Saga SW Saga In-Depth In-Depth Discussion Thread

True, but there the priestly Grand Mouff character is of very little importance--he's a craven coward who opposes General Skywalker's plan to defend Aquilae.

In the third draft, by contrast, the Grand Mouff is plainly a hero of the Rebellion. He's even said to command "legions." In fact, he's the person to whom Princess Leia is ultimately trying to deliver the Death Star plans. (Seeking out Ben Kenobi was just a backup plan. In the third draft, Leia's hologram is a general plea for help, rather than a specific message to Ben himself.)

 

I'm of the opinion that perhaps the best interpretation so far of the likely original plot of the ST is Jim Henson's The Dark Crystal.

 

Vader's red eyes in ANH: early Sith eyes concept, part of the mask, or a failed special effect?

 

Well, Vader wasn't quite a cyborg at the outset of ANH. The lenses of the mask were red due to a growing trend of having red represent evil and aggression. Lucas had darkened them for the rest of the series to keep us from seeing the human underneath. The idea of Vader becoming an actual cyborg and the suit being a life support system developed during post production and became official once he started to describe who Vader was in relation to the next film.

 

Red eyes have always been popular for villains, though I only really notice Vader's red eyes when he was talking to Tarkin about how Leia was resisting the mind probe.

 

The red eyes of Vader's mask in SW 1977 are quite a cool idea, for my money--I wish they'd been kept in the later films. (Likely they were dropped for the exact reason noted above: they were barely noticeable on film!)

I doubt they were meant as the actual eyes of Sith Lords, however. Per GL's own notes, at that stage the Sith were meant to look "like Linda Blair in The Exorcist."

Judging from John Mollo's concept drawings, the Sith Lords all wore Vader-style masks... no doubt to cover up their hideously mutated faces. Their real eyes likely very much resembled the Sith eyes seen in the PT.

As for when exactly Vader became a cyborg... I presume it had something to do with when Ben Kenobi (who was himself a cyborg in the 1975 third draft) stopped being one.

 

The fourth draft removed all instances of maskless Vader and gave Tarkin a lot of Vader's third draft dialogue. Perhaps it was here?

I wonder if making Vader a cyborg was supposed to symbolize him holding on to his physical body.

 

Posted by darth-sinister in the Classic Trilogy forum:

Interesting that GL specifically cites killing Obi-Wan as a means to make the Empire more threatening without resorting to explicit violence.

In the 1975 third draft, of course, he did just that--Leia was apparently going to end up beaten bloody, V for Vendetta style, as a result of gruesome Imperial torture. But Ben Kenobi, on the other hand, got to live. Not only that: Ben stole the Kiber Crystal, a mysterious Force artifact which was apparently intended (like Luke's father's sword) as a dangling plot thread to be resolved in future sequels.

It would seem, therefore, that by "cleaning up" the film to get rid of the more adult levels of violence, GL in effect robbed the Imperials of their power as effective villains. And he clearly realized it once he'd written the two versions of the fourth draft.

So he had to put some sort of deadly threat back in. But this time, instead of Leia, it was Obi-Wan who drew the short end of the stick. That's the Mentor Occupational Hazard for you.

 

The screenplay (the actual screenplay, not the published version) describes Vader as Tarkin's "powerful henchman" and Tagge says that he thinks the Death Star "has more to do with Governor Tarkin’s bid for recognition than any prudent military strategy." In the unrevised fourth draft, Tarkin says, "Lord Vader, we still expect you to find the hidden rebel base before this station becomes operational. It is the Emperor’s will… you were sent here to enforce it."

 

Interesting.

Of course, Governor Tarkin is the one ultimately responsible for the destruction of Alderaan--pretty clearly genocide on the face of it.

But aside from a world-shattering kaboom, we don't actually see the consequences of this act.... except for Ben Kenobi having a fainting spell on board the Falcon.

As Josef Stalin said: "A single death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic."

In filmmaking, at least, that grim epigram cuts to an essential truth. I'd wager the audience in general was far more emotionally affected by Ben Kenobi's death than by Tarkin's annihilation of an entire planet.

(Especially since we never see Leia suffering any sort of emotional trauma afterward.)

