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Whill
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 Posted: Thu Feb 18, 2021 3:33 am Post subject: OG "I am your father" |
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In 2018, there was a heavy, giant-sized, and expensive behind-the-scenes making-of type book released called The Star Wars Archives 1977–1983 with an MSRP of $200. Amazon sold it for less but it was still way too much to pay for a SW book so I put it out of my mind, convincing myself that it was probably a rehash of the three Rinzler "Making of" books.
This past December, The Star Wars Archives 1999–2005 was released with a $200 price, but they also released a new shrunken-down (but still hardback) edition of the first book called The Star Wars Archives 1977–1983 40th Anniversary Edition (I don't know what it is the anniversary of). The $25 MSRP came down to $18.63 so I nabbed it. It's fantastic! It has a good amount of stuff not covered in the three Rinzler, including some pictures I've never seen. It's got a little of everything so there is also art, old and new interviews, screenplay pages, and reproduced screenplay passages of various drafts of the films. If they make a cheap version of the prequel book, I'll get it.
In the Rinzler Making of TESB book, there is a very brief passage from first draft of that screenplay, the part of the story where Luke is on the bog planet, but the Archives book has a bigger passage below. This is dated February 1978. The first draft of the screenplay was written by Leigh Brackett not long before she died. It was based on the first story treatment written by Lucas in November 1977. Check this out...
| Quote: | The scenes of Luke's Jedi training on the bog planet sketched the paradox of his gift — that what makes him outstanding also attracts the dark side of the Force.
MINCH Luke, you're in greater danger than I realized. Even untrained you're far more powerful than I.
Ben Kenobi startles Luke by appearing in ghostly form.
LUKE ...Darth Vader didn't kill you.
BEN It was my time to move on.
LUKE To move on where?
BEN To a different part of the universe. It's all one, if you know the way — Or rather if you understand the laws that govern the way. One day you will. Luke, I've brought someone with me.
Another half ghostly form emerges from the mists; a tall fine-looking man who approaches Luke slowly.
BEN Your father.
LUKE My father.
Even with his newfound maturity, Luke finds this an awesome, not to say shattering, moment. They look at each other.
SKYWALKER You've grown well, Luke. I'm proud of you. (Luke, not knowing what to say, says nothing.) Did your uncle ever speak to you about your sister?
LUKE My sister? I have a sister? But why didn't uncle Owen...
SKYWALKER It was my request. When I saw the empire was closing in, I sent you both away for your own safety, far apart from each other
LUKE where is she? What's her name?
SKYWALKER If I tell you, Darth Vader could get that information from your mind and use her as a hostage. Not yet, Luke. When it's time... (He looks gravely at his son) Luke, will you take, from me, the oath of a Jedi knight?
Slowly, proudly, Luke draws his lightsaber and activates it, bringing it to the salute. Skywalker does the same. Ben and Minch also raised their sabres, standing by as witnesses.
SKYWALKER (Luke repeats after him at suitable intervals)... I, Luke Skywalker, do swear on my honor, and on the faith of the brotherhood of the knights, to use the Force only for good, turning always from the Dark Side; to dedicate my life to the cause of freedom, and justice. If I should fail of this vow, my life shall be forfeit, here and hereafter.
The four sabers touch a kind of ceremonial amen.
SKYWALKER That is the only armor I can give you, son. The rest is yours to do. |
The next screenplay draft was written by Lucas and completed in April 1978. An except from that shows Vader telling Luke, "I am your father." The full text of Lucas' original TESB story treatment is not present in either book, but it doesn't make any sense for Lucas to put Vader being Luke's father into the story treatment and then the original screenplay writer ignoring that and having the ghost of Luke's father appear to him with Ben. This is more evidence that Vader being Anakin wasn't always planned. It is extremely likely that it was a new concept conceived of between February and April of 1978.
And I just thought it would be neat to think of if the 'what if' of Luke's father appearing to him on Dagobah.
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Ray
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Joined: 31 Oct 2003
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| Posted: Thu Feb 18, 2021 5:34 pm Post subject: |
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OK, that would be completely grade-a awesome.
Like, I don't know, Rey being a Kenobi/Mandalorian. |
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DougRed4
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| Posted: Thu Feb 18, 2021 5:40 pm Post subject: |
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Very interesting! And further proof that Lucas was making stuff up as he went along.
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Whill
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| Posted: Fri Feb 19, 2021 1:56 am Post subject: |
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| Ray wrote: | OK, that would be completely grade-a awesome.
