Channel72

Sideburns of BoShek said:

If there’s any older fans out there who remember this time before the prequels, I’m curious if you could attest to what it was like during this time? Was the speculation more or less what the EU writers were hinting at? How shocking was it when these changes were made?

I’m old enough at least so that I was already a teenager when Phantom Menace came out, so I engaged in my fair share of speculation about the Star Wars backstory as told by Obi-Wan to Luke in A New Hope. I hadn’t read any of the EU material at that time, so the speculation was purely based off the OT and various playground rumors I picked up. I somehow knew that Anakin Skywalker fell into a lava pit while fighting Kenobi, which is how he became Vader. I was aware of the “OB1” idea that Kenobi was actually a clone - but I didn’t necessarily believe it. The basic assumption regarding the Clone Wars was that the clones were the bad guys - possibly associated somehow with Mandalorians - and they were fighting against the Republic (or maybe the early Empire). Anakin followed Kenobi on some “idealistic crusade” which was probably to fight for the Republic against the clones. Anakin and Kenobi were similar in age, and Anakin was known for his great star-fighter piloting skills. The Jedi Knights were kind of like Samurai who served the nobility (which is why Kenobi served Bail Organa.) Beyond that, I assumed very little.

I do remember assuming the Prequels would be much closer aesthetically/stylistically to the OT. And due to the mention of clones, I assumed the Prequels would have more of a “science fiction” angle to the story than the originals did. I also assumed that Alderaan and the Alderaanian royalty would play a much larger role in these stories. (The actual Prequels seem to have replaced Alderaan’s role with Naboo.)

There’s a fan-made plot synopsis/script outline that was circulating around in the 80s or early 90s which told the story of Episode 3. Obi-Wan is essentially the main character. The story also featured characters like “Lady Arcadia Skywalker”, who was Anakin’s wife, Bail Organa, and Captain Antilles. The story focuses a lot on the Alderaanian forces as Palpatine takes control of the Republic. There’s also a “Prince Valarium”, which indicates that whoever wrote this may have actually read (or at least heard details about) genuine early drafts of Star Wars. (They definitely read the ANH novelization at least.)

Anyway, this fan-made synopsis is close - both plot-wise and stylistically - to my vague expectations about the Prequels. At least, much closer than the actual Prequels that were released 1999-2005. I can’t say to what extent this fan-made synopsis was an amalgamation of pre-existing fan expectations, or to what extent it actually influenced fan expectations. I can’t even remember when or if I became aware of this plot synopsis as a child. But I can say with certainty that this plot synopsis is at least closer in spirit to what I expected from the Prequels.

Darth Vader is named after someone named Gary Vader, a resident of Modesto, California, who bullied George Lucas in high school. Also, this fact is only partially untrue, surprisingly.

These silly Ewok movies capture an aesthetic aspect of classic Star Wars which has all but disappeared since the Original Trilogy - which is the classic visuals/animatronics of a Jim Henson inspired production. This really doesn’t exist anymore since CGI replaced puppets. Not that Jim Henson style puppetry and animatronics always looked good - they sometimes looked really fake or stupid. But when it was done right, it often resulted in some really amazing, memorable visuals, now infused with nostalgia.

When TFA came out in 2015, Daisy Ridley’s performance - and her chemistry with Finn - was actually one of the major aspects I liked about the movie. It was such a breath of fresh air to see actual acting and chemistry after 3 Prequel movies of non-stop wooden acting and lifeless characters.

But that turned out to be just a small silver-lining after the Sequel Trilogy devolved into a catastrophic incoherent mess. As for the upcoming movie, Daisy Ridley is a good actress, but it’s hard to be too excited about this new movie. I mean, even Adam Driver’s amazing performance couldn’t save the Sequels. It’s really all about the writing - and so far Disney has been sorely lacking in that department.

Gandalf the Cyan said:

In my ideal prequels, Ep1 would’ve had Anakin as a heroic protagonist. Ep2 would plant the seeds of darkness in him, becoming an antihero, and by Ep3 would be about him turning to the dark side, with the definitive turn at the climax. He may only become evil at the very end of the trilogy, but it’s a much more gradual progression that doesn’t feel forced.

Agreed 100%. The OT was very character driven. Every scene followed the POV of a main character. It almost never cut to a location unless a main POV character was there. In contrast, the Prequels would often suddenly cut to the Senate, or Palpatine’s office, or random battles with no main characters (in ROTS at least). It was more like a historical documentary than a character-driven story (with the notable exception of Phantom Menace). Consider the Order 66 montage, for example - something that feels very un-Star Warsy and doesn’t mesh well with the film language of the OT.

I think the Prequels should have been mostly character driven, to mirror the OT. Stuff like how the Clone Wars began, or Palpatine’s rise to power, etc. should just be part of the backdrop - a given historical background against which the story unfolds. The main action should exclusively follow POV characters like Obi-Wan, Anakin and Padme, just like the OT followed Luke, Leia and Han. A better way to depict Order 66, for example, would be something like Clone Wars Season 7, where we follow a single character’s POV experience through the massacre.

Spartacus01 said:
The problem is that, as Mark Hamill also said, the hatred for the Prequels at the time went far beyond the simple “I don’t like them”. There are actors who have received death threats, actors who have even tried to commit suicide, and George Lucas was covered by a mountain of poop for almost 10 years.

I mean… who cares? Among any passionate fanbase, there will always be some small percentage of irredeemable assholes. But this stuff is often brought up to deflect criticism of the Prequels, or to imply that all criticism of the Prequels is somehow invalid or dangerous simply because it’s vaguely congruent with more extreme, anti-social behavior coming from 0.000000000001% of the fanbase. Anyone that actually sends a death threat to an actor over something like this is clearly deranged.

I mean, I do feel sympathy for people like Jake Lloyd and Ahmed Best, considering what they had to go through for the sake of their day job. But honestly that’s a sideshow, and it has nothing to do with how the Prequels were received in general. (Also Ahmed Best has a black belt in Jiu-Jitsu so I doubt any of these deranged morons would make fun of him to his face. He’s also clearly quite comfortable with making fun of the character he played, since he voiced Jar Jar in some Robot Chicken skits about Star Wars. As for Lucas, he’s actually covered with a mountain of cash, not poop.)