 

One could argue this as a good reason for not making Padme's home planet Alderaan in the PT. After forming such an emotional connection to the planet over three movies, the matter-of-fact way its destruction is handled in Episode IV would feel a bit odd.

 

Yeah, I very much liked that we got to see other planets besides Alderaan. It made the galaxy feel a lot bigger, like there was still much more to explore.... always a welcome feeling, given EU writers' propensity to dwell on pre-existing settings.

Though I would have equally enjoyed spending more time on Alderaan itself, rather than the momentary glimpse we did get.

(In the same vein, I really loved that Star Wars Infinities comic book series from a few years back. Note to any Marvel editors reading this: More like that, please!)

 

Do guys ever wonder what would of happened if Bail Organa survived the destruction of Alderaan? I always assumed he would still serve the rebels, perhaps still be the leader, and even become the first chancellor of the New Republic.

 

Interesting thought.

GL said in story notes from 1977 that Leia had two adopted younger brothers, aged four and seven. If Bail survived, they might have as well.

 

I wonder if they'll use those notes for the Leia comic.

 

If Bail had survived, he would have had the same type of role that Mon Mothma had, as well as possibly some of the military commanders in the films.

 

Against whom? Afro-Americans? The word comes from the Indian cult of the thuggees:

http://www.damninteresting.com/the-thugs-of-india/

 

Generally speaking, yes. I'm well aware of the origins of the word, but using it in the US to refer to malefactors is almost universally considered unwise. A lot of the people who do so are really using it as a code word to disguise their own racial biases, after all.

The danger of such code words is that, over time, they may evolve in the public eye into the naked form of the thing they represent.

"And so the mask becomes the man."

But elsewhere, in places with different histories and ethnic backgrounds, that context is unknown--and so the original innocence of such a word is preserved.

 

While searching for something else earlier today, by happy chance I found my long-buried copy of Star Wars Screen Entertainment, a screensaver program put out by LucasArts in 1994. Naturally I booted up my copy of Windows 3.1 and checked it out. (If you're wondering why, a better question might be, what sort of person doesn't keep a DOSbox environment with Win3.1 installed handy?)

There are some interesting subtexts here, mostly in the colors used to differentiate the dialogue lines. Each line of dialogue has a different color, depending on the speaker. The text appears on screen character by character, a process made more dramatic as the letters initially flash different colors when they first show up.

Luke Skywalker's dialogue lines are naturally blue, like the color of his first lightsaber. But they're "swept in" (to coin a phrase) in two successive shades--first red, and then purple. This perhaps subtly hints at Luke's own hidden dark side.

Leia's dialogue, meanwhile, is golden in color, swept in by green.

Almost all the other characters have gray dialogue, though the initial color of their letters may vary. Han Solo's starting letter color, for example, is purple, and Ben Kenobi's is brown, followed by green. This may indicate the spiritual connection of his character to the natural world--in contrast to the machine-man, Darth Vader.

Vader himself, oddly enough given GL's hindsight description of "The Tragedy of Darth Vader," has ordinary gray dialogue lines. But they're swept in by letters which flash first purple, then blue.

"One gray thread. Gray goes with every colour."

Threepio, though, has white dialogue text, swept in via purple. Which apparently makes him a more important character than Darth Vader in the eyes of the LucasArts programmers.

The other major character to have an unusual dialogue color is Biggs Darklighter. Biggs's dialogue is red, swept in by purple and then green.

Strangely, this trait is also shared by a minor character who has all of one line: Deak, the otherwise nameless fellow who appears in the background of Tosche Station in one of the infamous "Lost Scenes."

But the other inhabitants of Tosche Station (Camie and The Fixer) have ordinary gray lines of text.

What explains this?

Perhaps the answer lies in the SW 1977 shooting script's description of Biggs and Deak at Tosche Station.

Deak is about Luke's age, but Biggs, the recent Academy graduate, is a few years older.

Now consider that Biggs has dark hair, as apparently did Annikin Starkiller in the 1974 rough-draft script of The Star Wars.

As the recent Dark Horse comic adaptation of that script rightly shows, Annikin's lightsaber color in that draft was red.

