BTS Reconstructing the Backstories

Thought I'd resurrect this thread in relation to the previous discussion regarding the Clone Wars - as early as the first two drafts of SW, GL had established just what the 'emergency situation' was which resulted in the Jedi becoming outlaws & the Empire taking total control of the galaxy:

He clearly had two wars in mind - The Clone Wars & The Great/Holy Rebellion - but no specifics thought through on the first. By the time it came to writing the PT, GL was well aware that everyone wanted to know what the Clone Wars were (having been mentioned in the film of SW), even if he hadn't intended for them to be particularly significant in his storyline. Far easier to combine what was little more than a name with the conflict crucial to the plot of the entire backstory.

Of course, he turned the idea of the 'Jedi Rebellion' on its head to good effect in the actual PT as made - there was no actual rebellion, it was a myth conjured up by Palpatine that became the official story. I doubt that this rebellion mentioned in the early drafts was ever meant to be a cover-up, it was probably meant to be full-blown civil war - perhaps a civil war that had continued until the time of the story being told.

However, I'm still curious about the little hints about the Clone Wars & clones relating to Lando in Brackett's draft of ESB - hints of the real backstory or solely Brackett's invention?

 

There was no large-scale Jedi rebellion in the finished version of ROTS, but the script (and some lines left in the film itself) make this less-than-clear.

And given the remnants of the pre-pickups version of the film left over in the Mustafar sequence ("The Jedi are evil!" "I should have known they were plotting to take over!") it seems to me that perhaps initially their plan got farther than in the film as we know it.


Also, here's the story of the Empire's rise, as told by George Lucas in the summer of 1977 (from the additional material in TMoSW). I'll pick up after the Emperor has already been manipulating the bureaucracy behind the scenes...

So here's how I see it. The Clone Wars probably happened before this, dating implied from other sources to 35 years before ANH. This may actually have been part of Palpatine's machinations, as the above quote says he's been secretly building up Imperial forces, and I seem to recall a piece of background info from 77 or 78 explaining how the stormtroopers are clones (though I'm not sure if this came from Lucas). After the Clone Wars, Palpatine rises to official power, and things happen as noted in this story.

The Clone Wars remained tied to the 35 BSW4 date until 1999. The Bantam Era EU uses that date, which Timothy Zahn says was given to him by LFL during the writing of his Thrawn Trilogy. It wasn't given to him at the beginning, but only during the production of the second book. He talks about LFL as being extremely cautious about what could be done with the prequel era; I suspect they noticed his interest in the era and went to Lucas or other higher-ups to get some official statements to pass on.

Anyway, when the Clone Wars were re-dated isn't clear. Probably it occurred during the writing of TPM, but the details of the process are virtually nonexistent.

 

Although technically true as it stands, I've always had the impression that the Rebel Alliance was something that only really existed in the couple of years before SW/ANH. Vague mutterings between the likes of Bail Organa & Mon Mothma in the 20 year interim between the establishment of the Galactic Empire & the Battle Of Yavin could hardly be considered a 'Rebellion' with a capital-R.
However, in the first draft of SW, one gets the impression that a full-blown military struggle had been ongoing.

I still believe that the Clone Wars in the 1976 vision weren't something that came about via the machinations of Palpatine or the Sith Lords, they were simply a massive galaxy-wide conflict that eroded the stability of the Republic. The backstory proper would basically begin as the galaxy attempted to recover, just as the world attempted to deal with the wreckage of World War I.

 

That does make sense, and is how I mostly feel about it too - I was just trying to incorporate those anecdotes about the Empire and Imperial forces and clones. As Palpatine was not a wizard in this version but rather just a corrupt politician (or a politician surrounded by corrupt advisors), his plotting would have had to be correspondingly more political and less magical... and probably less complex.

 

Darth_Nub and Lt.Cmdr.Thrawn:

Great find on this 'Jedi Rebellion' aspect.

I think you're right. In the earlier drafts - or specifically, the Second draft - The 'Rebels vs. Empire' sub-plot is almost interchangeable with the 'Jedi vs. Sith' conflict, unlike the situation with the final draft and the film itself, where 'Rebels vs. Empire' predominates.