Anyway, the same thing happened again more recently with the Sequels. Some idiots on Twitter decide to harass one of the actors, and therefore all criticism of the Sequels is forever deflected. It’s like poetry, it rhymes.

Barfolomew said:

And yeah, he definitely didn’t do Brackett any favors by withholding whatever his plans at that moment were, because I think the biggest weakness of Brackett’s draft as a story (so aside from not really getting the feel of Star Wars right) is that she’s clearly having trouble getting a handle on Darth Vader as a character, struggling to find a throughline for his various motivations. What she seems to settle on is that Vader is insecure - first he’s obsessed with killing Luke because Luke’s victory over the Death Star humiliated him; then he wants to to turn Luke to his side because he’s tired of being afraid of the Emperor.

This is how I interpret Vader’s motivations in Brackett’s draft: In Act I, Vader’s is just a straightforward villain carrying out instructions to kill Luke. But then in Act II, two things happen that change Vader’s motivation: (1) he talks with the Emperor, where we learn Vader is afraid of his boss and there’s tension between the two of them, and (2) he discovers Luke is becoming very powerful while training on Dagobah. These two things make Vader decide to try and convert Luke to the Dark Side, so the two of them can team up and overthrow the Emperor. Vader believes he has a good chance of converting Luke, because of course Vader killed Luke’s father in this version, and thus can leverage this fact to harness Luke’s rage.

There’s nothing really wrong with this - it’s a good a way as any to handle Vader’s character arc, given the information Brackett had about Vader while writing this. It’s certainly not as good as the final version of ESB, but it more or less works.

Another semi-related thing I find interesting: in Brackett’s draft, there’s no “cave scene” on Dagobah. Instead, Vader appears to Luke through some kind of “force vision” and the two of them have a conversation, where Vader begins trying to convert Luke to the Dark Side. It reminds me of the Sequels, where Kylo Ren speaks with Rey via the Force while she trains. It’s a convenient (if clumsy) way to have the hero and villain communicate before their big showdown later. Although, Brackett portrays the conversation between Luke and Vader as more dream-like, whereas in the Sequels it comes off as a straightforward Force Zoom call.

NFBisms said:
My theory is that this will be a big source of the sectarian rebel tensions in the lead-up to the Alliance. Like I alluded to above, Luthen is basically a bolshevik accelerationist. Revolution on his terms is dirty, brutal, and spearheaded by a professional vanguard of gangsters and spies. Mon’s canonical call for Open Rebellion is the inevitable clash with that clandestine exclusivity, but I think what’s added to it with the development of a culture and religion rally, is that for once there might be a tangible, coherent ideology to the so-called “Alliance to Restore The Republic”, one that addresses what exactly makes The Empire more evil than the Old Republic.

Yeah - I mean, historical parallels are always tricky and inexact, but I think what you say about Luthen here is essentially correct. But I interpreted Mon Mothma as basically aligned ideologically with Luthen, rather than viewing the two as representing opposing sides of something like an eventual Bolshevik/Menshevik split. Mon Mothma finances Luthen’s revolutionary activities. She comes off as less “Machiavellian” than Luthen mostly because she operates as a public figure in the middle of a technological police state. (Mon’s cousin Vel also is presumably aligned ideologically with Luthen.) The fact that Mon does some Menshevik type things - like working with the Imperial Senate and Galactic elite to fight oppressive legislation - doesn’t really put her in opposition to Luthen’s attempts to pull off an “October revolution”. Mon’s public activities in the Senate (and her ineffective opposition to Palpatine) are something of a cover story. She’s a Bolshevik in Menshevik clothing, if anything.

for once there might be a tangible, coherent ideology to the so-called “Alliance to Restore The Republic”, one that addresses what exactly makes The Empire more evil than the Old Republic.

Yeah. I mean, the movies don’t explore this beyond a very superficial level. But clearly, we’re supposed to understand that the Empire is worse than the Old Republic because the Empire isn’t a democracy, at least after Alderaan. (Oh yeah, also that little matter of blowing up Alderaan.) But we don’t really even know exactly how the Empire functions economically. We often call the Empire “fascist” - but all we really know about it (from the OT at least) is that it’s a totalitarian police state. It doesn’t necessarily have the structure of classic fascism, like a corporatist economy organized around syndicates. Ironically, the Old Republic was shown to have a Trade Federation and other enormous corporate entities representing an economic sector, with representation in the government - a major feature of fascist/corporatist economies. Presumably these were nationalized and absorbed into the Imperial State.

The encroaching nationalization of private enterprises is mentioned in the novelization of ANH and a deleted scene, but Andor depicts private corporations working as organs of the State. Historically, fascist states would often privatize industries at first, but then end up nationalizing (more so in Italy than Germany) or subsidizing major industries over time to consolidate state control and subordinate the economy to the military. I assume the Empire does this as well (if their handling of Preox-Morlana is any indication) - and they probably absorbed/nationalized former Separatist corporations. But presumably, Palpatine’s end goal is complete nationalization of everything in subordination to the State/military, using the Death Star as a means of maintaining direct control. Also unlike actual fascist regimes, the Empire doesn’t seem to glorify an ancient past or ancient traditions.

The Old Republic, on the other hand, was apparently a quasi-democratic, liberal, capitalist society, with encroaching forms of corporatism (e.g. Trade Federation, Techno Union, etc.)

It’s unclear what sort of economy/ideology the various Rebel factions depicted in the OT or Andor are actually fighting to achieve in some hypothetical New Republic, but presumably the Rebel Alliance that we know and love wants to setup something similar to the Old Republic, rather than something more like a socialist economy with publicly owned industries as suggested (arguably) by the underlying thematic vibes of Andor.

Also, anyone notice how that deleted scene in ANH with Luke and Biggs is kind of an early “spiritual predecessor” to Rogue One/Andor? It’s a scene that would be right at home in an episode of Andor, minus the corny 70s dialogue.