Like, I don't know, Rey being a Kenobi/Mandalorian. |
Star Wars started as a single film. Vader and Luke Skywalker's father were two separate characters. Then everything changed in TESB. The entire franchise is based on the fact that Vader is Anakin. Them remaining separate characters would be a radically different Star Wars.
And Rey is a Palpatine, so how would this change make effect Rey? This change would change Kylo Ben. But I submit that without the bombshell twist of Vader being Luke's father, there may not even be a Star Wars franchise today.
| DougRed4 wrote: | | Very interesting! And further proof that Lucas was making stuff up as he went along. |
It is more evidence supporting Vader not always being planned to be Luke's father. Lucas is an extremely creative person and ideas evolve. Some things change along the way.
"Making stuff up as he went along" sounds like there was no vision and he just made movies one at a time not worrying about what may come next until it comes time to make that movie. A lot of people don't realize that the so-called "Dark Knight Trilogy" is not really even a trilogy. It was one movie at a time. There was no looking forward to the themes or even which villains would be in each film. It is just a movie with a sequel and then another sequel. Lucas is not like that at all.
Lucas originally came up with one Star Wars movie story treatment and wrote a backstory for it. Then as it developed he thought he had enough for three movies and made the first movie out of the first act of his original story, with the final battle of the original story tacked on to the end of the first movie. That become ANH. In the story treatment for its sequel, Vader became the main villain (since Tarkin had died) and the Emperor was introduced in a hologram. All evidence supports that when Lucas wrote the second draft of the sequel's screenplay (his first draft for it), Vader then also became Luke's father. Lucas' original backstory already addressed Vader's fall to the Dark Side. He already had the volcano planet and a battle between Obi-Wan and Anakin vs. Vader. TESB changed the backstory to be Anakin's fall to the Dark Side and made the final battle be Obi-Wan vs. Anakin/Vader. Lucas thought the backstory could be expanded into three prequel movies too. In 1980 when developing RotJ, he decided to abandon the 9-12 movie idea and put the death of Palpatine in it. Luke's long lost sister, who was also not originally slated to appear until the third trilogy, was changed from being a new character to Leia. Lucas has always admitted most of this story evolution.
In the mid-90s when Lucas plotted out the PT from his backstory, he actually stayed true to his basic plan throughout. He had to tell the story of the fall of Anakin Skywalker and the rise of the Empire/Palpatine. But then again, prequels are more restrictive creatively because you are leading up to the original films. Now we know that Qui-Gon Jinn was not part of the original mid-90s story treatment because there are TPM story boards where young Jedi Knight Kenobi is by himself in rescuing the queen and helping Anakin win his freedom. But I'm sure glad he added Qui-Gon because Liam Neeson made that movie.
When Lucas was selling Lucasfilm to Disney in this century, he took out his late-70s sequel trilogy story notes and rewrote them to account for the plot of RotJ (which had diverted from them). This was only done as a Jedi Mind Trick on Disney to sweeten the deal because the obvious value in the company and its properties was to make new Star Wars films, even though Disney was not beholden to his story treatments (and they for the most part didn't). A lot of fans wrongly think that Lucas' 20th century sequel story was for post-RotJ movies, but it had a never-died Palpatine in them and Leia was not Luke's sister.
Lucas always had a grand vision of things, but his creativity never ceased so stories evolve. In the past, Lucas has claimed that he always planned on making Vader Luke's father when we have a lot of evidence that was not actually the case. But that doesn't mean that it wasn't a good change. And it is amazing that some things haven't changed. In the summer of 1977, Lucas gave interviews where he discussed Midi-chlorians in cells as a measure of Force ability, and Threepio being "reassembled by a young boy working for junk dealer" in the outer rim of the galaxy. Also, Lucas advised managers of early supplementary publications that all stormtroopers were clones (they were not all clones of the same person).
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DougRed4
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| Posted: Fri Feb 19, 2021 11:53 pm Post subject: |
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Yes, my phrasing of "making it up as we was going along" was meant to reflect the improvisational changes that happened as the films were made. Anyone who has read the Annotated Screenplays (highly recommended!) knows how he made changes throughout.
I completely agree that Lucas was very creative and visionary. I did not at all mean it as a slight or criticism of his way of doing things.
