CT If Obi-Wan had survived his encounter with Vader...

What if...

When Obi-Wan is duelling with Vader aboard the Death Star it was originally scripted that Vader was distracted and Obi-Wan managed to close the blast door separating them, then he would join Luke and Leia aboard the escaping Falcon.

For whatever reason, Lucas or Guinness, wanting to kill the character off. But if he'd have survived could Obi-Wan have joined Luke in piloting an X-Wing in the attack on the Death Star rather than just be standing at Leia's side?

 

If Obi Wan survived he'd have been so awesome it would have overshadowed Luke's presence in the rest of the trilogy and leave him essentially useless

 

Doubtful, Obi-Wan was old and tired and may have been killed in a similar manner to Biggs or Garven Dreis.

 

Maybe Obi Wan could have been the one to save Pokins' big fat ass during the death star battle

 

Maybe Obi-Wan would have helped the Rebels with making a plan to attack the Death Star. After all, he did have a lot of military experience.

 

Edit: nevermind, my post made no sense in context to the thread,

but I think Chagrian is correct, he'd be a military strategist, and be at the base.

 

The only thing that would have changed was that Obi-Wan could be Luke's mentor for a little bit longer. Given that three years passed between ANH and ESB, Luke would have been busy training as a pilot with the Alliance, only now previously having received instructions from an alive Obi-Wan to eventually seek Yoda once his time with the Alliance ran its course.

I don't think Obi-Wan would have become a military strategist during that time. He would certainly have offered some initial counsel or advice to the rebels regarding what they are up against. But remember, Alderaan is gone, and with it anybody who Obi-Wan could have assumed any authority with.

In my opinion, had Obi-Wan survived his encounter with Vader, realizing the magnitude of what is taking place throughout the galaxy and between the Empire and the Rebel Alliance, he would have eventually made his way back to Vader, and possibly Palpatine, maybe even in a similar manner as Luke did by giving himself up. There is too much history there for that not to happen. But I don't think Obi-Wan would have tried to kill Vader knowing that Vader is part of Luke's journey to become a Jedi. Obi-Wan knew from the start that his purpose in all of this was to confront Vader, perhaps to try and convince Vader of his wrongdoing, but to eventually live on through immortality to guide Luke and watch over the future of the Jedi.

If you think about it, it was Obi-Wan who guided Luke to destroying the Death Star, and would not have been able to if he was still alive. So had Obi-Wan survived Vader, are we so sure Luke could have done what he did during the Battle of Yavin all on his own?

 

Obi-Wan probably would have taken Dodonna's lines and briefed the pilots. He would have communicated with Luke over intercom.

 

Taking the theory to its conclusion was basically the answer I was looking for. Obi-Wan could've guided Luke over the intercom just as easily if he'd still been alive and just as easily he could've been the raid commander back at base after Dodonna had planned it.

Looking into the following films isn't that simple, his role on Hoth would be a little bit empty until the AT-AT's attack and then may be he can show Luke the nature of the Force in that size matters little. Lucas says in his rough notes that Obi-Wan and Luke then go off to somewhere quiet to train, so for whatever reason Luke's training hasn't started proper or its at a stage when they need isolation. So may be he could train Luke and then as planned take him to Yoda to complete Luke's training? And that opens a can of worms in what would Obi-Wan do with Leia and the potential incest between her and Luke, if Obi-Wan was to reveal to them that they're siblings would he then train Leia too?

 

There's more really to say on this isn't there? If Obi-Wan had survived Vader....or to put this another way; if Lucas had decided to retain Obi-Wan (Guinness) to the end of the movie then....yes his communication to Luke would have been likely by intercom.

So...would telepathy then necessarily have been a 'power' the Jedi had? Would the concept of 'Force ghosts' have come to be? Would there be Yoda, or Dagobah?

 

Obi Wan wouldn't of piloted, he makes it quite clear he doesn't enjoy space travel in the PT and he's getting too old for all that by the time of ANH.

He'd be at base with Leia and Dodonna, aiding the battle with his strategy. And instead of speaking to Luke with the force, it would be the comm.

Alittle less magical that way.