I want to see Dorothy and the Wicked Witch get into a serious lightsaber battle, while the Tin Man and Lion pilot the Falcon.

Superweapon VII said:
Still can’t make good hands.

Skynet’s main weakness is hands.

^ Well, you might be right about how Lucas perceived Brackett’s draft. I mean, at the very least, we know he was unsatisfied enough with it to rewrite from scratch. But if Lucas’ later Star Wars movies are anything to go by, there’s one aspect of Brackett’s draft that is quintessentially Lucas - even more so than Kasdan’s later drafts. I’m talking about the whole idea of how one falls to the Dark Side.

One issue I always had with Return of the Jedi was that I never really bought into the idea that Luke was at risk of turning evil. I love the whole Throne Room sequence with the Emperor, but I always questioned how the Emperor believed he had any chance of converting Luke. In fact, there’s little in the first two OT movies that really explores exactly how someone falls to the Dark Side. Yoda says that anger, aggression, etc. are the path to the Dark Side, that the Dark Side is perhaps quicker and easier, more seductive, but the actual process is left mostly to the imagination. Through later material, like ROTJ and the Prequels, we learn that the actual process of converting someone to the Dark Side basically involves really pissing them off and forcing them to act violently out of anger. This is what Vader does in ROTJ, and it almost works - but Luke manages to regain control of his rage.

The problem is that Vader being Luke’s father muddles this whole process. Luke loves his father - that’s the whole point - so the usual “Dark Side conversion therapy” doesn’t work. And not only does it not work on Luke, we have little reason to believe it really could have ever worked. But… if Vader wasn’t Luke’s father - if instead, Vader murdered Luke’s father - then Vader and the Emperor would have a lot more to work with in terms of converting Luke.

And this is exactly what we see play out in Brackett’s draft. The Luke vs. Vader fight in Brackett’s draft reads almost like a scene from the Prequels, with Vader taunting Luke about his murdered father, trying to make Luke angry enough to start using the Dark Side. And Vader’s tactics almost work - but Luke throws himself down the Cloud City ventilation shaft at the last minute. This whole sequence plays out exactly the way George Lucas seems to envision the “Dark Side conversion process”, as seen in later movies like ROTJ and the Prequels. So Brackett seemed to have a really good handle on the whole Force mythology and how the Dark Side works.

But when Vader became Luke’s father, this whole process became much more complex and muddled. If Vader’s goal was to convert Luke to the Dark Side, it makes little sense to reveal his identity as Luke’s father. From Vader’s perspective, it would be much easier to harness Luke’s anger if Luke believed Vader murdered his father, than it would be if Luke knew the truth that Vader IS Anakin Skywalker. This knowledge might trigger positive emotions in Luke, like affection or even love - which is exactly what happens. Now, I think ultimately the twist makes for a much more compelling story. (I’m not one of those fans that dislikes the big twist in ESB.) But it comes at the cost of muddling the whole Dark Side conversion mythology, and it makes the Emperor’s attempt to convert Luke in ROTJ seem like a long shot.

But the point is, later movies reveal that Brackett really nailed Lucas’ ideas about how the Dark Side works, and how one can fall to the Dark Side via embracing anger. And I think this was lost in later drafts of ESB. Vader has a few lines about “giving in to hatred” while fighting Luke on Bespin, but it’s all sort of deflated once Vader reveals he never actually wronged Luke (by killing his father), and in fact, actually IS his father. It also lessens the stakes during the final battle in ROTJ, because there’s much less the Emperor has to work with to make Luke turn evil. Still, I think it was worth it - because the twist in ESB is just too awesome to leave on the cutting floor.

There’s also some concept art by McQuarrie based on ideas exclusive to Brackett’s draft. So Brackett’s ideas at least got far along enough in the production process that McQuarrie created some art based on these ideas (or maybe it was the other way around and Brackett based ideas on some of McQuarrie’s available concept art). Ironically, even though Lucas famously hated Brackett’s draft, her draft gives me stronger vibes of “Prequel era Lucas” (i.e. the real Lucas) than Kasdan’s stuff.

Anyway, it would be nice to be able to read the 2nd draft of ESB, which Lucas wrote after reading Brackett’s draft. This would shed some light on the transitional stage of the script after Brackett but before Kasdan/Lucas ironed out Vader’s role. Unfortunately, I’ve never been able to find a legit scan of the 2nd draft anywhere online.

Caston said:
Unfortunately, it appears so. What a waste for 30 years of storytelling opportunities in the Star Wars Universe. As well as being a completely underwhelming and baffling journey’s end for the OT-era heroes.

I agree but please stop making me want to cry. (Excellent post BTW)

In conclusion: It feels like they are going out of their way to make the New Republic, and certain legacy characters seem incompetent, and doing so with very little nuance. That the writers don’t know how to write politics, and so the characters then come across as flat moustache-twirling villains or inept bureaucrats, with the plot operating on a level of briskly getting from point A to B without wanting too many questions asked. Such little effort or quality is put in, that the New Republic repeatedly comes off as feeling two-dimensional and inept, something that the viewer then doesn’t really care about, or is invested in.

I don’t think they’re trying to make the New Republic seem incompetent. They just suck at writing this stuff. All the Favreau/Filoni shows basically suck. Mandalorian Season 1 was an anomaly, and even in Season 1, the signs of creeping bad writing were starting to show. This has nothing to do with the New Republic specifically - it’s just the Favreau/Filoni shows happen to be set there, and Favreau/Filoni suck at Star Wars.

I haven’t watched Ahsoka and probably won’t. I’ve accepted that for the time being, Disney is not capable of producing any quality Star Wars content, with the stunning exception of Andor.

As for the New Republic, any number of fascinating political-intrigue type stories could be told in this setting. But the big elephant in the room is the glaring absence of the OT heroes. We all know the main action driving the politics of the New Republic should involve people like Leia, Lando and Luke. But those characters are gone. The actors are old or dead, and I don’t know if a deep-fake/AI main character is financially or technically feasible yet. Even if it is (or even if they decide to recast), Disney has shown little interest in pursuing something like this - and given the depressing fates of the OT heroes in the Sequel Trilogy, it might be difficult to get too invested in such stories anyway.