This sounds right, the only thing is I'm not sure the bit about the stormtroopers being clones is from '77 or '78. I was under the impression that this first appeared in media around '80 or even '81 (something called "The Official Star Wars Compendium"?).

Yes, I agree that it probably was during the writing of TPM.

 

That would be the notorious Star Wars Poster Monthly #4 from 1978:

I'm pretty certain it's a bit of a lucky guess, rather than something written from information provided by GL. Fan fiction with an official stamp, basically. It came up in this thread:

http://boards.theforce.net/star_wars_saga/b10456/30813951/p1/?12

shanerjedi's reply was intriguing - that "the 1987 West End Games sourcebook also makes passing reference to the clone rumor for stormies." I should try to track that down.

 

Here I am.

Yes, the first West End Games sourcebook makes a passing reference to the stormies "as rumoured to be clones" or something like that. It is mentioned in the stormtrooper character section in the book.

That Poster Monthly info is the first I've seen going back that far. Amazing.

Great thread guys. Keep the positive vibe going. No one likes the darkside.

 

The Poster Monthly from '78 would seem to indicate the Stormtroopers = Clones, but a mere year before that, Lucas was telling Carol Titleman - as noted in the "Lucas Expands His Universe" section of Rinzler's TMOSW - that there were women Stormtroopers (which would seem to argue against them being clones of a male bounty hounter). Actually, I think he says outright in that '77 interview that they are drawn from recruits and/or military levies. This would indicate the stormtroopers = clones concept as a ret-con.

 

Like I said, I'm convinced the article is more speculative than anything else, & can't really be taken as proof that stormtroopers were necessarily meant to be clones back then. It's possible the idea was floated, however, but it's very difficult to figure out just what 'The Clone Wars' were meant to be - prior to the release of the PT, it was usually assumed that the actual clones were the enemies of the Republic, & this is what was implied in the EU. One would imagine that GL would have vetoed such implications if he had firm ideas contrary to them.

You've also got a possible implication in the ESB novel that the armour worn by Boba Fett was that of clone warriors:

"A human bounty hunter, Fett was known for his extremely ruthless methods. He was dressed in a weapon-covered, armoured spacesuit, the kind worn by a group of evil warriors defeated by the Jedi Knights during the Clone Wars."

Then again, it was mentioned here & there prior to the release of ESB that Fett's armour was that of 'Imperial Shocktroopers'. Both can't be true.

 

Are there really mentions of Fett's armor being Imperial, prior to the movie coming out? Hmm. The TMoSW backstory mentions Palpatine building up "Imperial forces" in secret, though I'm not sure if this is supposed to be before or after he becomes Emperor.


Another interesting tidbit:

Who are the White Legions? They seem to be tied to the Clone Wars here, though apparently they've not been around for a long time. That makes little sense if they're supposed to be the stormtroopers, who are mentioned in the same draft as having fascist white armor.



So in the Clone Wars, as of 197X we might have had the White Legions (whatever they were), led by at least one Jedi (though this is from an earlier draft than the final). By the time of ESB, the antagonists (possibly clones?) have Supertrooper armor like Boba Fett's, though presumably less customized (did this info come from Lucas? Do the scripts say anything about this?). Also, Lando, in some early versions, might have come from a planet of clones, his people being refugees. Is it possible to compile the information on the Clone Wars from this era into a narrative that makes some sense?

 

I don't think so, too much of it is contradictory when it comes to just who the 'clones' themselves were. Putting aside just who knew what & how much might have been made up by people other than GL, there's only three sources that are even close to being specific:

1. Star Wars Poster Monthly #4 (1978) - the stormtroopers are clones;
2. The Empire Strikes Back, first draft by Leigh Brackett - Baron Lando Kadar is the leader of a peaceful community which includes what remains of his family - clone refugees;
3. ESB novelisation (1979/1980) - Boba Fett's armour is the same as that of a group of evil warriors defeated by the Jedi during The Clone Wars - I believe the implication is that these 'evil warriors' (later Mandalorians) were the very clones the wars refer to.

I'd have to look into sources & dates, but it was also mentioned around the time of ESB & (I think) prior to its release that Fett's armour was that of Imperial Shocktroopers/Supertroopers, which would directly contradict point #3. Despite many changes over the years, it's always been the case that the Republic & the Empire were the same. If the Jedi fought a group of evil warriors during the Clone Wars, they weren't Imperials, particularly if they were defeated.

