ATMachine

The fifth draft has surfaced, it’s just not on Starkiller - there was a PDF floating around some movie-script sites on the Internet a few years back.

The fifth draft omits Rieekan’s death scene; it plays out like in the final film, with the command center falling apart around Leia but Rieekan absent for whatever reason.

Where is that music at the beginning of the promo (4:40 in the video) from?

Genuine question: does the FOV of the shot indicate that Yavin IV would be visible from the Death Star? An observer watching from a third point in space (like the camera here) might be able to look on either side of the Yavin gas giant to see both objects, but they might not be able able to see each other nonetheless.

The ARC-170 is based on the Y-Wing fighter from the January 1975 second draft, which had a pilot, a top/rear tail-gunner bubble turret, and a bombardier position. At that point there weren’t X-Wings, so the Y-Wings were the primary Rebel starfighter.

Colin Cantwell’s original Y-Wing concept had the bombardier seats on the bottom of the fuselage, but the ARC-170 has it on top, as with the Y-Wing’s real-world inspiration, the World War II Grumman TBF Avenger.

During the assault on the Death Star in the January 1975 second draft, Luke flies a Y-Wing as pilot, Chewie Antilles (forerunner of Wedge) is the tail-gunner, and C-3PO and R2-D2 are the bombardiers.

(The 1974 rough draft describes pre-Ralph-McQuarrie R2-D2 as “a short multi-armed tripod”, basically a miniature version of the Martian tripods from HG Wells’ War of the Worlds. This idea later influenced the designs of BD-1 in Jedi: Fallen Order and ID-10 in Battlefront II.)

The three- or four-person Y-Wings in the January 1975 second draft are descended from four-person Imperial starfighters in the 1974 rough draft, which are stolen by rebellious Wookees and used to attack an Imperial space fortress orbiting Leia’s home planet. The Wookees also paint the craft in bright Chris-Foss-style colors, kind of like Sabine Wren’s stolen TIE fighter on Rebels.

The 1974 rough draft also features lighter “destroyer-class” two-person starfighters. Leia’s homeworld of Aquilae uses a model with a pilot in front and a navigator in a separate rear bubble, somewhat like the snowspeeders on Hoth in ESB; the Empire uses two-man “stardestroyers” that have pilot & gunner sitting side-by-side, like the cloud cars on Bespin. (Fitting since the cloud city was the Imperial capital city in the 1974 rough draft).

Right. It’s possible the name Palpatine could’ve gone the way of Owen Lars being Obi-Wan’s brother.

The ending of Mad Max Fury Road was basically what I’d imagine a Gary Kurtz-style “bittersweet” ROTJ ending to be. Just substitute Nux with Han, Furiosa with Leia, and Max with Luke.

At least, something like that was probably Kurtz’s idea for how to wrap up the OT in one film. Had George Lucas kept to the idea of an ST that introduced Luke’s lost sister, probably Han and Leia would both have been killed in ROTJ (as Lucas indicated in interview in Bantha Tracks: the sequel trilogy “deals with the character who survives Star Wars III”, meaning Luke).

It’s in the ROTJ novelization. Along with the name “Palpatine”, which isn’t in the film of ROTJ either.

I do think the Clone Wars-era Y-Wing design looks pretty neat. That and the Venator Cruiser are IMO the most successful PT ship designs meant to look like ancestors of OT ships.

Here are few suggestions for what the “shadow creature” might be. None of these are necessarily the “true” answer, they’re just possibilities.

Maybe it’s a dark Force user from long ago, trapped by the Jedi and imprisoned in some sort of Phantom Zone-like netherworld for his crimes. He’s manipulating Vader in order to get free, and is using the Empire to have revenge on the Jedi Order and Republic of old that imprisoned him.

Or similar to the above, but he’s an alien from a long-vanished stellar empire who survived due to his imprisonment, and is using the Empire to lay the groundwork for his own conquests, while working to get himself freed from his prison.

Or maybe it’s an evil spirit, a malign Force ghost that is bound to an ancient artifact Vader discovered.

Or perhaps it’s a being from another galaxy or another dimension, one that views Vader’s rule as a stepping stone toward invading and conquering the GFFA. (This reminds me of how Nom Anor was portrayed in the run-up to the Yuuzhan Vong old-EU storyline: see for instance the Crimson Empire comics.)