Superweapon VII said:

Yeah, anticapitalism’s become just another commodity.

If Disney or any of these other film studios were truly leftist, they’d be co-ops with workplace democracy, their IPs would be in the public domain, and they wouldn’t be churning out all these cynical, artless cash-grab sequels, reboots, remakes, etc. in the first place.

Agreed. But the term “leftist” is now mostly a vague term, causing people to talk passed each other. Some people use it strictly to refer to various forms of socialism, implying public ownership of means of production - basically a primarily economic term. I gather that’s close to what you mean here (although worker co-ops obviously can exist under umbrella capitalist economies).

But nowadays the term is also thrown around as a general synonym for “progressive” or just a blanket term describing a cluster of beliefs centering around equity-based social justice. But I think the number of people supporting equity-based social justice is probably way larger than those who identify as socialists. Anyway, modern corporations often release messaging broadcasting support for various relevant social issues. They’ve updated the language of their messaging to parrot the vocabulary of the left. It’s not entirely a farce, just like 95% a farce. Large corporations are huge and consist of countless departments and sub-departments. There are certainly many people (including executives) working at these corporations that support equity-based social justice, and push internally for policy changes, while resigned (reluctantly or not) to the reality of shareholders and profit margins. Most large American corporations generally really do try to diversify their workforce via hiring policies that seek to replicate population percentages of minority groups as percentages of the workforce. (The consulting firms they hire instruct them to do this - or at least say they’re doing it.) This is mostly a PR tool to manage public image and redirect attention away from any number of hilariously evil practices, like operating sweat shops in Asia, giving obscene bonuses to executives, and/or regularly laying off large swathes of their work force to appease shareholders.

But, at the risk of getting too controversial for a Star Wars forum, I feel that the American “left” has largely abandoned economic change in order to focus mostly on identity politics. Marx is probably turning in his grave, but it seems class tensions alone are insufficient to generate any sustainable mobilization in the Western world. Identity politics, on the other hand, has the power (and corporate backing) to generate significant public interest and funding, and so has obviously been co-opted by corporations as a PR tool. And the majority of social movements or NGOs that were once focused primarily on economic change have seen where the wind is blowing, and have shifted focus to social issues instead, to better secure funding - often from large corporations. (The modern “Occupy” movement, for example, no longer protests the corporate greed or the excesses of capitalism, but instead protests immigration issues and ICE.) Now most “leftist” messaging (corporate or otherwise) is all about supporting Black-owned businesses and hiring women/minorities, instead of actually uniting the proletariat or even just promoting some form of economic democracy. (The average person in the US doesn’t even know what a fucking worker co-op even is.)

Spartacus01 said:
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to attack you or anything. But I think that you are being guilty of the same extremism you are criticizing. You said: “You can look at them as pieces of pop entertainment or as serious films or both, but you don’t have to go to extremes either way”, which is totally correct. But then, when it comes to the history of the movies and their appreciation by the fandom, you did the same thing you are preaching against: generalizing. Sure, I’m one of those millennials who were not around at the time, I became a Star Wars fan in 2018. But I don’t think that saying that everyone hated the movies is fair. I think that it is more fair to say that the fanbase felt very divided about them. I have known a lot of people who liked them from the beginning, just as I have known a lot of people who disliked them from the beginning. There were a lot of fans who liked the Prequels in the 2000s, just as there were a lot of fans who hated them in the same time period. Saying that everyone hated the movies is unfair to the people who always liked them. And they exist, denying their existence is unfair too. Furthermore, I have known a lot of people who became fans of the Saga only in recent years, watched the Prequels as adults, and liked them a lot. I’m one of them. So, to say that they became popular in recent years only because of nostalgia and the memes is a bit unfair too. I liked them when I first watched them. And I was already 18 when I watched them, so I didn’t have any nostalgia for them.

I was a teenager when TPM came out in 1999. I wouldn’t say everyone hated the Prequels initially at the time. But it would be hard to be alive during 1999 thru 2005 and not conclude that, in general, on average, people did not like these movies. These were not to be new classics, like the OT. They were instead the endless punch line of jokes across pop culture (e.g. the Southpark episode mocking Jar Jar, etc.) I never actually met anyone at the time (in my circle of friends or outside it) who actually thought these movies were genuinely good. At best, you had people saying that ROTS was good but the others sucked.

Now - of course, the whole paragraph I just typed is nothing but anecdotal evidence. It proves nothing. And of course, there were also many Prequel fans in 1999-2005 as well who passionately defended these films (just look at theforce.net). To get a truly accurate sense of general public or average fan opinion at the time these movies were released, you would need to have conducted properly-worded opinion polls that randomly sampled some cross section of movie-goers. Unfortunately, such comprehensive scientific polls were not conducted as far as I know. So the only thing I have is my anecdotal impression from having lived through that time. My conjecture, based on anecdotal evidence, is something like 60% to 70% of Star Wars fans (provided we could agree on the definition of “Star Wars fan”) had a negative opinion of two or more of these films. But again, I certainly cannot prove this, and I admit that negative opinions are likely to be voiced more loudly than positive opinions, potentially biasing my impression.

A bit more objectively, I can say that the media at least was more hostile to the Prequels than they were to the first two Disney films, which may have affected fan opinion. If I were inclined to devote time to it, I could probably prove this assertion by randomly sampling popular Internet or print publications or opinion pieces discussing the Prequels from 1999 through 2005. This would probably produce something like 65% negative, 35% positive sentiment, averaged across the three films, in my estimate (again a conjecture). Maybe closer to 60% negative, 40% positive right after ROTS. I could be wildly off, but I would be very surprised.

What I can say for sure is that nowadays there are a lot of ideas about the Prequels floating around the Internet that are blatant revisionist history. These ideas include things like “everyone loved the Prequels until those Plinkett reviews came out in 2009”. This is certainly false. Almost every single criticism made in those videos was typical stuff discussed between friends and pre-social media Internet forums long before Plinkett. (For fun, here’s a 1999 review of TPM that essentially makes the same points found in your typical anti-Prequel youtube video nowadays).

