ATMachine

I finally figured out an explanation for why Vader was angry Admiral Ozzel came out of lightspeed “too close to the system” during the Imperial attack on Hoth.

If the Imperial Fleet ships were to simply hang back and wait for the Rebels to notice their presence, then they would be well-positioned to destroy any Rebel ships trying to flee the planet and escape into hyperspace.

But with the fleet in close proximity to the planet, then Rebels fleeing Echo Base have a chance of slipping through the blockade and getting into hyperspace before the Star Destroyers can turn around and give chase.

This might have worked as a means to mount a surprise attack, as Ozzel evidently hoped… but the Rebels had a shield generator that prevented making an attack from orbit, which the fleet commanders apparently didn’t know about until arriving at Hoth. At which point Vader orders a ground assault to take out the generator, which otherwise wouldn’t have been necessary.

So Vader’s original plan accounts for the possibility of a Rebel shield, saves Imperial lives, and also works to make sure more Rebels fall into the Imperial dragnet.

You’re confusing the ideas for a low-budget sequel, which George Lucas considered while making the original film (in case it performed poorly at the box office), with the much more expansive ideas for a Sequel Trilogy, conceived during production of ESB.

In the former case, Lucas was genuinely afraid that SW would be a flop, and took measures while writing the 1976 fourth draft to make the film work as a standalone story if necessary: by doing things like introducing Tarkin as a proxy character for the Emperor, whose death represents the Empire’s eventual defeat.

However, he also talked to Alan Dean Foster about doing a novel or two, which could be used as the basis for a couple of TV movies in case fully-fledged cinematic sequels weren’t possible. Those discussions led to Splinter of the Mind’s Eye – which at the time was conceived as being a potential capstone to Luke’s journey. Hence Leia survives her duel with Darth Vader, but is badly scarred, while Luke kills Vader and thus avenges his father’s murder.

(One reason Lucas was panicked about not getting the chance to do sequels was that even back in 1975, he’d already envisioned SW as a trilogy, plus at least one prequel film: echoing Richard Wagner’s Ring Cycle operas, a “trilogy with a prelude”.)

In the latter case, the massive success of SW 1977 led Lucas to start more expansive planning for sequels, and hitting upon the idea of a trilogy of trilogies.

It seems that at that point, Lucas wanted the film after ESB to feature the defeat of Darth Vader, but also the demise of Han and Leia. Probably this was a result of the chemistry between Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford; Lucas had wanted Luke to “get the girl”, but real life moved events in another direction.

Lucas mentioned in the newsletter Bantha Tracks that the Sequel Trilogy would focus on “the character who survives Star Wars III”, almost certainly meaning Luke. As we also know, the plan was for the ST to focus on Luke’s adventures with his long-lost sister, and their defeat of the Emperor.

Boba Fett being the agent of either Han or Leia’s demise in “Star Wars III” probably figures in to what Craig Miller meant when he mentioned Fett’s expanded role. One possibility would’ve been for Leia to be killed in battle by Boba Fett’s disintegrator: turning her into dust, like the planet Alderaan she was princess of.

Star Wars Insider issues #145-146 have some pretty substantial excerpts from the 1976 story conferences of Lucas talking with Alan Dean Foster about SOTME. Apparently Luke was going to kill Vader in the original “low-budget sequel” ending, and Leia ended up pretty badly scarred from the duel. (Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, lightsaber beam in the body’s eye, I’d guess…)

Well, the online scan of the typewritten version of Brackett’s draft does make the love triangle explicit, since Darth Vader offers to help Luke win Leia’s hand if he joins the Dark Side.

Although I don’t think the Brackett draft is “more dramatic” overall; it’s very talky and undoubtedly needed work that she probably would’ve undertaken if she hadn’t passed away.

none said:

In Craig Miller’s “Star Wars Memories” page 165 there is an image of “Leigh Brackett’s Longhand Outline for The Empire Strikes Back”. It is explained that she created the outline after listening to Lucas and Kurtz explain their ideas in the pitch meeting. Has anyone seen this image in a readable form? The image version in the book is too small to read, the document is three pages, full of handwritten notes, one for each act.

I’d never heard of this document before. I’d love to see a legible version also, as I hadn’t realized that any of Brackett’s notes from the story conference had survived besides the first-draft script itself.

Given that Luke outright gives the droids to Jabba, I’m pretty sure he’s expecting Jabba to want to do things the hard way.

V.I.N.Cent said:

ATMachine said:

V.I.N.Cent said:

Interesting how the ROTJ logo very obviously doesn’t fit with the two prior films’ vintage logo designs.

