Hi all, I thought you’d all find this interesting:
Gary Kurtz:
“When we made Star Wars, Vader and Anakin were two separate people. The idea that Vader was Luke’s father didn’t exist. I remember Lucas talked about Anakin having killed Vader and then taking his identity, but that was dropped early on. The whole twist in Empire was new and unexpected.”
Star Wars Insider #138, 2011
So @Barfolomew and @Channel72 were basically right. The paradigm of the Brackett draft of ESB was factually correct as it goes, but also wasn’t telling the whole story: Lucas indeed had an earlier version of the twist when they were making the first film, no less, but it was ultimately dropped. Lucas then came up with the ‘Vader killed Luke’s father’ story for the final script (the Revised fourth draft), and this is what went into film. This notion was still in place
when they started work on Empire. When it came to the second draft (by Lucas alone), Lucas re-worked his earlier dropped idea, and merged the Vader and Annikin(Anakin)Luke’s father characters, and the rest is history.