Also, remember that in 1999, TPM was hyped as this monumental, Earth-shattering event - with Lucas descending once again from Mount Sinai Skywalker Ranch to deliver unto us a New Testament from a Galaxy far far away. I lived through both the hype of Phantom Menace and the hype of Force Awakens, and the hype for Force Awakens was nothing compared to what happened in 1999. Remember, at this time, the fanbase was mostly unified, and viewed George Lucas as this master storyteller of unparalleled creative genius who could do no wrong (except Howard the Duck). This environment certainly did not help when the movies came out and not only failed to live up to the hype, but seemed to be just weirdly mediocre movies in general.

Literally any fan speculation about the Clone Wars is likely to be cooler than what Lucas actually came up with in 2002.

Like everyone else, I imagined some awesome galactic conflict with massive clone armies controlled by distant alien factions trying to overthrow the Republic, along with clone-based subterfuge and political intrigue (cloning of Senators or Jedi - with some darker elements like cloned Jedi going insane).

I did not imagine that the clones were boring CGI Stormtroopers created under bullshit circumstances for the Republic to use at the last minute to fight some equally boring CGI robots as part of an under-explained civil war, and that every single clone was actually Boba Fett’s dad.

Anyway, pre-Prequel ideas about the Clone Wars always fascinated me because while many of these ideas are traceable to pre-1999 EU publications, some of these ideas are actually examples of pre-Internet “memes”. These were orally-communicated “memes” whose origin is forever lost to time, yet are somehow consistently known by many people of a certain age group across multiple regions/countries. These memes were spread on playgrounds, fan gatherings, and mail-based fan publications, in a way similar to how stories and myths were spread in pre-literate cultures. Similar to childhood songs that somehow every kid of a certain age knew (“Jingle Bells, Batman Smells”), the idea that Obi Wan Kenobi was actually OB-1 the clone is a pre-Internet meme that was remarkably wide-spread before the Internet, and remains well known to this day. Every Star Wars fan in the 80s and 90s somehow “knew a guy” that told them about this theory. (Of course it turned out to be false, and I’m glad, because it’s stupid.)

Barfolomew said:

First off, I must say it’s amusing and interesting how much mileage we’ve gotten out of the words “orbital bombardment” from a single line! But I think we’ve come to a mutual understanding of sorts, we more or less agree:

• Certainly Leigh Brackett, at the least, wrote murderous intent into Darth Vader in the first half of her draft.
• Subsequent drafts show an evolution playing this aspect down.
• By the final script they’ve got it to a point where for many viewers (like me!) they’ve successfully rid the script of any overt murderous motivation…
• But Lucas and Kasdan have perhaps underestimated that many other viewers (like you!) may still take the term “orbital bombardment” to specifically reference a plan of guaranteed eradication of the rebels, including Luke.
• I think we agree that even if we go with the most uncharitable read of this scene, it’s at worst a very minor flaw in a masterpiece of genre cinema.

Works for me!

Yeah, that’s a good summary. I agree with everything you say here.

Regarding the “orbital bombardment” line - maybe I read too much into it, but I always took General Veers’ line to strongly imply that Vader must have previously ordered Veers to bomb the base from orbit. In my reading of the scene, it makes more sense that Veers brings up the infeasibility of bombardment because Vader had earlier ordered Veers to carry it out. And more significantly, Vader orders Veers to prepare for a surface assault only after Veers explains that bombardment from space is infeasible. (I admit this is muddled somewhat because earlier on the bridge Vader had already ordered Veers to prepare his troops. But I always interpreted that line as more of a generic order to have troops standing by ready for deployment just in case.)

Also - you brought up earlier how a lot of the plot mechanics surrounding Hoth are designed to setup an excuse to have a visually awesome ground battle. I agree with this. But then why do we even need the scene where Ozzel messes up Vader’s plans? The excuse for a cool ground battle should be trivially easy to write if you know about the ending twist. Vader should demand a ground invasion as Plan A because he wants to capture Luke alive. The whole business with Ozzel coming out of hyperspace early, forcing Vader to adjust plans, simply muddles this whole issue. But it makes sense once we realize that Vader’s motivation was originally just to kill Luke, but Lucas/Kasdan needed some excuse to have a cool ground battle with impractically awesome AT-AT walkers. (To be fair, even without the ending twist, the Hoth ground battle could be justified simply by the Rebels’ discovery of the probe droid prompting them to raise the shield.)

Ironically, in Brackett’s draft (page 40), no reason for the ground invasion is provided. (Also there is no Imperial probe droid - Vader finds the location of the Rebel base on page 21 by interrogating some alien smuggler.) It’s implied that the “ice castle” that the Rebels use as a base is somehow immune to orbital weapons. Maybe at some point, Kasdan/Lucas/whoever decided they needed to explicitly justify the ground invasion, (Kasdan’s writing for ESB is more military sci-fi than Brackett’s more fantasy-heavy style) so they developed the “Ozzel excuse”. This ironically became unnecessary once the ending twist was decided. (But Ozzel’s death is such a cool scene, establishing Vader’s infamous habit of casually murdering underlings when they mess up, so I’m glad the scene exists.)

Anyway, I think the earlier drafts strongly support the interpretation that Vader ordered the bombardment and intended to kill Luke, which is why I always felt something was a bit off about Vader’s motivations.

Basically what I’m saying is that there’s no reason at all this story wasn’t still heading toward Vader’s redemption regardless. Certainly it majorly effects the backstory, but the general sequence of events in ROTJ’s plot don’t have to be overwritten from what we know. You’d only have to make adjustments in motivations, something like Luke’s existence profoundly triggering the remorse Vader still feels for betraying Anakin Skywalker (or whatever Skywalker Sr’s name would’ve ended up being).