In fact, Biggs' dark hair already appears in one of John Mollo's 1975 costume sketches.



However, in another Mollo drawing, Biggs appears to have light-colored hair, and is clean-shaven, much like Luke himself.



Meanwhile, Deak Starkiller was the name of Annikin's younger brother, who dies at the beginning of the 1974 rough draft.

In the deleted Tosche Station scene, Deak was played by actor Jay Benedict, who, like Garrick Hagon as Biggs Darklighter, had black hair.

All of this may point to something interesting about the symbolism of the characters in SW 1977.

Perhaps Biggs was meant to embody a visual echo of Annikin Starkiller... the hero of an unmade movie, who blazed the trail which Luke Skywalker followed, before he went on to save the galaxy.

And perhaps the Deak of the deleted "Lost Scenes"--the young farmboy of Tosche Station, equal to Luke in age, who seemingly never leaves his home planet--was meant to honor Annikin's fallen brother, whose body remains on the Fourth Moon of Utapau.

 

Okay..I'm going to haul this thread back to its origins. I've been doing a lot of thinking on this (partly as a result of a book I'm writing which has come to be about the myths we incorporate into our histories, partly on the basis of personal experience) and I'm beginning, I think, to understand why I generally dislike the 'fantasy' genre...and in some cases the science-fiction genre as well.

In terms of Star Wars this has become manifest I think. It may even have always been Lucas' original schema but others were involved in the OT and so it headed in a different direction.

I am, at the moment, enjoying Game of Thrones. Game of Thrones has dragons...usually that is an instant turn off for me because I associate it with the more fantastical elements of 'fantasy'. I'm enjoying it thus far because those fantastical elements are used to symbolise inner fears and passions. It is not ( at the moment) about those elements. Those elements are used to express something about the characters, and it is the characters and their interactions - their values, desires etc. that the story is about. The danger in using fantastical elements is that, as the story progresses it becomes more and more about them.

I see a huge amount of magical thinking becoming more and more prevelant in our societies, to the detriment of reason and rationality and I see Star Wars reflecting that.

In the OT the seemingly magical props are just that; props. The culmination of the movies isn't reliant on magic. The magical properties of the story don't 'save the day'. One character reveals to another the truth of selflessness, sacrifice and compassion and another (who happens to be his father) responds to that. Faith is a faith in others, that they can succeed,and also a faith in yourself, that you can succeed. There is still a very real battle that needs to be won.

In the PT conception of this (and even further with TCW) it is about some notion of faith in a magical otherness, a supposedly benevolent power that will come good if you just have faith in this nebulous, magical 'it'.

It is the idea of magic as in some way being the answer. and those in charge of the magic as being arbiters of right and wrong that I find despicable in such tales.

 

Wow, you just pointed out one of the things I enjoy most about the OT. One thing I enjoy about the OT is that it has all sorts of fantastical elements to it yet doesn't get over run by the effects but tells a very good story with complex characters. It doesn't just focus on the action (even though that's a very important part of star wars), it will take the time to show character growths and how characters deal with issues. Maybe that's why I love ESB so much that it has fun space chases, duels and blaster firefights but still treats the audience with intelligent's. The film presents a philosophic look to the force and life choices that you don't see often. I believe George Lucas said it best "A special effect is a tool, a means of telling a story. A special effect without a story is a pretty boring thing." Don't get me wrong I still like the PT (it's actually starting to grow on me again) but I just like the characters and story of the OT a little better.

 

Yet the Jedi and Sith characters in the OT are the arbiters of right and wrong. The Jedi did it for a thousand generations. Palpatine and Vader both try to get Luke to do wrong, while Yoda and Obi-wan try to get Luke to do right and warn him of the wrong. And in the end, Anakin becomes a Jedi again because his son did the right thing and so he should also do the right thing.

 

And...the fate of the galaxy does not depend in any way upon Anakin's actions..the rebels and those they fight are as much arbiters of right and wrong as any of the Jedi.

 

Except it does because A) he eliminates Palpatine and B) the war ends due to this. If he had not sided with his son, Palpatine would have sensed the danger he was in and escaped in time.

 

Not in the OT as it stood.....projection of magical necessity.