BTS "No, I am your father"

Lucas did say something like that in the DVD commentaries (I think), but it's so close to the concept of the Sister. And The Other and The Sister ended up being conflated in ROTJ anyway... so it feels like it could very easily be related - even if not specifically as a reference to 'Nellith' as that character briefly existed OR to Leia as she would become in ROTJ.

 

Wait, was Annikin (particularly in that form) his name at that point? The Brackett script refers to his ghost only as "Skywalker", IIRC.

 

I think that version of the name being used that way just comes out of some older conversations on here, where we were trying to keep the different versions of the characters straight: "Anakin" = "Vader," "Annikin" and "Darth" would be the separate versions of those characters as they existed up til ESB.

What was the first place to call him Anakin (in any spelling)? The name existed from early on, but I mean in the role of Luke's father.

 

Remember what JJ Abrams said Lucas told him about LOST "make up as you go alone but tell everyone you had it all planned out from the start"

 

SW Draft 3, August 1975:

The name doesn't appear in Draft 2, and in the rough/first draft, it's the name of the character who would evolve into Luke (the father is Kane Starkiller).

Also crops up in this 1977 interview, printed in Rinzler's Making of SW:

Other than that, I'm pretty sure the name doesn't come up again until a later draft of ROTJ, with the new spelling, not sure which draft included it first - the January 1981 revised rough draft of ROTJ doesn't, Vader's former given name isn't mentioned, although his family name was Skywalker:

 

Cool. So it did have that spelling, at that point. Thanks, Nub.

 

There is the argument that the change of the line from "Now we must find another" to "No, there is another" suggests that there was, but it could also be argued that it's just a slightly stronger line in terms of creating tension.

The funny thing is that although it supposedly creates a loose end, the Emperor's line in the revised rough draft ties it up neatly enough by making Vader/Anakin the 'Other':

Admittedly, ESB never states or even implies that the 'Other' is a Skywalker, but one way or another, having Anakin as the Other works perfectly - would have worked for ROTJ, and even better for the PT, including the Chosen One prophecy (which probably didn't exist back then).

No need to make Leia the Other at all. Odd choice, and the love triangle didn't necessarily require such a dramatic and definitive resolution - Leia picks Han, Luke's focus is on being a Jedi anyway, they all live happily ever after.

 

I wouldn't say that quite works for ROTJ as it stands. Obi-Wan and Yoda express very little faith in the possibility of Anakin's redemption, which means that it wouldn't really make sense for Yoda to refer to him as "another hope" (though it does make more sense than the existing situation where Obi-Wan apparently doesn't think Leia is up to snuff).

 

Maybe not exactly as it stands, but Obi-Wan's the one expressing real doubt about the possibility of Anakin's redemption in ROTJ, not Yoda - and that fits with the exchange in ESB, when he considers Luke to be their last hope. Yoda isn't quite as absolute in his belief that Vader can't be redeemed in ROTJ, his main concern is the power of the Emperor (Yoda and Luke don't really discuss the possibility of Vader's redemption anyway).

As to why GL still went with Leia as the Other/Luke's sister - it's quite possible that he was still attached to the old idea of Luke having a sister on the other side of the galaxy, and wanted to incorporate it into the story somehow, despite it being completely unnecessary.

 

I wanted Making of ROTJ to cover this more (as I'm sure you recall). There's barely anything in the notes, but it's clearly something both the fans and the filmmakers were ruminating on (snippets or mentions of conversations with Kazanjian or in the story meetings). I wonder if Rinzler has any information on this that was left out, if he asked anyone any questions on this. There is so much 'they bought a camera on this day and it cost this much, which made this person very angry'; comparatively little story/notes (though it does have nice excerpts from the conferences).

 

I'll say - for every ten pages addressing contract negotiations and discussions about the sort of materials used for making sets and costumes, you're lucky to get one page which covers how the story itself was progressing. I recall that GL's notorious ring-binders containing the entire SW Saga were off-limits to Rinzler, so he's working with what he can - which means a lot of the archival material amounts to invoices and contracts, and precious few story notes.

It's still a good book to have, and there's gold in there, but an utter slog getting through it.

 

Really? That seems like it would make it extremely difficult to piece it all together.

 

Well, and also that I do get the impression - despite the lack of it really showing in ESB - at least some of the filmmakers still seem to have considered the "love triangle" a thing that needed to be resolved. I think I actually remembering commenting before (maybe in the Making of ROTJ thread, although I can't remember if Rinzler really mentioned it) how surprising I found that, but it does seem to have been the case.

Why they thought that this particular retroactively squicky way was how it needed to be done, though, is one of those questions to which we'll probably never have the answers.

 

Hence why we're still floundering around in the dark trying to do just that, despite all three films of the OT having received the Rinzler treatment. They're great books, but let's face it, for every answer they give us, they just pose two or more questions - and dodge the questions we really want detailed, specific answers to, i.e. just when was Vader made Luke's father, ditto Leia as Luke's sister, plus what the real vision was for the 12-part series or the nine-episode trilogy of trilogies.