You’re probably correct. Even in Brackett’s draft, there are some hints of nuance in Vader’s portrayal. Brackett’s draft also depicts tension between Vader and the Emperor (page 71 and 90), which is an obvious setup for Vader to later betray his master. And of course, there’s precedent in earlier drafts of a black knight that makes a last minute turn to good. But the thing that really started me on this whole tangent was that in Brackett’s draft, Vader definitely, indisputably, unambiguously tries to murder Luke by force choking him from a distance (page 45) - an event that Luke barely survives due to a fortunately timed jump to hyperspace. And my primary point is that Vader’s desire to kill Luke seems to have made its way into Act I of Empire Strikes Back as a vestigial remnant, in the form of Vader’s attempt to destroy the entire Rebel base from orbit.

I also suspect a related vestigial plot remnant is to be found in the general weirdness surrounding Vader’s conversation with the Emperor. This brings up the question of what exactly Vader knows about Luke and when, what the Emperor knows, and at what point Vader decides to use Luke to overthrow the Emperor. To me, Act I of ESB seems to imply that Vader is just straightforwardly carrying out orders to kill Luke and the other rebels. Vader openly throws around the name “Skywalker” in front of his crew. But when speaking to the Emperor, Vader is very cagey and downplays Luke as a threat, suggesting either subterfuge on Vader’s part, or perhaps merely an attempt to downplay his failure to kill Luke.

In Brackett’s draft, the Emperor scene is the turning point in Vader’s motivation, where he now wants to capture/convert instead of kill Luke, to overthrow the Emperor. In Kasdan’s drafts and the actual film, the Emperor suggests converting Luke at the prompting of Vader, whereas in Brackett’s draft, the Emperor firmly wants Luke dead (page 71) but Vader secretly decides to use Luke to overthrow the Emperor (page 91) after sensing that Luke is becoming powerful. Either way, the Emperor scene functions as a pivotal turning point in the script for Vader’s motivation, and explains why Vader was originally trying to kill Luke in Act I, but then changed to trying to convert Luke. But the ending twist nullifies this scene’s function as a turning point, since the twist implies Vader always wanted to secretly capture Luke, even before speaking with the Emperor. The Emperor doesn’t really tell Vader anything he doesn’t already know. It seems to be public knowledge that Luke is a Skywalker, and the Emperor mentions “the son of Skywalker” as if Vader already knows Luke is his son. So the scene loses much of its original purpose when viewed post-twist, functioning mostly as a way to simply introduce the Emperor as a character for later movies, and to setup/mislead the audience about Vader’s intentions on Bespin. (The altered 2004 Blu-ray dialogue tries to better clarify the situation, albeit in a very clumsy way. Vader asks “how is this possible?” after the Emperor claims Luke is Anakin’s son. This implies either that Vader is very transparently playing dumb or is actually clueless/unsure about Luke at this point. The latter possibility would restore the scene’s function as a turning point for Vader, since Vader is now discovering/confirming for the first time that Luke is his offspring. I wonder if Lucas changed the dialogue here because he realized it makes no sense that Vader was trying to kill Luke in Act I if Vader had always known Luke was his offspring.)

Finally, the lightsaber battle on Bespin also may have some traces of earlier plot mechanics. The lightsaber battle plays out like Vader really IS trying to freeze Luke in carbonite so Luke can be transported to the Emperor. (Vader uses the Force to flip the “on switch” to the carbon freezing device after knocking Luke into the chamber.) But after the twist, it’s kind of unclear what exactly Vader was trying to achieve by freezing Luke in carbonite. It can be interpreted in many ways: (A) Vader initially intended to obey the Emperor and bring Luke to him, but changed his mind after seeing that Luke was powerful and/or after unexpectedly feeling affection towards Luke; (B) Vader was trying to freeze Luke in order to transport him somewhere away from the Emperor where Vader could privately train/convert Luke; or (C ) Vader didn’t intend to reveal his identity to Luke at all on Bespin - because it’s a lot easier to convert someone to the Dark Side when they’re mad at you for killing their father - but after Vader failed to make any progress and Luke was cornered, Vader gambled (unsuccessfully) that revealing his identity as Luke’s father would at least buy him some form of tentative loyalty from Luke. In any case, I get the sense the writers didn’t actually have a solid idea in their minds to explain Vader’s attempts to freeze Luke, apart from the dramatic story-telling requirement to mislead the audience before the big reveal. This ambiguity may be traceable to Brackett’s draft (page 116), where there is no carbon freezing chamber at all on Bespin, and Vader is just straightforwardly trying to convert Luke to the Dark Side in order to overthrow the Emperor.

My point is just that the final script contains vestigial traces of changing motivations and relationships from earlier drafts throughout the writing process, revealing a more muddled story, rather than the straightforward story we all have in our heads, where Vader wants Luke for his own secret purpose and is not aligned with the Emperor on this issue from the very beginning of the movie. If the ending twist had existed since the very first drafts, the whole Hoth sequence would probably be written differently such that Vader explicitly orders a ground invasion as Plan A, specifically instructs his generals to capture Luke alive, and perhaps treats Luke’s last name as privileged information so that efforts to capture Luke alive fly under the Emperor’s radar.

The film is still a masterpiece. The criticism I have here is something only us overly analytical fans would notice or care about - but I find the topic interesting because it’s a window into the evolving story behind the scenes.

Barfolomew said:

Channel72 said:

Sure, I could be overstating the case here. The main issue is we know that the script was originally written with Vader not being Luke’s father, and very explicitly trying to kill Luke on Hoth. Later, during subsequent rewrites, Vader was turned into Luke’s father, but he still seems to want to kill Luke on Hoth. It’s pretty hard to interpret the dialogue between Vader and Piett any other way than that Vader had planned on killing all the rebels via orbital bombardment, and only resorted to a ground invasion because of the shield. I guess you’re right that the dialogue leaves some wiggle room here, but not much in my opinion. (I mean the entire first movie was about blowing up a secret rebel base from orbit - so the audience would naturally assume the same idea in ESB.)

