Tack

With the Space Battleship Yamato (aka. Star Blazers) having been torn asunder from its creators Yoshinobu Nishizaki and Leiji Matsumoto due to rights issues/death, I’ve considered what a different remake might look like. Yamato 2199 is not a bad series by any stretch, but it feels very clearly like a “modern” remake and I feel the new story additions only clutter the story and draw attention away from the primary players. A good remake, in my mind, should not worry about fans of the source material getting tired of the reinterpretation. Rather, they should make a point to improve the foundations of certain iconic moments to make it an altogether more enriching experience.

To those unfamiliar with the original series, it centers around an interplanetary war in the 23rd Century between Earth and a far-off world named Gamilas. Gamilas’ neighboring plant, Iskandar, sends a message to Earth containing the secrets of a new weapons and propulsion system and promises a secret which could restore Earth to itself. With the threat of extinction looming over them, Earth outfits a ship (the titular Yamato) with the new technology and a crew of elite starpilots including the captain Juzo Okita and the main character Susumu Kodai. Over the course of the journey to Iskandar, they discover the devastating effects of the new technology, and the Gamilan leader (named Dessler) inadvertently uses it to cause his own planet’s downfall.

The series had many sequels between 1977 and 1983, with the cast of the first series returning in various capacities to encounter new threats. The creative staff clearly began to feel fatigue by the end, but at least part of this was the fault of creator/producer Yoshinobu Nishizaki’s strict code of rules. He only ever permitted there to be a handful of female characters, the main love interest Yuki Mori and the alien goddess of the particular story arc. He tried to keep the characters’ personalities as “classically Japanese” as possible, often at the expense of character development (and in a fashion which caused the departure of essential co-creator Leiji Matsumoto). He was notoriously wishy-washy on character deaths, often deciding at the last-minute to kill or spare a main character. The Yamato 2199 remake rectified some issues but exacerbated and created many of its own, including removing the element of the Iskandarian technology as a threatening element and a total overhaul of Gamilas’ motivations and chain of command. The remake of the second series, 2202, messed even more with the base story.

My own remake (which I started adapting as an audio drama) would try to incorporate elements proposed by Matsumoto and other writers during the development of the first two series, and try to turn the story into a cohesive trilogy; one focusing on the war with Gamilas and the voyage to Iskandar, the next being a hybridized reimagining of the second arc (the ‘Comet Empire’ storyline), and a third final series with a largely original plot based on elements of the 1980 film Be Forever Yamato.

Among other things, I would like to diversify the cast from the original series. Juzo Okita would remain the same, a hardened and strict Japanese man, but the rest of the cast would be heavily altered. The main character becomes Jason Kodai, a Japanese-American whose dual parentage resulted in him having a very hot-blooded view of the world behind a wall of insecurity. Daisuke Shima, his best friend, becomes Shane Davison, a character who acts as an anchor to his intense personality. Engineer Sanada would become Santiago, but remain the stoic and logical voice of reason of the crew. Two other characters from the bridge, Yoshikazu Aihara and Yasuo Nanbu, would become Yoshiko Aihara and Yahan Anbu; one a strict Japanese woman playing the role of communications officer, and the other a weapons expert who is very much in over his head as a member of the crew.

The story for each season would diverge from the original but keep the primary elements intact. The biggest changes would center around the role of Dessler. He becomes one of the most interesting villains in animation at a certain point, but in the first series he is by and large far less interesting. Matsumoto’s plans (and his comic adaptation) paint the entirety of Gamilan culture in a far more nuanced and intriguing manner, and early story ideas for the inner circle contain characters unfortunately not included in the eventual TV series. Not to mention, Dessler’s concubine Mela and daughter Jura, two telepaths who wage a psychic war on the Yamato and its crew and who segue into perhaps my biggest initial change…

Yuki Mori (Nova in my version) is a character who no writer seemed completely confident writing. She seemed a very confident and capable woman in the first series, and then slowly (due to the influence of Nishizaki) became a Japanese stereotype of the perfect woman. Moreover, Matsumoto and other authors seemed to always be hinting that she was more than she seemed, though no series ever followed through on that. In my version, she would be much more than she seemed; a telepath and empath who had been forced to conceal her talents until her tenure on Yamato, and whose abilities would play not only into a war with Mela during the Gamilas War, but into each further arc as she steadily became the confident woman Matsumoto envisioned her as.

I never fully planned out my changes to the third arc, though I did have the first and second lined out rather extensively. Given the time to edit them, I’d be happy to post them here.

Yes I am! I’m actually going to go more and more radical with each film, incorporating elements from different stages in each film’s development. I’m currently about forty pages into ESB.

This is an idea that has worked in other fiction. In ‘Gundam: The Origin’, Char Aznable and Casval Deikun were two separate (and similar-looking) soldiers in the Zeon army, but Casval took Char’s name as his own early in the war after a failed coup.