The Lando Kadar connection in the Brackett draft is the real odd one out, as the clones seem to be simply a type of culture/race/species, not the army of organic robot warriors of all the other conceptions. All Brackett's idea? Put it alongside the ghost of Luke's father in the "we don't know" bin.

Throw GL's comments about Stormtroopers in 1977 & the White Legions from SW Draft 3 into the mix & you've got an ugly mess that doesn't make a whole heap of sense if you try to deduce anything from it when it comes to this mysterious, galaxy-wide conflagration. I honestly don't believe GL had the Clone Wars thought through at all back then, largely because he probably intended them to be even further back in time than 35BBY. Something to be referred to, not actually shown, even in the original version of the PT. The immediate effects of the Clone Wars would have been something that may have been dealt with, but it's not a given that the wars themselves would have been covered.

 

In light of the "NO! NOOOOOOOOO!!" added to Jedi, I'd like to reiterate how important it is to do what we're doing in this thread (and on this board generally).

This change is clearly an effort to harmonize the saga and emphasize Vader as the protagonist. I was quite aghast when I first saw the new version of the scene, though my reaction has diminished a little since then. If your goal is building stronger ties between the two trilogies, this is certainly one way to do it. But beyond an emotional reaction, or even stylistic concerns, there's a historical issue.

In a way, these changes remind me of the altered story of Bilbo getting the ring of power in The Hobbit. I'm not nearly old enough to have read the original, so I don't have an emotional attachment to it, and probably I prefer the new version. But from the standpoint of studying the creative process behind that work and its world, knowing that originally the ring was only a trinket is important. And so it is with this.

(This post is adapted from one I posted elsewhere.)

 

I'll leave my own opinion on the "NOOOO!!!" issue alone, but yes, Tolkien did make some alterations to The Hobbit to change both Bilbo's & Gollum's motivations somewhat, for the very same reason GL has made changes to the OT - to make the earlier work fit the newer, larger vision a bit better. I suppose you could say it set a precedent.

However, there's an interesting twist to this - Tolkien originally sent the changes to his publisher as an example of how he might re-write the novel for a new edition. He was then surprised to find the galley proofs of the 1951 second edition included the new text.

He began a complete re-write of the Hobbit in 1960, but abandoned it altogether after criticism that "it just wasn't The Hobbit".
The 1966 third edition also had very small edits relating to some references to Elves.

It's all a question of degree, I suppose. Can't say I've ever read any attacks on Tolkien's integrity for making such tweaks.

 

Been thinking about another aspect regarding the changing vision of the PT. I've been trying to find details on a quote from George Lucas from the 1990s when he was asked to give some information about the Prequel Trilogy he was making & simply answered with "ANAKIN". I can't be sure just when this happened, however, I think it was sometime after TPM was released, but it might have been before.

Point being, it really emphasised the fact that the PT was now primarily focused on the character of Anakin Skywalker - but this wasn't the case before. I believe that the fact that there was this change in focus is what led GL to make such a broad, specific statement, however unconsciously.

Prior to ROTJ, virtually every statement from GL about the backstory referred to "the young Ben Kenobi". When it was the 12-film, pre-Father Vader vision, he talked about one film about the young days of Ben Kenobi. When it was the 9-film ESB era vision, he talked about the trilogy that comes before, which is about "Ben Kenobi and Luke's father".
Even after ROTJ was made, and "Luke's father" received an official name, we still didn't know much about this person, other than that he was once a Jedi Knight who turned to the Dark Side of the Force and became the monster known as Darth Vader.
As far as this backstory that might get made as films one day, I imagine that in the back of GL's mind, he was always thinking that the main character would have to be Ben Kenobi, simply because he was the only character in this story that the audience would feel it knew in any way & could possibly relate to or sympathise with.

However, once it came time to flesh out this story, he must have had certain new ideas he wanted to express, but which perhaps didn't fit with what material he already had jotted down. One of the main complaints about The Phantom Menace is its lack of a central protagonist - this may have been the result of it being written during a sort of transitional period while GL was still trying to get to grips with exactly who & what this trilogy was 'about', especially considering that in the original draft of TPM, it mainly followed a single Jedi called, you guessed it, Obi-Wan Kenobi, not a master & a barely used apprentice.

