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.
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.)
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Another thing to consider: we often forget about this, given how awkward it turned out to be in retrospect, but in the OT (or at least for most of the OT), Luke Skywalker is implied to have a romantic interest in Leia. In A New Hope, Luke thinks she’s beautiful and she is part of Luke’s entire reason for following Obi Wan on the adventure. Towards the end of the movie, an implied love triangle emerges between Han, Luke and Leia. In Empire Strikes Back, Luke seemingly is still attracted to Leia, although his attraction is serendipitously downplayed in the actual film compared to what happens in earlier drafts. (In Brackett’s first draft, it’s implied that a major reason for Luke wanting to be a Jedi is to impress Leia and compete with Han.)
So how do they resolve the love triangle? One easy way would be to just have Yoda straight up tell Luke: “Forget about Leia. It’s not happening. Jedi can’t have romantic attachments, because it just makes it easier to fall to the Dark Side.” But that’s not what happens. Yoda never says anything about Luke’s feelings for Leia (apart from the more generic concern expressed by Yoda that Luke not abandon his training to help his friends). Instead, the love triangle is eventually resolved when we discover Leia is Luke’s sister. This is yet more evidence that the “no romantic attachment” rule was never even considered as a possible idea when the OT was written.
One last thought: it’s interesting that Return of the Jedi decided to keep the imagery of the implied romance between Luke and Leia. Luke and Leia swing together on a rope off Jabba’s sail barge, Leia dressed in a sexy golden bikini in the arms of a confident, mature Luke - implying a swashbuckling romance between the two of them. All that sexual imagery is of course defused once we discover they’re brother and sister, but it’s weird that it’s still in the movie. (More evidence of how late an addition the whole Leia=sister idea probably was.)
Raiders is obviously the best. But Last Crusade is probably the most fun to watch. Temple of Doom is also fun to watch, but the entire plot basically happens by accident, instead of Indy specifically searching for some artifact, which I always found to be kind of weak plotting.
Crystal Skull had some promising opening sequences with a fresh new 50s setting, (I actually like the ridiculous nuke fridge scene) but ultimately it devolved into a series of generic chase scenes in a boring jungle. I don’t mind sci-fi elements in an Indy flick, but the aliens and crystal skull mythology is just so shallow and uninteresting.
Dial of Destiny is just… kind of a big mess. It’s obviously the product of 2023 factory style film production, with heavy usage of CGI (e.g. the opening train sequence), instead of the old-school stunts and all that, and it just doesn’t feel like a real Indy movie to me.
Let’s be honest: Indiana Jones basically always sucks whenever it strays from Judeo-Christian mythology.
What Luke’s father and Darth Vader would have been like had Lucas kept them separate?
You can find out by reading Leigh Brackett’s first draft of Empire Strikes Back. In this early 1978 version of the movie, Vader is not Luke’s father. Also, Luke’s actual father appears to Luke as a Force ghost. Luke’s father is portrayed as a stereotypical wise old Jedi character, very similar to Obi Wan.
No, the “no romantic attachments” rule didn’t appear explicitly until Attack of the Clones, although arguably a more nebulous form of this rule was hinted at in Phantom Menace. But the OT definitely never even considered the idea of “no romantic attachments” as a possibility. The pre-Prequel EU of course never considered this idea either, and thus we had Jedi getting involved in romance like everyone else (e.g. Mara Jade, etc.).
You can argue further (as you point out) that the OT not only doesn’t have this rule, it outright contradicts this rule, since we hear that Anakin had offspring and the movies never indicate this was in any way weird or not expected of a Jedi.
Also, having offspring is possible without romantic attachments. The Jedi rule is specifically about romantic attachments. Arguably, some species that say, reproduces by laying eggs and then just abandoning them (as is done by many species on Earth) would be allowed to be a Jedi AND have kids.
There have been a couple of in-depth discussions about this issue in previous threads in this forum.
The general consensus around here is probably that romantic attachments were allowed until George Lucas decided to inject some Romeo and Juliet into his love story, because he didn’t know how to write a love story. I mostly agree with this sentiment, but consider it a bit too reductive, since arguably the “no romantic attachment rule” could be considered a logical consequence of the Jedi’s general dislike of emotional attachments, which was implied (if somewhat muddled) in The Phantom Menace when they bring up Anakin’s fear of losing his mom.
The reason it’s hard to figure out what to put in some hypothetical Episode 2.5 is because the whole Prequel series was poorly structured and it’s hard to figure out climaxes or cliffhangers to bridge the episodes. Ideally, Phantom Menace shouldn’t exist, and instead some kind of “Intro to Clone Wars” plot line should be Episode 1. Episode 2 should depict one or more critical missions during the Clone Wars, and Episode 3 should be either after the Clone Wars or during the end of the wars.
But there’s usually a rhythm or pattern in a Star Wars trilogy. The first episode ends with a triumph for the good guys. The second episode ends in defeat. And the third episode ends with a final triumph. Since the Prequels have to end in disaster, perhaps the Prequels should mirror/inverse that pattern: so we get a defeat, then triumph, then final defeat/disaster. So that pattern would suggest that Episode 2 would depict a major turning point in the Clone Wars where the (ostensibly) “good guys” get a major victory.
Imagine buying that shoe for like $50,000 and displaying it in your house. Then people come over and ask what the hell it is, and you’re like “That’s the shoe from Return of the Jedi!” And then your guests would be like “What? There’s no tennis shoe in Return of the Jedi, are you insane?” And then you’d have to explain, “Well actually it’s in this one shot during the space battle, but they removed it in 1997 or something.” At which point, your guests are likely to respond “Suuuuure they did. Are you sure you didn’t get scammed?”
The Lucas idea that crime bosses fill the power vacuum left by the empire is a really good one. I could take or leave everything else, but that would at least be a unique enemy that isn’t just more of the empire (though some stories with the imperial remnant are cool too,) and it makes a lot of logical sense.
I think some of that bled into The Mandalorian, at least in season 1. It starts with all frontier bounty hunting stuff because this is the aftermath of the empire’s defeat, though fragments of it are still there.
Some of Lucas’ crime-boss trilogy ideas definitely seem to have bled into other Star Wars media. Like Darth Maul actually appears as a crime boss in a cameo at the end of the Han Solo movie. In fact, the Han Solo movie seemed like it was building up to depict a world of criminal organizations vying for power.
But then again, I don’t think Lucas’ “crime boss trilogy” idea appeared on the Internet publicly until very recently (maybe like 2021?), which makes me wonder if the crime boss trilogy was ever real, or just extrapolated from other material after the fact. It’s also totally unclear how the microverse/midichlorian stuff fits in - was that a completely different idea for a sequel trilogy that George pitched at some point, or is it a subplot of the crime boss thing? Who knows.
Boba Fett should’ve just never showed up post-TESB.
Or pre-ESB (Clones)
Who came up with the absurd idea to make all the clones Boba Fett? Out of all the universal shrinkage in the prequels, this one has to be my “favorite.”
George was like: “Hey, so the fans all like Boba Fett right? So what if we had like millions of Boba Fetts? What if every character was actually Boba Fett?”
Seriously though, Boba Fett was always vaguely connected to the Clone Wars in some way, even before the Prequels. The marketing material around Boba Fett in the 1970s spoke of him as being associated with troopers who fought in the Clone Wars. Of course, that vague source material never suggested that all clones in the Clone Wars were Boba Fett clones. Because that would be stupid.
Amazingly, AoTC took this vague backstory and somehow produced the least interesting possible story.