I should note that in the 1975 third draft, the “Sith Knights” were not necessarily an ancient order. The idea seems to have been that when the Emperor seized power, many Jedi rebelled against him and were killed, but others remained loyal to the nascent Imperial government and became Sith Knights. Rather like the Inquisitors of current SW “canon”.

In Lucas’ notes he also considered having “only seven Sith - one in each sector”, which goes with the Inquisitors being addressed by numerical rank.

However, in the second draft, from earlier in 1975, there were multiple Emperors over time, due to a gradual corruption and decline of the Republic, rather than a single power-hungry tyrant. This idea lingered into Alan Dean Foster’s novelization, via a reference to “the later corrupt Emperors”. It’s probably also connected to an idea George Lucas mentioned to Foster and Charles Lippincott of having Leia become Empress at the end of the trilogy.

The second draft goes a bit more into the origins of the Sith Knights: a runaway “Padawan-Jedi” named Darklighter taught the Dark Side of the Force to a group of “Sith pirates”. “Sith” is an alternate spelling of “Sidhe”, so you might think of these as basically Space Elves. Apparently these Dark Side-wielding elf pirates were the nucleus of the Sith Knights who served the Empire when it arose later.

But again, some Sith were probably Jedi who turned rather than become victims of the Purge - this draft also mentions that some Jedi were tried by the corrupt Senate & executed. (From Lucas’ notes also is the mention that “Sith Knights look like Linda Blair in The Exorcist.”) The Sith Master, Prince Espaa Valorum, is Vader’s boss, and his residence is said to be on the Imperial cloud city of Alderaan, the floating prison from which Luke rescues his older brother Deak.

Plus, the second draft harps strongly on the notion that the Force runs in families - there were “several hundred Jedi families” before the Purge, while Luke’s father, the Starkiller (who is “over three hundred years old”), has trained at least seven of his sons to fight against the Empire. It wouldn’t surprise me if Lucas was setting up the second draft’s Valorum to be a secret Starkiller, another of Luke’s brothers.

The 1974 rough draft is more like the 1975 third draft in terms of treating the Sith Knights as simply fallen corrupted Jedi, who chose to serve the Empire rather than rebel against it. But in that draft the previous virtuous government was also an Empire, albeit a benign one - whereas the “New Empire” is evil, an aggressively expansionist state that has absorbed almost all the “independent Systems”.

…Also, in the 1974 rough draft there are no Force powers. At all. Jedi are fearsome warriors because of their intensive training, rather than telekinesis or mind-reading. There’s basically just a sense of premonition that is called “feeling the Force”.

What’s “The Lost Interviews”?

And there was a point where Lucas considered making ESB “Episode VII” (of 12), with the prequels having a Prologue and an Epilogue film wrapped around the central “Clone Wars Trilogy”. So SW 1977 could’ve become “Episode VI”.

Good question.

The idea of Vader having a dark Force master is one that goes back a ways; in the 1975 second draft Vader’s Dark Side master is Prince Espaa Valorum, the “Master of the Bogan Force”, an offscreen character who is evidently a shadow power behind the Emperor’s throne.

In the 1975 third draft and beyond, the Emperor was still seen as a warlord/tyrant/corrupt politician figure rather than a Sith sorcerer. But George Lucas was evidently playing with the idea of Vader taking orders from some sort of Dark Side boss figure, whether corporeal or not - perhaps not even part of this plane of existence. A mystery for future sequels, perhaps.

By the time of ESB, the two concepts were merged to some degree, with Palpatine becoming an evil counterpart of Yoda, as Vader is to Obi-Wan.

Another interesting passage is this one from Lucas’ 1977 story conference with Leigh Brackett, in JW Rinzler’s Making of ESB:

“We have to give Vader another environment, either another Death Star–type Imperial City or some kind of cave. Might be nice to give Vader a little castle on a rock in the middle of the ocean. One way to see him would be in a tall, dark tower, very narrow in a lava flow, dark, red, and burning, almost like hell. He’d be up in the tower with his gremlin, goblin type gargoyles surrounding him. His pets. Vader walks down the hall — these long, narrow, steel corridors, very gray — and he goes into a gray room. It’s all steel and there at the end of the room on a throne is a gray, macabre, cold steel box and it’s the Emperor. The Emperor tells Vader to get Luke — he is the last of the Jedi and must be stopped. Vader is saying he’s not a Jedi yet. Vader could talk to the Emperor with a viewscreen à la Flash Gordon.”