The basic plotline of the PT was effectively there - Anakin becomes Vader, Republic becomes Empire, Jedi wiped out, Luke & Leia born - but just whose eyes we're meant to view it through don't become particularly clear until AOTC, & it's only 100% definite in ROTS.
Oddly enough, the original PT protagonist from the OT era - Obi-Wan Kenobi - is barely a second-string character in TPM, comes to the fore in AOTC, then steps back into supporting mode in ROTS.

Thoughts?

 

On the change being an effort to harmonize the saga and emphasize Vader/Anakin as the protagonist, I though exactly the same thing when I heard about this. It is somewhat amusing, though, to see some of the other reasons for the change being put forth on the other boards (adds more "emotion", Vader as "angry robot", etc.).


Darth_Nub, interesting bit about TPM being from a "transitional" period. I agree about the PT character arc progression that you describe (Ben Kenobi to Anakin).


Getting back to the Clone Wars, for a minute:

Darth_Nub, do you think a different outcome (as far as the Clone Wars being shown on film or not) would have been predicated upon a 'prequel' back-story that might have only been ONE episode/movie (i.e. back when SW was being made to as late as AUG/SEP '77), versus a back-story of prequels, that consisted of three films? Maybe in the earlier iteration of the back-story where only one film could have been made, the Clone Wars would have truly been the "back-story to the back-story" spoken of earlier. Perhaps this changed as soon as the back-story was expanded to three episodes (circa '78/'79), where there would have been room to show the Wars. Thoughts?

 

PART II:

The thing is, the change was most likely geared toward those who aren't/weren't aware of the original character focus of the PT that you refer to, so the "revisionist" aspect of the Blue-Ray change will be lost on this demographic. This group, who've heard nothing but the Anakin-centric story focus, will think that Lucas is merely making it more blatant/obvious now.

That's a great point, and the main reason why I don't think it was at all a good idea to shift the story focus onto Anakin.

 

One of the interesting ones is Kevin Smith's reaction. He says he always felt something was missing, there. I guess maybe he could have, but... just weird considering that what was added could only have been missing since 2005, given the development of the story of the prequels.

There's a line from the RLM review: "Obi-Wan Kenobi and Qui-Gon Jinn should have been combined into a single new character, named Obi-Wan Kenobi." Indeed the earlier versions of the story had Kenobi discovering Anakin and pretty much doing everything Jinn does in the final film, with Jinn being the background character only arriving in the story when they get to Coruscant (right?). For some reason the roles are flipped in the later versions - I suspect so that Obi-Wan could have some kind of arc over the course of the film. But it also unfortunately removed anything interesting for him to do, and introduced a couple inconsistencies (rectifiable through 'certain points of view,' but still).

Qui-Gon is what we expected a Jedi to be, and though Kenobi absorbs his character traits at the end of TPM ("Qui-Gon's defiance I sense in you"), he still feels more by-the-book in the later films than Jinn (proto-Kenobi) would have been. It seems like maybe originally Kenobi's failing in training Anakin would have been being too 'out-there' and lax, but in the prequels this actually became him being too strict and dogmatic instead (along with the whole Jedi order). Again, maybe this was done to give them some kind of arc? The Jedi as depicted in the backstories from the 3rd draft of SW or the 1977 infodumps don't seem to have this same characterization (from what I recall).

I'd love to see what ROTS was like before all the changes, because if I remember correctly, the focus on Anakin only really took off during production (Lucas cutting anything tangential to his story, rearranging the turn scene, etc).

 

That makes sense. GL has admitted several times that the actual backstory he had plotted out was almost completely related to Episode III, & that Eps I & II he was virtually making up from scratch. He was actually quoted as saying he'd have to use a lot of "Hamburger Helper" for Ep I.
So basically, he had material for one film, which would show the backstory we know he had planned out as far back as the early 1970s - the transformation of the Republic into the Empire by a corrupt politician, along with the rebellion & subsequent extermination of the order of Jedi Knights.

