ST Ideas From Previous Script/Plot Drafts?

There's a line, maybe in The Annotated Screenplays or Making of ESB, where they mention that the clones are from a planet with several hundred countries, each ruled by a different clan (I think). Not sure how this related to galactic politics, but the story and concepts were much different than how they eventually got used, even if the terminology is the same ("Clone Wars").

Also used on Kamino in AOTC. Though I always thought they were cool too, and wouldn't mind seeing them again.

 

I would love to see Vader's castle or the Emperor's palace as well as a live Krayt Dragon

 

I'd l-o-v-e to finally see Vader's castle come into play, and I've been dreaming of seeing Palpatine's Imperial Palace fully realized for a long, long time.

With the Imperial Period being the setting of Rebels, as with the notion of clone prejudice, the new series may prove the perfect vehicle for diving into these concepts.

But what about both? What if Rebels offered us a look at what these places were like in their heyday, when they were occupied by Vader and Palpatine at the height of the Empire? And then we revisit these locales in the ST, decades after the deaths of their former occupants? I think that could be interesting.

"Hate" may be a bit strong, but I suppose I can envision a scenario where a history of acting as Palpatine's agents could have given clones a bad name among some people. A population mistrustful of anything symbolic of a past that folks would rather forget all about in these Halcyon days of the New Republic.

That kind of thing?

For not altogether different reasons, this type of general mistrust could apply to any efforts at rebuilding the Jedi Order, too. And as we discussed in the "Vader's Legacy" thread a little while back, the Skywalkers themselves -- who we know as the heroes of the GCW -- may have to face a similar kind of thing, as well.

It all comes down to what the people believe.

 

This early draft of ESB was probably written long before Lucas had any real idea of what the Clone War was actually about. He probably hadn't conceptualised at that stage that the clones would be fore-runners of the storm troopers. There are no further details into why the clones were killed other than that line of dialogue from Lando which I pasted above. It may have been a deliberate genocide of them for some reason or they may have been fighting on one side or maybe their world/worlds just happened to be key battlegrounds and they were innocent bystanders.

 

What about that one draft where Luke Skywalker was an old man? The one that was turned into a comic last year? Since Luke will be an old man in this one they can adapt elements of that.

Also GL's outlines for the ST in the early 80's apparently focused around a young girl named Nellith Skywalker. I'm not so sure about the name Nellith but maybe the new main hero will be a Skywalker girl?

And this isn't a script idea, but I really like the way Jedi were originally supposed to look in the PT based on this concept art:

 

Not quite (or at least, we don't actually know that):

In pre-ESB notes, Lucas mentioned that he wanted Luke to have a secret sister who, far away across the galaxy, was also being trained as a Jedi. She would appear when the time was right - probably she and Luke would team up and this would have something to do with defeating the Empire/Emperor in the very last film - Lucas maintained that once the Emperor was gone, that was going to be the end of the plot. At that point in the development of the saga, this probably would have been in Episode XII.

Soon after that, Leigh Brackett wrote a draft of the next film to be produced - The Empire Strikes Back. In her draft, the ghosts of Ben and Annikin (who had not yet been combined with the character of Darth Vader) tell Luke about his lost sister. In that version of the story, she's named Nellith.

Sadly, Leigh Brackett died shortly thereafter and so the next draft was written by Lucas himself. In this one, there is no mention of the Sister. And when Luke leaves Dagobah (in this draft or the next one, I can't remember), Yoda says 'now we must search for another [hope].' As more drafts were written, that line continued to morph until it became 'no, there IS another,' i.e., someone or something that Yoda knows of who could step in and take Luke's place if necessary. We don't know if this version of the Other was supposed to be tied to the lost sister from the earlier drafts. Lucas has said that the line was mostly there to create a sense of danger for Luke's fate in the minds of the audience. But it does seem very close to the Sister concept from earlier...

Of course, in ROTJ that Other was Leia, who also happened to turn out to be the Sister as well. But we don't know when this decision was made, and we don't know how, when, or why these three elements - the Lost Sister, the Other, and Leia - were fitted together. (Perhaps, for example, the Other in ESB was meant to be the Sister but ROTJ was going to kill off the Emperor and so Lucas needed this character to show up in ROTJ - in keeping with his idea of having the twins revealed to one another before the end of the Empire - and so he simply assigned that Sister role to the nearest available female character. That's just one possibility; there is very little actual information to go on here.) In one of the earliest outlines for ROTJ, Lucas simply scrawled 'Sister!' next to Leia's name at one point, and apparently that was that.

(Interestingly, there's even a line by Palpatine in one of the drafts of ROTJ that suggested that perhaps the Other was in fact Anakin himself, even though Yoda and Ben had, as in the final film, told Luke that they meant Leia.)

The idea that the Other was a setup for the Sequel Trilogy is a really cool concept, but unfortunately it seems that there isn't really any information that supports it.

 

Given Lucas' penchant for reusing names, perhaps one of the young female characters they are casting will indeed be called Nellith, whatever her relationship to the Skywalkers might be.