Consider - I never had the impression that Vader’s plan was to just blow the base up. Before they’re even on their way to Hoth, Vader specifically tells General Veers (General being an army or marine rank) “prepare your men,” which right off the bat has me envisioning an occupation. Later, Veers brings up a hypothetical “orbital bombardment” unprompted, in the context of the shield’s strength - his message is “Hey, the Rebels already have a big ass shield up and it’s REALLY strong, we won’t be able to battering ram our way through it.” And finally, when they actually do bring the shield down, Vader follows up by landing there himself. True, circumstances have changed by that point, but it feels incongruous if the ultimate goal was to simply wipe the base out.

Well, I’m almost certain the original intention of the script writers was that Vader wanted an orbital bombardment, but was forced to deploy ground troops when he discovered the shield was up. I can prove this with a little “script archeology”. In the Fourth Draft of the script (the second to last draft), the conversation between Vader and Veers goes like this:

VEERS: My Lord, the fleet has moved out of light speed. Com-Scan has
detected an energy field protecting an area on the sixth planet
in the Hoth System. The field is strong enough to deflect any
bombardment.
VADER: (angry) The rebel scum is alerted to our presence. I told Admiral Ozzel
not to go out of light speed so close to the system.
VEERS: He felt surprise was a wiser…
VADER: He’s as clumsy as he is stupid. A clean bombardment is impossible
with that energy shield up. Prepare your troops for a surface
attack.

The bolded part is what I want to emphasize here. I think it’s pretty much impossible to deny that the writers expected the audience to understand that Vader wanted an orbital bombardment, but changed plans due to Ozzel’s incompetence. There’s very little wiggle room here.

Now, in the Final Draft or actual shooting script, the dialogue is tightened up a bit and some lines are removed. This happens all throughout the script, but here they specifically removed Vader’s line where he says “A clean bombardment is impossible with that energy shield up.” It’s possible Kasdan or someone specifically removed this because it doesn’t fit with the ending twist, or it’s possible the line was removed coincidentally as part of an overall effort to tighten up the dialogue.

Either way, I think this more or less proves the original intention of the writers, was for Vader to want to kill everyone on Hoth. Of course, I fully concede that the final shooting script is the only thing that matters in terms of how we interpret the film. But my argument here is simply that, in my opinion, the efforts the script writers made to modify Vader’s motivations (in light of the new ending twist) are not really sufficient to dissuade the audience from believing that Vader’s original plan was to kill everyone on Hoth via orbital bombardment. (Especially since that’s exactly what Tarkin/Vader tried to do in ANH.)

Now, I understand that you (and probably many other audience members) did not come away with the impression that Vader definitively wanted an orbital bombardment. So in that sense, the script writers successfully did their job by leaving things vague or open to interpretation. But I guess we just have a difference of opinion in how well they did this. I always thought Vader wanted an orbital bombardment, even before the Internet existed and I had access to earlier drafts. So it seems the earlier, original intentions of the writers have leaked into the final script.

And finally, I suppose you could argue that even in the earlier Fourth Draft, Vader’s line about a “clean bombardment” could be interpreted to mean something like a strategic bombardment of defenses/power-grid as a prelude to a ground invasion. (Much like how in real life, the US bombarded Iraq to destroy infrastructure before the ground invasion.) But (A), this is not in the spirit of the “evil moustache-twirling Empire” that we saw in ANH, where Tarkin blows up entire planets without a second thought. And (B), it doesn’t account for the fact that Vader specifically tells Veers to prepare for a surface invasion only AFTER Vader learns about the shield.

(Also, this might just be me, but it’s a space opera convention that space weapons are flashy but puny, in order to facilitate lengthy and spectacular pew-pew battle scenes, so I tend not to presume anyone can just nuke-the-site-from-orbit-it’s-the-only-way-to-be-sure unless they specifically tell us, even if logically you’d think they should be able to!)

I agree with this sentiment, but only for Star Wars material created during or after 1999 when the Prequels came out. In the OT, beginning with A New Hope, they were always trying to blow up Rebel bases from orbit. Yes, I know ANH was unique because of the Death Star, but this helped set audience expectations about what sort of firepower the Empire had and how they usually wielded it. In the Prequels, George Lucas wanted to have grandiose ground battles, so the writers pretend that orbital bombardments don’t exist. (The most hilarious example of this is in A Phantom Menace where the Gungans gather out in an open field like a Napoleonic era army. I always think, why doesn’t the Trade Federation just obliterate them all from orbit?)

Also:

Star Wars: Return of a Jedi
Star Wars: Attack of a Clone

Barfolomew said:

Channel72 said:
Even if Lucas was toying with the idea of “Father Vader” before Brackett wrote her draft, the idea was still sort of clumsily forced into the script, giving the impression of a “last minute rewrite”. The fact that Vader apparently is okay with KILLING Luke at the beginning of ESB is a vestigial remnant of the original script, where Vader very much explicitly really did want to murder Luke: there’s a scene where Vader tries to force choke Luke to death as Luke escapes Hoth in his X-wing. This early motivation partially carries over into the final draft, when Vader orders the orbital bombardment; Vader’s actions were never properly updated to reflect the later revelation at the end.

TLDR:

The original arc for Vader’s motivation was: “(1) Find and kill Luke, (2) Change of plans: capture and convert Luke to appease the Emperor”

The UPDATED motivation in later drafts was: “(1) Find and kill Luke, (2) Change of plans: capture and convert Luke because Luke is his SON, and can be used to overthrow the Emperor.”

But in everyone’s head-canon, the motivation is more like “(1) Discovers Luke is his son, but hides this from the Emperor, (2) tries to capture Luke to overthrow the Emperor”

The head-canon version at some point became ACTUAL canon via some Boba Fett comics. The head-canon version also makes the most sense given the “big reveal” at the end of ESB, as well as the wider context of Star Wars lore. But the head-canon version just is NOT supported by the first act of the actual movie.

I really do appreciate all the thought you’ve put into this so I hope I don’t come off flippant at all, but I think your concerns over the plot’s integrity stem pretty much entirely from an assumption that Vader for sure would have order the “orbital bombardment” and that this would entail the instantaneous extermination of the rebel base and its entire population. General Veers simply informs Vader that the Rebels have a shield up strong enough to deflect anything their ships can throw at it, and Vader is perturbed that this means the Rebels already know they’re in town. We don’t actually know what Vader would’ve done otherwise or if the rebels had any other defenses against being fired on from space. (if there’s a script weakness to this scene, it’s more that you can just feel the plot contriving itself to accommodate its spectacular land battle sequence, but would we have it any other way?).