When he decided that he would make a trilogy of this backstory, he might have felt he'd bitten off more than he could chew, even though the story of Anakin Skywalker's fall clearly opened up more possibilities.
I suspect he figured that the Clone Wars mentioned in SW could fill things in, even if he didn't quite know what they were yet. I'm inclined to think they were originally intended to be finishing up at the beginning of Ep I (just as they now do in Ep III), or effectively be a larger version of the Blockade Of Naboo storyline.
Even as far back as the 1970s, he may well have intended the Clone Wars to be loosely inspired by the American Civil War, just as they are in the current incarnation, although perhaps with allusions to WWI (massive conflict which changed the face of the world, leading to the sort of situation where dictators found it easy to assume power).

Same here. As I mentioned above, a great deal of the basic storyline of ROTS was already there way back in the 1970s, it's Anakin's fall that was the major change, & it's also the aspect which seemed to keep changing.
However, in a PT focused primarily on Obi-Wan Kenobi (a vision which seems to have existed up until the first draft of TPM), it occurred to me that Ep III may have included some of the abandoned prequel ideas referenced in the OT & 1980s interviews:
- Luke being aged three years old - perhaps it would have covered the early years of Obi-Wan's exile & silent guardianship of Anakin's son;
- Leia's memory of her mother - Anakin's wife still alive during the early years of the Empire, perhaps even in some sort of contact with Obi-Wan;
- Owen Lars as Obi-Wan's brother - an obvious way of adding depth & drama to the trilogy's main character. The idea probably first occurred to GL when he began thinking of making the PT, leading to its inclusion in the script & novel of ROTJ.

 

I think you may be remembering this:

And this is long before reshoots - pretty sure they're talking about the rough draft there (or possibly the subsequent draft).

Even after Jedi, Anakin didn't necessarily get top billing. This from a press conference, 20 April 1995 (Lucas is answering the questions):

Interesting for several reasons. Of course there's the similarity between this synopsis and the ones you quoted from before Jedi. Even though the story GL gives is close to what we know he was thinking before, and what was eventually shown, the focus isn't entirely on Anakin but is shared among several characters we knew from the OT.

There are other interesting bits of information here too - Anakin would be ten in this version (close to the final), but Obi-Wan has not yet been re-aged, which implies that this is before Qui-Gon's and his roles were swapped. (I don't know if there was a date for this before.) This makes sense as well because the synopsis still seems to be putting Obi-Wan first, or at least equal.

I wonder when the "prophecy" storyline was added to proto-TPM...

Also, Episode III here would be 20 years before ANH, instead of 19 like was finally decided (there's a timeline with the article which makes this clear). I wonder if this means that Luke and Leia were just to have been a year older or if some of the earlier prequel concepts - like Anakin not knowing his wife was pregnant, with her going into hiding - were still in play here.

I never thought of that point in that way before, but it makes sense. Especially since GL seems to consider stories very mutable so long as the changes provide an arc or new view on the characters - like Obi-Wan becoming the apprentice (and everything that entails) or the whole prophecy/balance thing (which, from some interviews, seems to have

 

Random Backstory Topic I Came Across Just Now: Force Ghosts.

Someone recalled that in 1999, when Qui-Gon was seen not to ghost/disappear upon death, this was regarded as a continuity error or at least a deliberate change to the Jedi way. Someone else remembered responding to similar criticisms with the fact that Vader in ANH seemed surprised at Ben's disappearance, thus making the disappearing/ghosting ability not a typical Jedi thing.

However, in ANH, I don't think Vader was to have been a full Jedi at any point. Lucas's backstory information on this is unclear - in the 3rd (2nd?) draft version, "Darklighter" is a student who leaves his master, trains himself and others in the dark side, and becomes a bodyguard of the Emperor. In the 'Summer of 1977' backstory, Vader is said to have been a Jedi who the rest thought was still good when he was in reality killing them secretly. In the film, even to this day, Vader says "When I left you (Obi-Wan), I was but a learner," which suggests to me that the Darklighter version might be closer, if we have to choose only one (they could be made to fit, if necessary).