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Whill
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| Posted: Thu Aug 05, 2021 2:14 pm Post subject: |
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| DougRed4 wrote: | Yes, my phrasing of "making it up as we was going along" was meant to reflect the improvisational changes that happened as the films were made. Anyone who has read the Annotated Screenplays (highly recommended!) knows how he made changes throughout.
I completely agree that Lucas was very creative and visionary. |
I love the Annotated Screenplays book, but it does include some revisionist history, like when Lucas said that Luke and Leia were originally one character who he split into two. Um, no. Leia was not even the original long lost twin sister. She didn't become Leia until 1980 (early in preproduction of RotJ) when Lucas abandoned all sequel trilogy plans, which Lucas has elsewhere admitted.
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TauntaunScout
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| Posted: Thu Aug 19, 2021 1:24 pm Post subject: |
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I tend to think making Leia Luke's sister was the biggest mistake Lucas made in Star Wars.
All the weirdness at this point I lump together and ignore. I view all of Star Wars as "historical fiction from another galaxy".
Star Wars is like if you tracked down that much historical fiction about, say Queen Elizabeth, written over a 40 year period. Movies, tv shows, historical novels, toy soldiers, rules for wargaming in the late 16th century, what have you. And then tried to decide that half of it was "canon". There'd be tons of inconsistencies and contradictions. And while a lot of the people in the source material would be real, they'd be doing and saying things that never happened. |
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Whill
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| Posted: Thu Aug 19, 2021 1:46 pm Post subject: |
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| TauntaunScout wrote: | I tend to think making Leia Luke's sister was the biggest mistake Lucas made in Star Wars.
All the weirdness at this point I lump together and ignore. I view all of Star Wars as "historical fiction from another galaxy".
Star Wars is like if you tracked down that much historical fiction about, say Queen Elizabeth, written over a 40 year period. Movies, tv shows, historical novels, toy soldiers, rules for wargaming in the late 16th century, what have you. And then tried to decide that half of it was "canon". There'd be tons of inconsistencies and contradictions. And while a lot of the people in the source material would be real, they'd be doing and saying things that never happened. |
If Leia is not Luke's sister, then who was "the other" Yoda spoke of in your mind? At the time he said that in TESB, it was originally intended on being Luke's long lost sister, who would have been a new character that first appeared in the third trilogy. Lucas' change meant that statement still had meaning.
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TauntaunScout
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| Posted: Sun Aug 22, 2021 2:44 pm Post subject: |
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| Whill wrote: | | TauntaunScout wrote: | I tend to think making Leia Luke's sister was the biggest mistake Lucas made in Star Wars.
All the weirdness at this point I lump together and ignore. I view all of Star Wars as "historical fiction from another galaxy".
Star Wars is like if you tracked down that much historical fiction about, say Queen Elizabeth, written over a 40 year period. Movies, tv shows, historical novels, toy soldiers, rules for wargaming in the late 16th century, what have you. And then tried to decide that half of it was "canon". There'd be tons of inconsistencies and contradictions. And while a lot of the people in the source material would be real, they'd be doing and saying things that never happened. |
If Leia is not Luke's sister, then who was "the other" Yoda spoke of in your mind? At the time he said that in TESB, it was originally intended on being Luke's long lost sister, who would have been a new character that first appeared in the third trilogy. Lucas' change meant that statement still had meaning. |
Obviously Leia IS Luke's sister, in regular canon and my own headcanon. I still think it was a bad call on Lucas' part. |
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Whill
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| Posted: Sun Aug 22, 2021 3:36 pm Post subject: |
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| TauntaunScout wrote: | | Whill wrote: | | TauntaunScout wrote: | I tend to think making Leia Luke's sister was the biggest mistake Lucas made in Star Wars.
All the weirdness at this point I lump together and ignore. I view all of Star Wars as "historical fiction from another galaxy".
Star Wars is like if you tracked down that much historical fiction about, say Queen Elizabeth, written over a 40 year period. Movies, tv shows, historical novels, toy soldiers, rules for wargaming in the late 16th century, what have you. And then tried to decide that half of it was "canon". There'd be tons of inconsistencies and contradictions. And while a lot of the people in the source material would be real, they'd be doing and saying things that never happened. |
If Leia is not Luke's sister, then who was "the other" Yoda spoke of in your mind? At the time he said that in TESB, it was originally intended on being Luke's long lost sister, who would have been a new character that first appeared in the third trilogy. Lucas' change meant that statement still had meaning. |
Obviously Leia IS Luke's sister, in regular canon and my own headcanon. I still think it was a bad call on Lucas' part. |
You know I'm well versed in "regular canon" so this is about your head canon. Your head canon is not at all "obvious" from what I replied to. You literally said, "I tend to think making Leia Luke's sister was the biggest mistake Lucas made in Star Wars. (next sentence-->) All the weirdness at this point I lump together and ignore."