I am with you ATMachine, and much prefer the boxier ROTJ alternatives, which match the other logos better:

or

^ even without the box lines itself?

Did ROTJ have any vintage logo designs that were slanted to mimic the crawl effect? SW and ESB had them, as demonstrated in that poster, but I don’t know about ROTJ.

Judging from the notes in Rinzler’s Making of ESB, Lucas came up with two different lists of possible planet names around the same time. One of them IIRC features “Hoth” as the name for the Rebel base planet, but the other uses it as the name for the cloud planet. Lucas favored one set in the handwritten outline he produced during the story conferences, but evidently the other is what Leigh Brackett went with.

V.I.N.Cent said:

Interesting how the ROTJ logo very obviously doesn’t fit with the two prior films’ vintage logo designs.

I can buy starfighter designs changing between AOTC and ROTS due to the needs of an ongoing war and battlefield testing resulting in improved technology.

However, it’s kind of ridiculous that the ship designs were so entirely made in CGI without any practical models that the cockpits wouldn’t actually fit real humans. So the actors in the cockpit rigs had to have their legs dangling out of the bottom just off-camera.

I was always fine with Rey Nobody - it’s a central theme of SW, or ought to be, that your destiny isn’t determined just by your blood.

Honestly I don’t think RJ works well with characters he didn’t create himself. He’s probably a far better director without having to deal with a collaborative series of films.

“The dead speak!”

The first line of the opening crawl.

Clones are people t… oh, that joke’s been done to death.

I think a huge problem is that the characters do stupid things that realistically they wouldn’t do. Particularly in the Canto Bight arc.

“Yup, them’s the shuttle parkers.” Seriously? The heroes are on a top-secret covert mission where remaining under cover is absolutely critical, and the first thing they do is ignore the instructions of the casino valet and rush off, leaving a cloud of suspicion? Are these our heroes or incompetent bunglers?

“Did you find the codebreaker?” “We found a codebreaker!” Because they’re all interchangeable, and it doesn’t matter if the heroes specifically failed to get the one guy Maz Kanata told them to, right? It’s not like the survival of the Resistance depends on it or anything.

Obviously this ties into the humor issue. I’d say a major flaw in the film is how with Poe, Finn & Rose it frequently goes for humor over characterization, to the point of undermining the entire idea that these characters are military operatives on what they think is a vitally important secret mission.

https://comicbook.com/starwars/2019/12/29/star-wars-the-rise-of-skywalker-filmmakers-discussed-splitting-two-parts-chris-terrio/

Because apparently Lucasfilm & Disney considered making this film even MORE of a cash-grab cliché by doing the Harry Potter two-part finale thing.

I think Padme’s ships are good designs, but I don’t see why they had to be constantly reinvented every movie.

ray_afraid said:

Broom Kid said:

I can think he’s wrong, but I don’t have to let it personally affect me to the point where I’m indulging in conspiracy theories and ugly insults.

There’s only a very small fraction of sad weirdos doing that.
I’m not attacking the man or anything, but I don’t like his stance on this.
Suppression of history is wrong. It’s something George himself used to preach about.

Back in the day he talked a lot about how it was wrong to suppress history. Now his actions demonstrate it.

ray_afraid said:

NeverarGreat said:

Where they keep the ladders on the various small fighters in this universe is something that bothers me late at night.

Rope ladder.

But 1980!Luke had a bulky metal ladder somehow on Dagobah…

Broom Kid said:

I think that’s his daughter?

It’s yet another JJ Abrams ripoff of Wrath of Khan, in this case by cutting out the explanation of her parentage, Peter Preston-style.

In LucasArts’ 1990s rail-shooter game Rebel Assault II, the plot was the player had to find & destroy an Imperial factory that produced special top-secret TIE fighters with cloaking devices. You got to fly one at one point, and the FMV cutscenes showed the ship had an elevator in the bottom of the cockpit for entry & exit. (Though it wasn’t exactly a standard TIE “eyeball” cockpit shape, but more like the one on the Millennium Falcon.)

I’m honestly impressed that simple thing like TIE fighters landing breaks the idea of a single monolithic “canon” into a thousand shards.

Mostly because, if the TIE is sitting propped up on its tall solar fins, how in the world do you get in and out of the cockpit?

Disney: What do you want on your toast?
TFA: Processed cheese!
TLJ: Marmite!
TFA: Processed cheese!

Evidently it’s all the tonal whiplash I feared it would be. Half the fandom hated TLJ, which had a lot of flaws but did try something new, and now at least half the fandom hates this movie, which works so hard to undo TLJ that it makes nonsense of the entire Sequel Trilogy.

If LFL wanted to destroy Star Wars, this would be a damn good way to go about it.