Which suggests the Emperor as some sort of person contained inside a life-support cubicle - like Guild Navigators in Frank Herbert’s Dune series, or Emperor Huon in Michael Moorcock’s Runestaff series. Or even a computer ruling the Empire in unfeeling machine fashion, picking up on the motifs in THX 1138.

Even during ROTJ, Phil Tippett noted that the makeup he designed for the Emperor was meant to suggest a strangely deformed cranium that was splitting into two, and that (quoting Rinzler’s Making of ROTJ) Palpatine was supposed to be “ancient, not old”, specifically “a Methuselah figure kept alive and intact by some unknown magic”.

AGAINST THE DEATH STAR might be a good title.

Tack said:

ATMachine said:

ZkinandBonez said:

ATMachine said:

FWIW, storyboard artist Alex Tavoularis designated his sketches of female Luke as “Luke”, without a name change.

That’s interesting. I just googled it and found this storyboard with a female Luke and according to the person who posted it its supposed to be from the 2nd draft. Makes me wonder if there exists a draft “2B” or something to that effect where its essentially the same script but with a female Luke.

It’s possible. There was something similar with the rough draft: a revised rough draft or “version 1A” where Lucas just went through and changed all the character names and some of the planet landscape descriptions to see if he found ones he liked better.

I like to think that this 2B draft existed at some point during McQuarrie’s involvement. The female Luke was the Starkiller’s only daughter and thus would meet a little extra adversity on her journey. It was quite an idea for Lucas to have at that time, especially since I still think he would have kept the love story between her and Han rather subtle. I suspect he didn’t keep with it because he thought the film in this state would be a hard sell.

The second draft does make the most sense of all the development drafts with a female Luke, if you ask me.

Agreed.

The change to a female lead in the second draft happened mostly because Lucas initially conceived the prisoner on the Imperial cloud city of Alderaan (later changed to the Death Star) as Luke’s older brother Deak. Meanwhile he couldn’t find a good place for the character of Princess Leia, whom he’d already had in the rough draft and wanted to reutilize. Hence why Leia Lars shows up as a bit character in the second draft, with her story held off for a sequel.

Then it occurred to him to swap out Deak’s role for Leia’s, and the female protagonist idea dropped out as no longer necessary to the story he wanted.

It might be worth mentioning that the handwritten subtitle “New Hope” shows up on John Williams’ scoring sheets, so it was an idea that had occurred to George Lucas before the film came out.

I suppose “Star Wars” film 1, “A New Hope”, sounded better than his previous idea, which was “The Adventures of Luke Skywalker” film 1, “The Star Wars”. That actually made its way into the novelization.

Published content, that is. The temp track for SW 1977 used classical composers who John Williams was told to riff on. IIRC Lucas actually considered releasing the film with that version of the music if Williams’ work didn’t turn out to be what he was looking for.

Perhaps because he doesn’t want people to remember him claiming to have a popular YouTube channel and access to lawyers powerful enough to threaten Vudu?

It honestly surprises me how many people even on this forum refer to the first Star Wars movie from 1977 as “ANH”. I do it sometimes just for the sake of clarity, but I cringe inwardly whenever I do.

ZkinandBonez said:

ATMachine said:

FWIW, storyboard artist Alex Tavoularis designated his sketches of female Luke as “Luke”, without a name change.

That’s interesting. I just googled it and found this storyboard with a female Luke and according to the person who posted it its supposed to be from the 2nd draft. Makes me wonder if there exists a draft “2B” or something to that effect where its essentially the same script but with a female Luke.

It’s possible. There was something similar with the rough draft: a revised rough draft or “version 1A” where Lucas just went through and changed all the character names and some of the planet landscape descriptions to see if he found ones he liked better.

FWIW, storyboard artist Alex Tavoularis designated his sketches of female Luke as “Luke”, without a name change.

I’ve never heard of “Luka” officially. I suppose female Luke might have been given Leia’s name, or something similar like Lara.

Or even just “Luke”. Like how Reverend Mother (Gaius Helen) Mohiam and Duke Leto Atreides both have genderbent first names in DUNE. (See also: Michael Burnham in Star Trek Discovery.)

It may have been because they were trying to kill this story:

Thousands affected after Disney temporarily suspends college program

DuracellEnergizer said:

Used to be alright with it, have since come to hate it. The episode numbers are needlessly restrictive, and have since been made pointless with the Anthology films.