 

I don't think Obi-Wan would have told Luke to use the Force over the intercom. In large part I think it was the psychic ability Luke discovered in that instant when Obi-Wan did communicate with him that finally allowed Luke to place such trust in the Force during the battle. Obi-Wan certainly would have guided Luke if he were still alive, but it's doubtful Luke would have 100% placed his faith in the Force had he not heard Obi-Wan's guidance telepathically. Plus, militarily, for Obi-Wan to be so focused on one guy as commander of the whole operation wouldn't make sense.

Obi-Wan knew he could accomplish everything as a Force Ghost that he could if he were still alive in the physical sense, he trusted in the Force. So any of those events where Obi-Wan revealed information to Luke or taught him something would still have taken place.

Again, given the history involved, I think Obi-Wan's main focus was to confront Vader one last time and knowingly allow himself to be killed by Vader in order to prove once and for all leaving no doubt that Vader had fallen to the Dark Side. Obi-Wan would have knowingly placed Vader into a position where he was forced to either kill him or let him live. And imagine if Vader had let on even the slightest hesitation towards killing Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan had to know...for himself, for Luke, and for the Jedi.

So even if Obi-Wan had survived his initial encounter with Vader, he would have confronted him again, but that was never his intention.

 

Nope. The original plan was for Obi-wan to have him be injured after the battle with Vader and be laid up. Luke would figure it out on his own to use the Force. There was no struggle to use the targeting computer. This was in the third draft. Lucas then amended it to having Obi-wan just stand around in the command center, not doing much. Dodonna didn't take his lines. As to why Obi-wan was killed...

Was the studio upset when you told them Kenobi would die?

"Everybody was upset. I was struggling with the problem that I had this sort of climactic scene that had no climax about two-thirds of the way through the film. I had another problem in the fact that there was no real threat in the Death Star. The villains were like tenpins; you get into a gunfight with them and they just get knocked over. As I originally wrote it, Ben Kenobi and Vader had a sword fight and Ben hits a door and the door slams closed and they all run away and Vader is left standing there with egg oil his face. This was dumb; they run into the Death Star and they sort of take over everything and they run back. It totally diminished any impact the Death Star had."

It was like the old Bob Steele westerns where they all had about fifty shots in their six-shooters.

"Right, but those kind of things dissipate without having a lot of real cruel torture scenes and real unpleasant scenes with the bad guys in order to create them as being bad or make them a threat. I was walking that thin line between making something that I thought was vaguely a nonviolent kind of movie but at the same time I was having all the fun of people getting shot. And I was very careful that most of the people that are shot in the film were the monsters or those storm-troopers in armored suits. Anyway, I was rewriting, I was struggling with that plot problem when my wife suggested that I kill off Ben, which she thought was a pretty outrageous idea, and I said, 'Well, that is an interesting idea, and I had been thinking about it.' Her first idea was to have Threepio get shot, and I said impossible because I wanted to start and end the film with the robots, I wanted the film to really be about the robots and have the theme be framework for the rest of the movie. But then the more I thought about Ben getting killed the more I liked the idea because, one, it made the threat of Vader greater and that tied in with the Force and the fact that he could use the dark side. Both Alec Guinness and I came up with the thing of having Ben go on afterward as part of the Force. There was a thematic idea that was even stronger about the Force in the earliest scripts. It was really about the Force, a Castaneda Tales of Power thing."

--George Lucas, Rolling Stone interview; 1977.

You can read the script drafts here..

http://starwarz.com/starkiller/category/star-wars-scripts/star-wars-star-wars-scripts/

Possible, no and no. Yoda was only created because Obi-wan was killed off. Dagobah as a training planet probably wouldn't have happened. Some place different might have been used. It's unclear if Luke and Vader's exchange in the third draft was via comlink or the Force. The script doesn't indicate either way. By the final film, Vader speaks more to himself than his wing men and Luke has no idea that Vader is out there.