I recall that one early fan rewrite actually used this twist to some effectiveness. I would like to see another version of the story which includes this idea.

I actually started this around Christmas, but had more time with the quarantine to be able to finish it. What this is is a version of the screenplay for the original Star Wars, reordered and extended with elements of the third, fourth, and revised fourth drafts, as well as sequences from the novelization and radio drama (and my own imagination). What I think this represents is what Star Wars might have been if allowed to be every bit as epic as Lucas had first imagined it. It takes the structure of the final film (scene order and all), but the events are shown in far more detail. I’m pleased with how it turned out, and I hope you all enjoy it too.

You can find it here.

Hope you enjoy! And May the (Belated) Fourth be with You!

I don’t know if anyone else has made this observation, but I just realized it upon another viewing.

In ‘Solo’, when on Kessel, many people have caught on to the fact that the “Calrissian Chronicles” recordings that Lando is making are referencing the old Brian Daley Han Solo trilogy. That on its own is rather amusing, but I think there may be a deeper level to the joke.

Unless I’m mistaken, part of the concept behind the Legends rebranding is that they’re stories that exist AS stories within the universe. Combine that with the idea that Han Solo was a pop-culture hero in-universe and…

I’m reasonably certain there was a meta joke being made about the Daley Han Solo novels actually being stories of Lando that Han has gone and substituted his and Chewie’s names into.

Has anyone been checking EC Henry’s (Aalenfae) videos about revitalizing old kitbash background ships into more cohesive designs?

The ones from ESB are interesting, since most didn’t exist besides the initial opening shot of the fleet (and are absent from the additional 35mm shots). He still has so far only tackled two from ESB and four from ROTJ, but the ESB ones are so cobbled together that they actually put some of the hero ships to shame in terms of ugly realism. In trying to search for any information on the other ships (and there are almost half a dozen), I found only this one: http://www.modelermagic.com/?p=111230

There are other very interesting shapes in the film shot and a couple of press kit composites, including one flying wing design that reminds me of a primordial B-wing.

SilverWook said:

Holy Bantha Poodoo! I never picked up on that before. 😮

Another deliberate creative decision I’m sure…

What’s extra funny about this is that it was a fix back in 1977. In Making of Star Wars, there’s a shot of Williams at the podium, and an early composite of that same shot from the approach except Yavin has actually been composited in. They obviously removed it for logistical reasons back then.

Well, thank you for that correction, ATMachine! Reading through it now.

Edit: You will all love this post. Links to scans of physical copies of most major script drafts. I’ve already saved everything. https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWarsCantina/comments/afvlzk/links_to_every_scanned_star_wars_screenplay_that/

SilverWook said:

Wow, never noticed him in ESB. As Leia seems to be using the Captain is the last man to abandon ship protocol on Hoth, I could see other rebel leaders waiting until the last ship goes out even though that increases the chances of not escaping. I once read someplace that Rieekan was supposed to have died in ESB, (which left Leia running things when Han shows up to get her) but was that ever filmed?

It is in the fourth draft (which seems to be what filming started with), but no telling if it was filmed or survived to the (regrettably unsurfaced) fifth draft. The Making of ESB seems to outline a few differences, namely a couple of Cloud City scenes that seem to have been filmed but later cut for budgetary reasons (it would have been shots requiring matte paintings and opticals).

As Rieekan dying takes place when the command center gets hit, it seems like that scene would have been cut from the schedule due to how much more difficult it may have been to actually wreck the set on camera, rather than redress it to look destroyed. I can’t imagine they would have filmed something like that and cut it. The script didn’t change much aside from cutting out a part when Han and Leia acknowledge his death.

The same (semi)recently happened with Willard in the newer Marvel series. It could actually be that Lucas was saving them, considering Rieekan pretty explicitly dies in the original scripts. I don’t recall the name showing up during the development of ROTJ, though…

Since Lucas toyed with having an attack on Yavin being a part of ESB’s story, it’s possible the idea of the Rebels suffering some major losses (ala the Hope Dies story arc) was in his mind at a certain point. I have a feeling some of the higher-ups from Star Wars being dispatched in the meantime might have been something Lucasfilm allowed at the time as a way to fill in blanks once the characters went nowhere. I have a feeling Veers would have shown up if the Marvel adaptation hadn’t labored under the assumption of him being dead (even though he showed up in ROTJ’s early drafts- that would have been fun to explain).

It’s also worth noting that earlier versions of the crawl actually did correctly state that Leia was the one in charge…

Do you think Willard and Dodonna were written out of the film for ease of casting or some other reason? Lucas immediately changes their roles over to Riekaan once he gets the chance. Brackett’s version definitely fits with the pre-EU notion that Willard was actually the one in charge of that Rebel cell.

