PT The original PT

No it's in J.W. Rinzler's book on the making of ROTJ, coming directly from the Lucasfilm archives. These are transcripts of discussions GL had with LK, and RM in 1981.

 

I'm angry I never knew about his books, just looked em up. Pricey but worth it it looks like. I have new things to add to my backlog of things to buy. Thank you.

 

This is a subject that would unleash so much interest and money if Disney were smart. But they obviously haven't touched this subject of OT and PT backstories that i know of. So it is up to us to research these older books/magazines/articles and scrape up what we can. Sounds like a difficult but fun job to me. I will see if i can get a hold of JW Rinzler's book, the making of ROTJ, and see whats in store for us. I'm also going to check out this Fan fic or fix pre-PTM info. I really wish the PT had kept some of what the originals talked about but they didn't...for what reason? Money? Or Lucas changed his mind again and thought Padme dying would give a better ending? That is why i and many fans agree he should have either started with AOTC or showed Anakin's discovery then flash forwarded to the AOTC story. We still have spinoffs for hope right?

 

The biggest difference between the original vision of the PT and what we got was that Padme wasn't supposed to die in childbirth. Anakin was supposed to leave Padme without the knowledge that she was pregnant. After the Emperor comes to power and Anakin becomes Darth Vader, Obi-Wan requests that the children be split up, with the girl going with Senator Organa to Alderaan and the boy going to Tattooine. How Padme, who was still alive, would agree to this I am not sure, but that is how it was supposed to happen. My guess is that Padme would have moved to Alderaan as well but somehow would have died within a few years of ROTS.

I understand why Lucas went the die in childbirth route but it also has created one of the biggest continuity issues between the PT and OT. The only way to reconcile it in universe is that Leia was remembering her adopted mother on Endor and had no idea who her real mother was.

 

Or she mistakes visions that she's had through the Force as memories. Leia knows she's adopted ("Do you remember your mother, your real mother?"), so the only person she could be talking about is Padme.

 

Interesting! It seems George Lucas had the things very clear since the beginning to me. He changed a pair of things at the end, but the general idea is, essentially, the same. It's clear Palpatine was luring Anakin towards The Dark Side and Obi Wan had to hide the kids. The only moment I keep maintaining doubts is the one when Obi-Wan says to Luke that Anakin wanted Luke got his lightsaber. I suppose it's an attempt of Obi-Wan to speak well of Anakin and convince Luke, I don't know...

 

Well, the PT wasn't what changed the meaning of that line, ESB did. Once ESB established that Luke's Father was alive, than this particular line, and it's implied meaning (That Luke's father, probably on his death bed, directed Obi Wan to give the saber to his son) was changed.

So as far back as ESB the fans had to come up with an alternate meaning or way to interpret that line from ESB. What happened though is that most of the fandom still thought Obi Wan was being very literal with that line, in that in some way Anakin handed the lightsaber to Obi Wan with the intentions of giving it to his son.

So when that didn't happen in ROTS, well than we find out that Obi Wan was bending the truth to a point, just as he was about Vader killing Luke's father. It was Obi Wan's way of introducing the lightsaber to Luke, without giving the whole backstory to Luke, a backstory that Obi Wan didn't want Luke to know just yet.

The change still works, it's just not what the fandom envisioned all those years in between the trilogies.

 

Yes, I agree. In the making process, ESB was the film which changed the matter of Luke's father. But we, like viewers, when we watched the Original Trilogy, we had some space to think that Obi-Wan's phrase could be true. I thought when Obi-Wan and Anakin were friends yet, Anakin told Obi-Wan he wanted his son had his lightsaber someday. But in the prequels Anakin didn't even talk to Obi-Wan about the kids.

Anyway, I don't have any problem with it. It's only I thought it was a little weird. But, in the end, I agree with you, it's a way to introduce Anakin to Luke friendly. And a way to convince Luke to be a Jedi Knight "like his father". It may be a truth from "certain point of view" by Obi-Wan :-D.

That make me think it's the only lie Obi-Wan says. Because the matter of Vader killing Anakin was true in certain way (the soul of Anakin "died" when he became Darth Vader). But the matter with the saber is certainly a lie to get Luke becomes a Jedi Knight.

 

Well in the same sort of blurred lines that one can say that OBi Wan didn't lie to Luke about Vader killing Anakin, we can also say that technically there's a good possibility that Anakin would have wanted his Son to have his Lightsaber had things gone differently in ROTS. So did Obi Wan outright lie about that? From a certain POV, he may or may not have.

 

I love reading stuff like this from the 80s. Even though this is very close to how ROTS went down, I just imagine it as being a lot more mythical, and much prefer Anakins secret turn to the dark side rather than his immediate turn from normal fella with issues to out-and-out psychopath in the space of 10 minutes. If we'd seen this version on film, we'd have been able to properly see a healthy, unsuited Darth Vader hunting down Jedi, which would have further justified his position in the OT.

 

But in the prequel trilogy Anakin did join the dark side and kill Jedi in secret . . . Yoda and Obi-Wan only discovered Anakin's betrayal when they saw a security hologram.

I greatly prefer the idea of Padmé dying in childbirth to the idea of her surviving childbirth and abandoning her son. I cannot imagine Padmé ever willingly parting with her son Luke. Additionally, the scene when Padmé dies at the very moment Anakin is reborn as Darth Vader is highly poetic.

Everything mentioned in the original post is exactly the same as the prequel trilogy that George Lucas wrote other than Padmé's death.

 

It's also arguably more dramatically satisfying to give her, who had up to that point been one of the leading characters, a succinct fate on screen than it would be otherwise if he ran with the assumed "plain reading" interpretation of what was said about Leia's mother. Consider future generations that will probably just start by watching them in chronological order. Imagine they watch Padme surviving ROTS but see it followed up with two films where she does not appear at all or even get brought up in conversation. And only being brought up finally in Luke and Leia's talk in ROTJ about their family where we'd learn that she died off-screen between movies. Maybe I'm wrong, but I cannot help but think it may play better in the long-run when watched in that fashion. I mean for sake of argument let's say we had gotten an Episode VII that directly follows up on say the stories of Luke and Han but there was nary a word about Leia there or in the following film. And then we only finally learn from a conversation in Episode IX that she had died between trilogies. Would that be more dramatically satisfying than getting to see the succinct closure/continuation of her story, she also being one of the most prominent/important characters in the series, on screen? (Sorry, that's the best analogy I've got right now) But hey, who knows. Only time will tell on that one.

 

I disagree. In the 1980s version Anakin is killing Jedi in stealth mode over a prolonged period of time. Jedi are being killed, but nobody knows who's responsible. In the PT we have order 66, and all the Jedi are subsequently slaughtered. I would hardly call this killing in secret. I mean the Jedi Temple was in flames:



Padme did in fact abandon her children. I mean, she lost the will to live, giving birth to her two children. Apparently they were not a good enough reason to hang around for...

 

PT Yoda is one of the best duelists of all time within the Jedi Order. And this wasn't even his forte, Yoda's speciality lies in his mastery of the force. Yoda beat Mace Windu in a duel.

The issue lies in the fact Yoda fought Darth Sidious, whom is the most powerful duelist and dark side user of all time. He was like an event horizon on the surface, but then his core was like a black hole for the dark side of the force. He was the incarnation of evil itself. Nobody really has a chance with Palpatine in a battle.

 

Sorry but, what are you talking about ?

I was referring to the article at the OP.

 

Oh I take that back then! Makes sense...