 

Guinness hated the idea of playing a ghost so that is obviously fiction from Lucas, Guinness stated he wanted to be killed off so he wouldn't have to film anymore of "this silly movie". Guinness was wined and dined at his favourite restaurant before he'd commit to ESB. A large pay check clearly influenced him also. Whether Lucas decided or Guinness decided, I don't think we'll ever know the truth as Lucas constantly changes his story on these matters.

Read them many times and also the drafts not there that are in J.W. Rinzler's Making of books, some are even photo's of hand written drafts by Lucas. Anyway that is far from the point of this thread which was intended to explore how Obi-Wan could've affected the following two films should Lucas stayed with his original idea.

 

Bit difficult with that understanding to argue that there was ever a story that was set in stone 'from the beginning' isn't it?

 

Lucas states that when Yoda dies in RotJ that it replaced Obi-Wan's death and served the same purpose, that of leaving Luke to stand on his own two feet and face Vader on his own.

I'm interested to hear what other people would make of Obi-Wan being at Echo Base on Hoth, how would that have affected the storyline. Would Obi-Wan have stood by with Leia whilst Han went out after Luke knowing that she might be the one to train now?

 

Leia didn't become "sister" until ROTJ.

 

That's not what I was meaning, more of being 'the other'.

 

Yes...but "sister" and "other" are intrinsically linked. She was no more the "other" than she was "sister" until ROTJ.

 

It sounds good at first but like other people on her, the magic would be lost and there probably ultimately wouldn't've been Yoda or the Force Ghost concept...so without Obi-Wan dying, we would not have got the Yoda arc in The Clone Wars. Funny how that works out.

 

I don't think Obi-Wan was interested in keeping Anakin alive in order to convince the latter of his wrongdoing by this time. After all, he tried to convince Luke to kill Anakin in "Return of the Jedi".

 

This going a bit off topic but if you can read Rinzler's The Making of Empire Strikes Back and The Making of Return of the Jedi you'll find hand written notes that Lucas made around 1979 and January 1980 which is 6 months before ESB was released that say Leia is Luke's sister.


From MoESB
sister
Leia ^ hears Luke calling out to her

 

Well, Lucas isn't going to tell the world two months after his film came out that one of his stars thought it was a pile of elephant **** and wanted out. It's not exactly good form to trash your movie while making it, much less promoting it. That's why you don't start hearing stories like what Ford said to Lucas until after the films were done and there was no longer an obligation to be entirely positive on the subject.

BILL MOYERS: "Where do these rough ideas come from?"

GEORGE LUCAS: "Now that I don’t know. That’s a mystery."

BILL MOYERS: "But 25 years ago, when you cast the original plot, you didn’t see these costumes? You didn’t see these characters, did you? That’s all..."

GEORGE LUCAS: "No. No. This is something I didn’t really do until I started to sit down and write this script. I knew the basic story, how Darth Vader got to be Darth Vader. But I didn’t have any details about what anything looked like. I knew there would be a — a slave owner. I didn’t know that he would actually run a junk shop and be blue and fly around on funny little wings."

--"Mentors And Faith" interview, 1999.

Now, obviously he's not referring to Vader in the strictest sense that we know him, but rather Prince Valorum. But he's not going to go into detail like that. Or at the very least, when he started to shift from Vader the general to Vader the Sith. Certain ideas were known and certain ones weren't until he sat down to figure it out.

 

Well not in the same sense as we see it now, but Obi-Wan still dies only in RotJ and not ANH. Yoda could still have been introduced in ESB and may be he's already dead when Luke returns to Dagobah to ask a dying Obi-Wan about Vader being his father. If you reverse the scene so Obi-Wan tells Luke using an altered Yoda's dialogue, then an angry Luke goes outside and the ghost of Yoda tells him not to be mad at Obi-Wan and explains Obi-Wan's actions.

It changes things around but the overall dynamism of the scene remains to an extent, may be its even more powerful now that the exposition comes from an entirely different source?

But as ive already said there a sufficient moments when the emphasis would be moved from Luke to Obi-Wan, I wouldn't disagree that it would need to be extremely well thought out before addressing it to keep Luke as the protagonist.

 

I guess so. It would be interesting to see Obi-Wan say Yoda's dialogue...without the strange speaking patterns, of course.