 

Yeah, if the rumors prove accurate and we really do see Luke with a son and Leia/Han with a daughter, perhaps we could be in store for Deak Skywalker and Nellith Solo?

As much as I'd rather they keep the names "Ben" and "Jaina" for some sense of continuity with the EU, I think something like that could be cool.

 

Deak is an old Lucas-draft name but didn't that eventually pop up somewhere?

Scour those old drafts for names, it took a few decades to get Utapau but, by golly, we got it!

 

Thinking about it, I was a little vague here, actually. The Sister was a concept that existed when the saga was going to be twelve films long, with the Emperor being deposed in the last one, and the Sister and Luke meeting before that. Now, there was a stage of story-planning after that, where there would have been a Sequel Trilogy (making nine total films) and yet the Emperor (I think) would have still been done away with in the next film after ESB. So it seems like that version of the saga, with a defined Sequel Trilogy, would have to deal with what came after the Empire. And indeed, one of Lucas's quotes on the Sequels talks about rebuilding the Republic. That may have been what he was thinking of around the time ESB came out, when the saga-as-Trilogy-of-Trilogies was still part of the plan. What was the Other at that point? We know the Sister concept was brought back. Was there a point around this time when the Sister wasn't Leia and would instead have appeared in the Sequel Trilogy? Or perhaps the Other could have been someone other than The Sister totally? ... or perhaps the Other would still have been resolved in ROTJ. And perhaps the plan was that Leia was the Other even at that point (though it would seem - and is - strange, because Yoda seems ready to let her possibly be destroyed on Cloud City at one point in ESB).

Only George Lucas knows, at this point. And maybe JW Rinzler. And maybe Howard Kazanjian. Etc. But we don't.

It might be a name Leigh Brackett came up with. But yeah, perhaps.

 

personally i don't want any pt influences other than what was in the ot. no clones (except stormtroopers, etc)) or anything. just new stuff.

what i mean is i want the st to be a sequel to the ot only.

i also love the original the star wars scripts and i hope we get more things from those.

 

WOAH, is this JAR JAR way back in the early concept art prior to the original trilogy???

 

Well, you know the droids will be — probably more so than before, considering that they were made to fight the Seperatists' war.

 

What about the Kaibur Crystal? We've never seen that in live action, so it was never used. A special crystal that enhances the power of the one who possesses it. I know crystals are part of the construction of a lightsaber, but I always found the Kaibur could be a very viable story element.

Also, a special talisman or amulet (with a crystal in it). Padme had that necklace that Anakin made for her. Brackett's early draft had a talisman the helped Luke find Yoda.

Perhaps these artifacts could help destroy the curse of the Sith, whatever that might be.

 

Since Episode IX was supposed to be Palpatine's only appearance, IX could instead reveal the existence of Palpatine's ghost.

VI was supposed to end with a lava duel, so IX could end on Mustafar.

 

I was just rereading The Making of ESB and noticed something I hadn't before. I had been under the impression that the defeat of the Emperor would be the last episode. But I think at one point, Lucas says - and this appears to still be at a time when there would be twelve episodes - that the last episode would be the rebuilding of the republic (which would seem to have to be post-Emperor, right?). Lucas's quotes from the 80s on whatever versions of the Sequel Trilogy he'd been thinking about also have that theme. I wonder if that says anything about the themes and possible villains.

 

Likely thanks to Kurtz. It was common knowledge in the 80's that Lucas had plans for a ST after 1983. He gave all kinds of quotes as to what it would entail. Rebuilding the republic and Jedi were some of the themes, as was 60 year old Luke passing on what he learned, etc.

 

Of course. I just thought I had read in one of the Making-Ofs that the end of the twelve-film, pre-ESB conception would have been the end of the Empire (with the Sequel Trilogy being truly just a tacked-on addition that came after that point). But I guess even before there was a real sequel 'trilogy' planned, there were some ideas for what might come after the Empire. Perhaps these were just idle ideas for a single film - ideas that would have then been expanded out into a potential trilogy of their own, similar to how the prequels seem to have been born out of a single 'young days of Ben Kenobi' film that Lucas talked about around the time the original Star Wars was released.

 

I was just reading The Making of Star Wars and came across some of GL's earliest notes on the backstory (page 17), which involved Nixonian gangsters assassinating the Emperor of the galaxy and taking power. One of the other things these gangsters do is incite 'race riots' to create chaos. Perhaps the Clone Wars, in their older conceptions, might tie into this general idea.

 

"The Skywalker" and "Darklighter", who the second draft of ANH says founded the Jedi and Sith, respectively. They could reuse the terms for characters in the ST or there could be spin-offs that involve the founders of the two sects.

 

what's great is that they have tons of mcquarrie, unused prequel designs, and george's rough drafts to draw from. i hope they use things from those.

"you never know when you'll need a good alien." GL

 

That Jedi looks way cooler than any in the PT.

 

That could be BRILLIANT, if they finally undo the mystery. But I think maybe it's too little, too late for that.

 

Quoted from another thread, but this would be an awesome forgotten concept to utilise somehow.