Here's the actual quote regarding the full outlines, from Rinzler's SW.com blog:

Make of that what you will. I'm guessing GL's reluctance to release all his original outlines and notes is due to how rough and incoherent they might appear in their entirety, being simply random notes from his own brainstorming of a constantly changing vision across decades. It would shatter the idea that there really is an actual Star Wars Saga as a solid totality.

That's not a criticism of GL, he's created a universe and mythology that's captivated millions, I completely understand why he'd rather not have the 'grand vision' revealed to be a mess of incompatible scribblings of pencil on yellow paper.

 

Mod action: Moving to Saga and tagging as BTS, talk about a loaded topic.

 

By the way, here's the quote Sarge mentioned earlier:

So no suggestion of his father's ghost, only Ben's.

 

Yea, I guess that was a fairly 'duh' comment on my part. I'd wonder what he's saving them for, but your idea of the roughness of the notes probably having something to do with it makes sense. It really is too bad. That's also why I was wondering if (or why not) Rinzler might have asked people (like Kazanjian, or Kasdan) about things like Leia being made the Sister. Obviously none of us know that, it was just a thought. There was another quote from Rinzler during the writing of the book, I think he said GL asked him to cut down the preproduction section as he felt it was too long. I wonder if that actually was a request to remove some of the story-related information... ?

And I continue to hope that at some point we get to see what GL has in those notes, finally.

Is he/are they still trying to maintain the 'had everything figured out from the beginning' concept anyway? I can't really tell.

 

That's a legend. Vader is Father in the Dutch language. Though the use of Vader as a name came from someone that Lucas knew growing up. At least that's what I recall reading.

 

I'm sure Vader's big reveal didn't really surprise anyone in the Netherlands

(Amsterdam 1980)
- Luke: Hij vertelde me genoeg (He told me enough). Hij vertelde me dat je hem vermoord! (He told me you killed him)
-Vader: Nee, Ik ben je vader (No, I am your father).

 

So I guess there is some truth to that. Though I'd attribute that to a funny coincidence, not eerie foreshadowing.

 

The whole Darth Vader = Dark Father theory simply isn't true. The fact that 'Vader' is Dutch for father is just a lucky coincidence.

For a start, it's pronounced differently. In the films, it's Vay-der, the Dutch word is pronounced Vah-der.
The name was also initially given to a different character altogether in the rough/first draft, an Imperial officer who was basically an early version of Grand Moff Tarkin or Jerjerrod, a character which played no part in the evolution of the Darth Vader we now know (who has his roots in Prince Valorum and Kane Starkiller), and who isn't anyone's father.

The reason GL used the name for one of his villains is due to its phonetic properties - it sounds like the word 'invader' - although it's quite possible that he also recalled it as being the name of one 'Gary Vader', who attended his high school (a lot of the names he used tended to be real names, as well as alien-sounding ones).

As for 'Darth' - it doesn't have any literal meaning in any language, it's a name GL made up. Again, the meaning lies within its phonetic properties, it's a combination of the words 'dark' and 'death'.

The name 'Darth Vader' was really meant to invoke 'Dark Invader'.

 

Stated by whom? I know Lucas has said (recently, if I'm not mistaken) that the intention of the line was to create tension about Luke's fate but that doesn't meant the line didn't have any other meaning. Most probably, Lucas WAS thinking about a possible other (or more than one); would any of you write such a line without even thinking who is that "other"?

 

The name "Darth Vader" seems to have accumulated added layers of meaning with the progression of the saga and its ever-increasing thematic complexity.

For example:




- "He had such a knowledge of the Dark Side..."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rigveda

"Veda" is Sanskrit for "knowledge". Anakin's wife -- whom he goes to the Dark Side, in theory, to save -- also has a rather conspicious Sanskrit name.

Darth Vader = Dark Knowledge ... or more accurately, Dearth (of) Knowledge ... i.e., "no knowledge"




- "First, I want you to go to the Jedi Temple..."; "Go to the Mustafar system..."

Words like "invade", "evade", "pervade", and the more-obscure "vade mecum", are derived from the Latin word "vadere", which means, "to go". Vader is one who goes.

The name Darth Vader also signifies the Emperor's desire to banish Anakin from his sight the moment he's actually drawn him under the spell of the Dark Side and knighted him.

"I told you to remain on the command ship."




Just thought I'd throw that in.

The name is rather clever and arresting -- at least, with the (semi) completed saga -- in my opinion.

 

Mr.Lucas, is that you? C'mon… tell the truth.

 

In one of the Making-Of books there are period notes where he appears to be putting together the words 'death,' 'water,' 'dark,' and 'invader.'

As Nub pointed out, the name 'Darth Vader' was originally applied to a completely different character who wasn't the father of anyone in the storyline, someone who sort of had the role of the Imperial Officers like Tarkin in the finished film. The character now called Darth Vader is closer to one who appears in one of the drafts, called Darklighter, and also now includes elements of other characters in the early scripts (the father aspect of Kane, the redeemed-villain aspect of Valorum).