For head canon, we each do indeed have the freedom to "ignore" what we don't what, and you made it sound like you were ignoring Leia being Luke's sister, lumping it together with other "weirdness" which you ignore. But ok, I read you loud and clear. You are not using your freedom to ignore Leia being Luke's sister for your head canon.
Sure, if Leia was always Luke's sister there would be no "triangle" in ANH or Leia using Luke to make Han jealous with a more than brotherly kiss in TESB. But I still feel Luke's sister changing for RotJ is not Lucas' biggest mistake in making Star Wars. To each fan his own.
I was inspired by Lucas' original idea for a long lost sister to create for my head canon that Anakin had a long lost sister not revealed until after RotJ (younger sister, not a twin).
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CRMcNeill
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| Posted: Sun Aug 22, 2021 4:37 pm Post subject: |
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| Whill wrote: | | I was inspired by Lucas' original idea for a long lost sister to create for my head canon that Anakin had a long lost sister not revealed until after RotJ (younger sister, not a twin). |
I like it.
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TauntaunScout
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| Posted: Mon Aug 23, 2021 3:56 pm Post subject: |
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Sorry I didn't mean to be insulting.
I guess more specifically, I think making the characters (Luke, Leia, Darth) related was his biggest mistake in the OT. Not in all of Star Wars. Then again maybe you're right that without blowing everyone's minds in 1980 with the revelation of Vader being Luke's father, the franchise would've weakened in power substantially.
A few hours ago I watched The Empire Strikes Back, in a rented theater. Given the context of having read that discarded script idea you posted it made the Dagobah scenes very i interesting. |
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Whill
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| Posted: Mon Aug 23, 2021 10:44 pm Post subject: |
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| TauntaunScout wrote: | I guess more specifically, I think making the characters (Luke, Leia, Darth) related was his biggest mistake in the OT. Not in all of Star Wars. Then again maybe you're right that without blowing everyone's minds in 1980 with the revelation of Vader being Luke's father, the franchise would've weakened in power substantially.
A few hours ago I watched The Empire Strikes Back, in a rented theater. Given the context of having read that discarded script idea you posted it made the Dagobah scenes very i interesting. |
Nice! I haven't seen TESB (or RotJ) in a theater since 1997.
Leia being Luke's sister is no big deal (it feels tacked on as it is), but 'what if Vader and Anakin remained separate characters' is a very interesting 'what if' scenario. The original Star Wars (ANH) works as a stand-alone movie with no franchise, but the entire SW franchise is built upon the premise of Vader having been Anakin (a retcon introduced in the sequel). There is no way to know for sure, but I feel it is certainly possible that TESB would have not been nearly as popular without that. Star Wars may have petered out after the third movie. There may have been no WEG SW RPG or Rancor Pit.
As much as I love SW (ANH) as is (where Vader literally murdered Luke's father), I disagree that Vader being Luke's father was a big mistake for the franchise, but I am also not saying it is definitely better that way. "I am your father" is fundamental to what Star Wars is for over four decades now. It works. It's really hard for me to imagine a Star Wars franchise without it.
And in Lucas' defense, familial relations of the characters (beyond Owen and Beru) was not completely out of the blue in TESB. The Star Wars rough draft had a lot of it. Kane Starkiller (a cyborg Jedi) was the father of Annikin and Deak. Princess Leia had two brothers (who were twins). They were all important to the plot. And interestingly, in 1977 Lucas said that Leia had several brothers, and it was unknown if any of her family (parents and brothers) survived Alderaan's destruction. The big difference between the rough draft and the released trilogy was that there was no secret revelations of familial relations. But it had to be a secret revelation in TESB because it was a retcon to ANH, and that served the drama of the TESB and RotJ well anyway.
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TauntaunScout
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| Posted: Wed Aug 25, 2021 5:11 pm Post subject: |
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| Whill wrote: |
And in Lucas' defense, familial relations of the characters (beyond Owen and Beru) was not completely out of the blue in TESB. |
And he's heavily influenced by old myths and legends. EVERYONE was related in those. |
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Whill
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