Is there any chance that this concept influenced the character of Black Hole from the Russ Manning daily strips?

ATMachine said:

ZkinandBonez said:

ATMachine said:

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

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

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

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

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

Once again, Dre, your work is peerless. Hats off.

SparkySywer said:

What’s the source of this? Because Hoth was originally the name of the planet Cloud City was on, in the first draft of the script.

I list my sources on the last page of the document.

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

yotsuya said:

Or its a behind the scenes photo.

The original script for D42: “Darth Vader and the regional Governor Moff Tarkin stand before a huge screen that shows a million stars. Admiral Motti and General Tagge are standing with them.”

There’s a number of reasons why it might have been cut, but considering the other images from David West Reynolds’ article are clearly screenshots, we shouldn’t rule this out.

Ronster said:

Look I made a mistake apologies about that but I did note that the Alien yet to be named Greedo apeared on 4th Draft revised not on 4th Draft so it is safe to assume that Montross became Greedo in the re-write that was the main point, but it negates the need for the Jabba scene IMO but would still be included in an assembly.

This is an alternate angle for scene D42.

I actually think you’re right about this. The novelization and Titleman script both describe this scene opening with the graphic of the star chart. They’re also in the same positions as in the final film. Either this is an alternate angle which they discarded in lieu of the single take used in the final film, or there was originally an establishing shot.

This is legitimately awful. The Lando/Leia scene is pretty decent, but the rest seems like it would have just been an even more awkward follow up to a film that already didn’t leave much of an out for its sequels.

Also, maybe I’m reading too much into it, but that Rose torture scene makes me very uncomfortable…

oojason said:

I enjoyed reading that mate - nice one 😃

It certainly wouldn’t be out of place up on the Starkiller – The Jedi Bendu Script Site.
 

Thank you!

Do they take submissions? Best I can tell, there hasn’t been anything new there in years.

The fact that this was filmed at some point isn’t entirely out of the realm of possibility (even if it is unlikely). A similar scene with an Imperial bureaucrat named Montross was cut out of the script rather last minute. If it had been filmed, Han’s escape from Docking Bay 94 would have been quite a bit different. That they may have tried the same thing with a Rodian gunman isn’t entirely out of the question, but I’m going to require quite a bit more evidence before I consider it.

In any case, this is surely something David West Reynolds would have brought up in his original Insider article. I don’t think we should assume it was part of the original Jympson assembly, nor any other edit.

Ronster said:

Not sure about the E.T. deleted scene I thought it was only available on laserdisc…?

That scene was also made available on the most recent Blu-Ray release.

As part of a personal project dedicated to delving into the script history of The Empire Strikes Back, I put together a loose reconstruction of the original 1977 story treatment by George Lucas. This involved combining information from a number of sources, chiefly JW Rinzler’s book but also supplements (including the whole of the first two pages) from Michael Kaminski’s “Secret History of Star Wars” and (to a lesser extent) “Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplay”. To my knowledge, this is the closest to the original story treatment that a non-insider can get.

You can find it here.

Let me know what you think (or if I’ve made any factual errors).

Ronster said:

The torture droid scene on the deathstar has the guard by the door change to a diffetent actor… Is this a reshoot? Which actor was the original actor for the scene? I have often wondered about this or if it was a bad shot of the torture droid entering the door? Could be anything really only we know something was reshot meaning something there was swapped. Or the droid itself was not ready in time? Perhaps it was an addition to the scene?

I really don’t know the answer only that the Guard by the door changes.

That is interesting. We do know about a few reshot scenes for Empire Strikes Back, but not very many for the original Star Wars. Star Wars Aficionado did once publish a photograph of the original Leia stun scene; apparently in the original shot there was a very blatant up-skirt that had to be toned down.

There’s many explanations for that actor change. The most probable one is that the two shots were captured on different days and the coverage cut together well enough that they didn’t feel a need to correct it. Once you start trying to track the smaller actors (Rebel pilots, Imperial commanders), you realize there was too much for the continuity people to keep track of effectively. Nobody but us madmen are going to notice things like this. 😃

There is a possibility of some original reshot scenes existing in Jympson’s original assembly. The location shooting was definitely done and over with by this point (so Luke’s alternate poncho scenes like in the canyon were likely never part of an edit unless Jympson plainly chose different takes than Chew/Marcia Lucas/Hirsch), but the Elstree shooting at this point would have been very flexible.

I do agree that the Falcon’s under-cannons being originally meant for Star Wars is a little far-fetched. Especially since no version of the script points this out. Not to mention the piece of scenery is definitely Echo Base instead of Docking Bay 94 (mist included). It’s a fun rumor, wherever it started, but I think it’s pretty well incorrect.

I feel like I must also warn you that ScreenRant’s reputation is not the best… Though you should also remember Greedo has many dopplegangers in the deleted Jabba scene.