BTS 1980s speculation on ROTJ & the PT

Just came across a page which has a transcription of a 1980 Fantastic Films article speculating upon the future of the SW Saga:

http://www.rowsdowr.com/2012/06/16/star-wars-speculation-from-1980-before-return-of-the-jedi/

It mainly all turned out to be wrong (the actual cloning aspect was assumed to have a far greater impact on the storyline), but there's this gem in there which I posted ages ago on the TSHOSW thread:

While it's tempting to leap to the conclusion that Anakin/Vader's background as a slave had somehow leaked back then, it's really just a coincidence - the writer connected Vader's Force Choke with the slave collars mentioned in a Brian Daley Han Solo novel & came up with a backstory that would prove eerily prophetic.

Nothing else in the article hits the mark, but it's still a bit of fun. This bit is absolute nonsense, but I seem to recall others making the same mistake over the years:

Just for the record, in case anyone reads it & assumes it's true, Alec Guinness did not play the Emperor in ESB, it was actually a woman wearing heavy makeup, and apparently also altered in post-production.

 

According to The Making of ESB, the Emperor makeup was actually worn by Rick Baker's wife at the time, Elaine; there were earlier makeup tests with elderly actress Marjorie Eaton, but these didn't prove satisfactory. They tested a few different looks for Palpatine's "unnatural" eyes--including those of a Siamese cat and a female ILM junior accountant whose irises were a striking yellowish shade of hazel--but in the end they matted in the eyes of a chimpanzee.

 

This is quite funny and interesting. Thank you for posting. He makes a couple of well educated guesses, like the Clone Wars taking place twenty years before ANH.

 

That guy really had a lot of imagination...Although he accidentally hitted the mark with Anakin Skywalker being a slave, can't believe he was paid to write such extravagant speculations in a movie magazine !!! Even as a sort of game.

The most funny to me is his theory about the half-truth of Vader being Luke's father, and that cloning explaination...
I guess he just couldn't believe that Vader was really Luke's father, or that he was indeed very fond of highly technological and scientific plot points (the whole cloning issue). It's true this "Clone Wars" was quite enigmatic and in a way open to many speculations.

Didn't know that this sort of in-depth speculation articles had ever existed. Especially at that time, when the first trilogy was not even complete...

All this reminds me of those speculative Episode I and PT screenplays that could be found on the web in 1997-1998. One I read was rather good and captivating actually.

 

And he did this some 15 or so years (give or take - this article was from what, 1980 or 1981?) before the whole Anakin-as-slave sub-plot was even part of the back-story. A striking fact, which for me at least, cements the possibility or even high probability that David Prowse had in a similar manner, "accidentally" made the Vader=Luke's father connection in late '77 (when said equation was NOT the case...yet), instead of having impetuously 'revealed the true story' that was supposedly* already in the works at the time...

*as LFL would have the movie-going public and SW fandom believe

 

That Bill Hays was strong with the Force indeed. He could see things before they happen

Yeah, I vaguely remember that issue with Dave Prowse and father Vader (SHOSW I guess). What was it about exactly ?

 

The David Prowse 'spoilers' don't appear in TSHOSW, they turned up in the press after zombie finished it. Here they are:

- San Francisco Examiner, July 24, 1978
http://www.retroist.com/2010/11/08/1978-style-star-wars-spoilers/

- David Prowse quote in Little Shoppe of Horrors #4, April 1978. Supposedly made at a convention some time between October & December 1977.
http://starwarsblog.starwars.com/index.php/2010/11/15/major-empire-spoiler-actually-dropped-in-1977/

There's also this, from Future Magazine in 1978, that zombie did include in TSHOSW:

TOSCHESTATION & I have been back & forth over this material ad nauseam, it's more confusing than enlightening, and it's definitely not some sort of smoking gun that proves GL had the Father Vader storyline underway in 1977. My own theory is that he began toying with it in very early 1978, after finishing his outline of ESB for Leigh Brackett, but before she completed her draft, the Future article seems to back this up, even though its sources aren't named (yes, they might have heard it from Prowse, who might have simply been guessing).