Lou, KY Interesting article I read

I'm gonna have to get and read the book The Making Of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. It has some interesting stuff in it, some of which I've listed below. The link goes to the article. I actually knew about a few of them...lol.


http://geektyrant.com/news/2010/10/12/10-things-you-didnt-know-about-the-empire-strikes-back.html


Yoda was originally named Buffy.

No, really. In George Lucas' earliest outlines for the sequel, Luke meets a supernatural entity named Buffy, or Bunden Debannen. Here's how Lucas described it:

"Buffy very old ? three or four thousand years. Kiber crystal in sword? Buffy shows Luke? Buffy the guardian. 'Feel not think.'"

And Lucas concludes by saying Luke will become the chosen one, "the human Buffy." In later drafts, he thought of Yoda as a kind of small frog, and Yoda had a full name: Minch Yoda. In the earliest script draft, Minch has the immortal line: "Skywalker. Skywalker. And why do you come to walk my sky, with the sword of a Jedi knight? ... I remember another Skywalker."

Lucas considered having a scene where Luke's face gets injured.

Mark Hamill was injured in a car accident in 1977, and his face had to be reconsctructed ? so for a while, George Lucas planned on including a sequence where Luke's face is damaged, and we see it getting patched up by a droid. This got as far as filming ? there's a set picture showing the droid bandaging Luke's face ? but was cut out of the movie.

Luke's journey to becoming a Jedi Knight would have had a lot more bumps.

One idea that got tossed around a lot in the early stages of planning ESB was the notion that Luke's light saber had a crystal hidden in the hilt, with secret encrypted information on it ? including the coordinates of Minch Yoda's planet. And Luke would have been "humiliated" when he couldn't use the Force to stop an attack by a bunch of ice monsters on the rebel's Hoth base. (With Han telling Luke, "You're not a Jedi knight, and you never will be." Meanwhile, Darth Vader senses that Luke used the force to destroy the Death Star and there's a new wannabe Jedi in town ? so Vader uses telepathy to choke Luke in his spacecraft, nearly killing him ? except that R2D2 jumps the ship into hyperspace and takes it to Yoda's planet.

We could have visited other planets.

Possibly including a "water planet," with an underwater city, and a "city planet," with the whole planet built over. And at one point, Lucas considered having a visit to the Wookiee homeworld (some of which ended up in the Christmas Special), and Ralph McQuarrie did some concept art of a young Chewbacca. (Also, Lando Calrissian's home would have been the planet Hoth ? not the ice world, but another planet named Hoth ? and there might have been a whole alien race living there. And in one early draft, Lando was a clone warrior, one of the many clans of clone fighters left over from the wars.)


Darth Vader would have had a castle.

And it would have been an evil fortress ? in some versions, it's surrounded by lava, and full of gargoyles who are Vader's pets.

Vader wasn't Luke's father at first.

In Leigh Brackett's first script draft, Luke meets his real dad, who says he sent away Luke and his secret sister for their own safety. (Luke's sister has been training to be a Jedi knight in secret, just as Luke has.) And Papa Skywalker administers the oath of a Jedi Knight to Luke, in which Ben, Minch, Anakin and Luke cross lightsabers, and Luke swears to "dedicate my life to the cause of freedom and justice."

The Luke-Leia-Han love triangle is a much bigger deal in earlier drafts of the script.

It's at the root of Luke's struggles for self respect and his humiliations. When Darth Vader is trying to win Luke over to the Dark Side in the second draft, written by Lucas himself, Vader says, "You're in love with Leia. You don't want to lose her to Han Solo... But you will, if you lack the courage to use the strength that's in you. A strength as great as mine, Luke." And then at the end, Leia flat-out tells Luke that he's not the one she lov

 

ugh... so many bad ideas. It really makes you thankful.

Thanks for posting this, Mindtwister! Can't wait to get this book.

 

"I'm seeking a great Jedi master."

"You seek Buffy"

when I read the post from mindtwister, and saw the part about naming yoda buffy, I immediately pictured Yoda in a cheerleader outfit carrying a stack of wooden stakes.