the story. In the next writing (first script), he’s just a military officer.
- “He slaps DARTH VADER, a tall, grim-looking general, on the back…”
He’s not the Central tragic figure, Chosen One, destroyer of worlds Lucas morphed him into decades later. He isn’t related to any of the characters. He isn’t Annikin. In fact, the separate character of Annikin is considerably younger than Luke.
- “ANNIKIN STARKILLER, a tall, heavy-set boy of eighteen.”
Vader wasn’t Luke’s father in Brackett’s script for The Empire Strikes Back either. That change came along later when Lucas rewrote her work.
Leia being Luke’s sister would be another such item that Lucas would not tell anyone the real story until it was time.
No.
- “LUKE SKYWALKER, Commander of the Aquilaean Starforce. He is a large man, apparently in his early sixties…”
PRINCESS LEIA, about fourteen years old…"
Their being related was a late change while writing Return Of The Jedi as a way to tie up the “There is another” line from The Empire Strikes Back. When Lucas decided to scrap films 7, 8, 9 (or was that 10, 11, 12?), he had to scramble to come up with “another”.
Also, the saber duel on the lava planet was planned from the beginning. I knew about it very early on.
No.
For the film Star Wars, the original outline and the first four scripts have no mention what so ever of a lava duel. That wouldn’t come along until an early draft of Return Of The Jedi and even then it was Luke fighting Vader. The lava had nothing to do with Vader needing a suit.
I occasionally peruse a Saga forum to get a feel for the climate when a new trailer or bit of news is released. I understand there are lots of fans who want the saga to be a clean, contained, planned-from-day-one story. I understand they are under the impression that Lucas * genuflect * was some sort of profound creator of their world.
Unfortunately (for them) there are decades of evidence proving that just isn’t the case.
If you dig The Tragedy Of Darth Vader saga, cool, but don’t kid yourself that it was all planned from the very beginning as some sort of Original Vision ™. It wasn’t.