I agree with Duracell - it sounds like a neat idea in theory, but in practice it locked Lucas (and his successors) into doing a set number of films in a structure that didn’t have as much room to evolve & breathe as it shhould.

oojason said:

It is quite difficult to ascertain just how many films George had in mind down the years 😉

Though if you back to the mid-late 1970’s era, before Star Wars '77 was a runaway success, George is on record stating he felt that Vader wasn’t strong enough as a main villain…
 

LUCAS: “I wouldn’t mind killing her off. (referring to Leia). The other thing we haven’t dealt with is Darth Vader. But Darth Vader, as we discovered in this picture, tends to be pushy; he’s not strong enough as the villain to hold the villain role. He doesn’t have the persona that you need. You really need a Cushing guy, a really slimy, ugly….”

LIPPINCOTT: “What if you unveiled him, unmasked him? Since he isn’t strong enough to hold up. Unmasked him and started building up a new villain who could continue into the next?”

LUCAS: “That’s an idea.”
 

^ from the Star Wars Splinter Of The Mind’s Eye Story Conference article at Cinetropolis.net. A transcribed conversation at the time of discussing a sequel to Star Wars - ‘Splinter Of The Minds Eye’ to not just be a novel - but a cheap-to-film sequel for Star Wars.
 

So, it’s a possibility that George had thoughts on other main villains lined up for Vader to work under in the continuing movies somewhere along the line - which could well have been Imperial Moffs and the like. There is a fair bit more on Lucas’ point of view that Vader not being up to much in the linked article above.
 

Note the date of the story conference: in mid-1976, when George Lucas was cutting together dailies of the original SW film with David Prowse’s broad Bristol accent speaking Vader’s lines instead of James Earl Jones’ menacing baritone. Lucas’ concerns about Vader being an ineffective villain would prove extraordinarily wide of the mark, in large part due to JEJ’s fantastic dub work.

In the 1975 second draft, Vader is indeed disposable: so much so that he dies kamikaze-crashing his starfighter into Han Solo’s pirate ship during the Death Star trench run. However, the film’s dialogue builds up another villain, Vader’s unseen boss Espaa Valorum, the “Master of the Bogan Force”, who would evidently take over his role in any sequels.

But by the 1975 third draft, Vader is obviously meant to stick around for a while; as Ben Kenobi tells Luke, he’s the guy who betrayed the Jedi in the climactic battle where Luke’s father died and the Jedi Order fell. And this more deadly Vader now survives the Death Star fight to stick around for future films. Even at this stage, Lucas was apparently planning some sort of secret identity for Vader, with a familial connection to Luke’s family history: in late 1975, Lucas told Alan Dean Foster that the second film would have the audience “learn who Darth Vader is”.

As for Grand Moff Tarkin, the character as such didn’t exist in the 1975 third draft: Vader was the sole major Imperial bad guy in the script. A “Grande Mouff Tarkin” is one of the Rebel leaders, but his title appears to suggest some sort of priest, akin to Friar Tuck of Robin Hood legends.

The character of Tarkin as we know him was added to the January 1976 fourth draft, as a proxy of sorts for the Emperor, whose death would allow for a satisfying conclusion if (as Lucas was beginning to fear at that time) SW didn’t make enough money to allow for full-fledged film sequels. (That this was becoming a concern for Lucas was evidenced by his turning to Alan Dean Foster to write SOTME as a concept that could be recycled into a low-budget TV movie, and doing other things like broadening the film’s audience by removing the planned violence and nudity.)

Tack said:

Adherence to ‘tradition’ makes the opening a little irksome to me. Jambe Davdar’s reconstruction of the storyboarded opening crawl is something I personally find a lot more interesting; a blue crawl over a snow-covered landscape, altogether different from the first film yet similar enough that an audience would be sure they came to the right film. Not to mention, opening with the launching of the probes removes a bit of the tension and mystery that was in the script; there are two threats, one to Luke and one to the Rebellion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdXzAcwyVrY

There’s one thing in that reconstruction that isn’t quite right: as I understand it, the original idea was to have the background plate be a top-down view of the snowy Hoth plains, so it would nearly be a featureless white.

Once the crawl finished, Luke on a tauntaun would ride into frame, and then the film would cut from a top-down view to a normal perspective.

Also, according to Rinzler’s Making of ESB, “a million worlds” was changed in the shooting script to “a thousand worlds”.