As far as the Hoth battle itself putting Luke’s life into potential jeopardy, I also get the sense that Vader and The Emperor don’t believe Luke can be taken out randomly in battle. To them he’s a mysterious phantom youngster who inexplicably showed up out of nowhere and blew up their Death Star, he’s caused a “great disturbance in the Force,” etc. They know if he is to be dealt with, they have to go out of their way to do it themselves.

Sure, I could be overstating the case here. The main issue is we know that the script was originally written with Vader not being Luke’s father, and very explicitly trying to kill Luke on Hoth. Later, during subsequent rewrites, Vader was turned into Luke’s father, but he still seems to want to kill Luke on Hoth. It’s pretty hard to interpret the dialogue between Vader and Piett any other way than that Vader had planned on killing all the rebels via orbital bombardment, and only resorted to a ground invasion because of the shield. I guess you’re right that the dialogue leaves some wiggle room here, but not much in my opinion. (I mean the entire first movie was about blowing up a secret rebel base from orbit - so the audience would naturally assume the same idea in ESB.)

But on a broader level, after reading Brackett’s script, ESB gives me “last minute plot twist” vibes, commonly found in many Hollywood movies that feature some crazy twist at the end that recontextualizes the entire movie. Very often, the earlier events in the film don’t QUITE make sense in light of the later twist - possibly because the bulk of the script was written before the twist was conceived.

A movie like The Sixth Sense is an obvious example of this. If you watch the movie a second time, knowing the main character is dead the whole time (25 year-old spoiler alert), there are some scenes that seem to cleverly support the twist, but other scenes that really just don’t make any sense in light of the twist. I’ve come to view the aborted orbital bombardment of Hoth (along with some of Vader’s dialogue) as a similar example of a later-draft plot twist not quite fitting with previously written material.

Superweapon VII said:

I’ve come across a few posts from folks who claim that K. W. Jeter’s The Bounty Hunter Wars trilogy references the Clone Wars. Specifically, that the majority of Mandalorians disappeared from the known galaxy at the end of the wars, their fleet making a blind hyperspace jump into the unknown. None of them cited their sources, though, which is frustrating.

That’s the coolest idea ever. So naturally, it didn’t happen in any canonical material.

timdiggerm said:

I assume Palpatine created the EPA and gave Federal recognition to native tribes

Well he definitely recognized that native tribe on Endor.

double post

I agree that the sense of wonder and discovery has been absent since A New Hope, to a certain extent. But it’s hard for me to understand how Darth Vader being Luke’s father shrinks the Universe. I agree lots of things after that revelation started to shrink the Universe, from Leia being the sister, to C3PO being built by Vader, to Yoda and Chewbacca being college roommates or whatever.

But the Vader being Luke’s father thing never felt like it had a “universe shrinking” effect to me. The reason is that a “universe shrinking effect” happens when two characters who we originally assumed had no reason to be connected, turn out to be somehow connected. For example, we never expected that Vader and C3PO had any connection whatsoever - why would they? But then Phantom Menace comes along and shows us they did. So stupid.

But Luke and Vader were ALWAYS directly connected - even before the ending revelation in Empire Strikes Back. In A New Hope, we’re told Vader killed Luke’s father. So Luke and Vader are already personally connected. Vader then turning out to actually be Luke’s father doesn’t really do anything to “increase” this pre-existing connection. The Vader/Luke relationship went from “you murdered my father, therefore I want to kill you”, to “oh shit - you are my father, now I want to redeem you.” This doesn’t change the fact that some deep personal connection between Luke and Vader always existed on an emotional level, and thus the “I am your father” revelation doesn’t “shrink” the Universe, in my opinion.

But yeah, I agree everything else after that certainly does shrink the Universe. And I agree with Vladius that the majority of the “shrinkage” occurred in 1999-2005.

Superweapon VII said:

I don’t think I’m gonna watch the final season of Stranger Things. In hindsight, everything after the first season has been adventures in diminishing returns, coasting on '80s nostalgia and that first season to keep afloat. But the emperor really has no clothes. I have no investment in this show anymore.

I barely remember what happened each season after the first. It’s like the same story over and over: weird shit happens around town, some 80s references drop, then everyone fights a CGI monster (with Eleven doing most of the actual fighting). Rinse and repeat.

As many people have already said, Stranger Things should have been an anthology series. But it’s just too commercially irresistible to return to the original hit cast.

Palpatine once had Vader break into Mon Mothma’s office on Coruscant to steal documents and install surveillance equipment. Also, Palpatine was once caught on tape making highly anti-Semitic remarks.

BedeHistory731 said:

I’d want to push back on that. This view is also heavily informed by modern rejection of religious institutions, colored by decades worth of abuse scandals and cults getting exposed (e.g., Scientology and the Unification Church). The “cult that captures children and brainwashes them” doesn’t seem so unreasonable after watching Jesus Camp or any numerous videos of indoctrinated fundamentalist children. The Jedi also acting as an added branch of government doesn’t help much, given how religious institutions have invested in candidates over the years. Hell, I’m not surprised Jedi molester stories aren’t more common within AO3 fanfics.

The intention may have been noble to show monastic life in a positive light, but the execution in the films has left things open to this more critical interpretation. I wouldn’t say it’s wrong at all, but rather just operating off of what has been presented in the media/real-world context. It’s a bit of that post-Catholic scandal/post-911 antitheism of which the internet has long enjoyed.

I agree with all this - it’s just bizarre that apparently George Lucas really believed he was portraying the Jedi in a positive light. The interpretation most people on the Internet seem to adhere to - that the Prequels purposely portray the Jedi as a flawed institution (like the Catholic Church or something) - is almost certainly incorrect. Multiple interviews with George Lucas reveal that he believes the Jedi and their anti-attachment philosophy was correct, and the only reason Anakin fell was because he gave in to his fear of loss.