Why does this matter? If Vader left Kenobi before the training was complete, perhaps he just never got to the stage where Kenobi felt it appropriate to teach him the ghosting power. I do not think that, at the time of the originals, the power to become a ghost (aural or visual - remember that we don't see a Jedi ghost til ESB) upon death was meant to be a mystery to the Jedi of old. I think it was supposed to be something the more venerable masters knew how to do, and Vader abandoned his training before he learned it, or reached the level of 'enlightenment' within the Force that would make it happen.

Of course, Kenobi's death at Vader's hands was a late addition to the story anyway, with him originally talking to Luke in the trench run over the radio (IIRC). So it seems possible, even likely, that there was no story behind the ghosting power for a while.

Why was it made into a mystery in the prequels? If I had to guess, I'd say, the same reason that we don't see a ship enter hyperspace from the inside in the prequels. GL took some things that were impressive but mundane in the world of the OT and made them mysterious or unique in the PT, possibly to encourage the feeling that there's some new spectacle in each episode.

The seeds may have been sown with this, though, in the same place so many other changes came from: combining Annikin and Vader. Annikin, as a full Jedi Knight, might have had the same knowledge Kenobi did. But Vader reacts as if he doesn't know what happened. If the two are the same person, why would Anakin seem puzzled? There are probably several ways to harmonize this, but one of them is making it so in fact none of the Jedi know how to do this, and it's only learned by a few after Anakin becomes Vader.

 

You mean Zahn uses that date. The Bantam EU wasn't solely written by Zahn. Children of the Jedi(1995) used a time placement for the end of the Clone Wars that was no more than one year off from that which eventually appeared in the PT.

And yet, oddly enough, he never said anything about it before now. I suspect he's rewriting history.

 

True. Though, the date apparently did come from LFL to Zahn during the writing of Dark Force Rising, and as far as I know, excepting COTJ, the rest of the EU used that date thereafter.

 

I wish I could remember the specifics of an official quote from around 1999 which stated that Anakin Skywalker never actually achieves the level of Jedi Knight. I think that's what it was (it might have been that Obi-Wan never formally becomes a master). IIRC, it was from Rick McCallum, probably in the SW Insider.
Whatever it was, it eventually contradicted the final films, which basically confirmed that GL was changing such things around at a very late stage - I doubt Rick McCallum was going to feed tiny snippets of info to the public that weren't from very solid information.

Sorry to be so vague - anyone remember? I'll try to track it down.

 

I also seem to recall McCallum talking about how in Episode III we'd see Boba Fett (and the Millennium Falcon, with us being surprised by who owns it). I think the art department wanted to do the Fett thing but I'm not sure he was ever actually in the story, and the Falcon is only seen for a split second (I don't think this was what he was talking about). So... I'm totally unclear on how trustworthy his 'prequel news' segments were. It'd be interesting to find a quote about the master/apprentice thing, though.

 

I don't think for a second that any of McCallum's prequel updates were ever made in anything but good faith. If he thought Fett was slated to appear in Ep III, he would have been going off whatever material GL had provided him with. If it was changed at the last minute, he couldn't help it. That's my point - McCallum was told certain things by Lucas, which he would then feed to a public hungry for information, but with GL chopping & changing all the time, much of what he said never came to pass.
I remember McCallum claiming that we'd find out a great deal about the origin of Vader's armour, which we never did (early speculation claimed it was linked to General Grievous). He also emphasised just how crucial Obi-Wan's line in ANH - "If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine" - was to the plot. As it turned out, the 'Force Ghost' concept was reduced to barely an afterthought in the final draft of ROTS, & was eliminated almost completely from the film itself.

Rinzler's Making Of ROTS emphasises just how late the actual script was turned in, & the frustration McCallum was feeling when he had to have sets built, costumes made - you know, get things ready. As I understand it, AOTC was much the same way.

However, the spin in the mid-1990s suggested that the three scripts were already done, and that Rick McCallum was one of the few people on the planet to have read them. Obviously this wasn't the case - McCallum probably only saw short outlines,treatments & notes, and perhaps the legendary ring binders from the 1980s. When he claimed certain things woud happen in the PT, he might have been under the same impression many of us were, to a certain extent - the story was set in stone, and the details just needed to be filled in. With GL changing the entire direction of the trilogy and making things up as he went along, McCallum's own impression of what the PT would be like could have been just as inaccurate as anyone's, despite being the producer.