Saga Who do you think was meant to be the original 'other'

The idea of a Jedi turned Sith, becoming a Jedi again, was there in the first draft of ANH. It disappeared, but it may have been on Lucas's mind the whole time. When he talked about the ideas that he pulled from ANH, he said that he had hoped that he could get them out there in the other films. That seems to have been one of those ideas. And he did indicate that we would learn more about Vader and what his deal was. That there was more to him than we thought. To me it seems as if he was saying that he was Luke's father, but that he was struggling between good and evil.

That wasn't the intention. Especially when you see the scenes that were cut out where Luke and Leia were more romantically inclined towards each other. Once Lucas, Kershner and Hirsch cut those scenes on Hoth, what we were left with was Leia being more with Han than with Luke. This also served as the backdoor to making them siblings.

 

Well, it wasn't the intention during The Empire Strikes Back...

 

Oh, there's more romantic scenes between Luke/Leia that were cut in TESB, to focus on Han/Leia. If only they had cut out what remained of the "kiss"...

 

Why wasn't it the intention? Lucas has always been interested in Freudian themes, especially given his deep inspiration by the work of Joseph Campbell. He positions Leia, the only significant female figure in A New Hope, as a sort of maternal figure to Luke in addition to being a love interest:



Carrie Fisher herself admits on the DVD commentary that Leia acts very "maternal" in this scene.

And then of course you have the fact that Lucas is on record about it:

Yes, I think Lucas was fully aware of the Freudian themes he was embracing by making Leia Luke's sister, and I think that's actually one of the reasons the idea was so important to him to include. Luke and Leia's twinhood is a representation of the pscyho-mythic idea of male-female duality. In the OT, Leia embodies all aspects of the feminine. She is mother, lover, daughter, Amazon, and princess all in one.

 

From the first ESB draft, February 1978:

Another half-ghostly form emerges from the mists; a tall fine-looking man who approaches Luke slowly, looking at him.
BEN
Your father.
LUKE
My father.
Even with his new-found maturity, Luke finds this an awesome, not to say shattering, moment. They look at each other.
SKYWALKER
You’ve grown well, Luke. I’m proud of you.
(Luke, not knowing what to say, says nothing)
Proud, and afraid for you. You’re going into battle untried. Did your uncle ever speak to you about Nellith? your sister?
LUKE
Nellith? No. Who is she?
SKYWALKER
Your sister.

174 (cont.)
LUKE
My sister? I have a sister? But why didn’t Uncle Owen….
SKYWALKER
It was my request. When I saw the Empire closing in, I sent you both away for your own safety, far apart from each other.
LUKE
Where is she? What’s her name?
SKYWALKER
If I were to tell you, Darth Vader could get that information from your mind and use her as a hostage. Not yet, Luke. When it’s time…
(he looks gravely at his son)

 

It wouldn't work as the scene would be screwed up if it was cut.

Except that comes after that fact. The fact is that Luke and Leia were not related when TESB was written, but were in ROTJ. By that point, Lucas just hand waved the whole lusting after Leia in ANH, when they were still not related. Take out all the other lusting scenes in TESB and this is what you get. He even admitted that it was done to resolve the love triangle.

"At the center of the movie is a lot of exposition, it's a lot of explaining what has happened, and why things are the way they are. In this particular case, there is a whole issue of Luke's sister, and you know, the fact that they were twins. Which is an element that has to be revealed, which comes in later, in terms of who is the 'other' that was talked about in Empire Strikes Back. And how could that person become as powerful as Luke? Well obviously if they were twins, then if she were trained, then, she has the same abilities as Luke has. That becomes an important issue, especially in terms of resolving all the love triangles."

--George Lucas, ROTJ DVD Commentary.

 

Like I said, I'm quite sure the Luke/Leia twincest plot wasn't intended at the time TESB was written.

Largely because another character was meant to be Luke's sister (and thus the female lead/love interest) in future films.

 

Absolutely agreed.

Probably not, lol....but what it does do is show the depths that Vader is willing to go to in order to turn Luke. That becomes the final straw for Luke, whereupon even he, himself, loses faith in turning Vader, just as everyone else had - including Vader, himself.

And making Leia Vader's daughter hinted at what a powerful Force user she could be, just like Luke ("The Force runs strong in my family").

Oh, I see DS beat me to it.

 

I agree that having Leia be Luke's sister is a powerful motivation for Luke finally to give in and fight Darth Vader. But I maintain -- and I'm hardly alone in this -- that there are many ways of resolving a love triangle that don't involve inserting awkward sibling relationships at the last minute. The first Pirates of the Caribbean movie is a good example of how to do it right.

 

There probably are...but Lucas chose this way.

 

There's no love triangle in Pirates of the Caribbean (first movie).

Anyway, there's no love triangle in Empire either. From the very beginning it's obvious that Leia and Han have feelings for each other and Leia only kisses Luke to provoke Han, not because she's having doubts about whom to choose. And Luke following his own storyline means that he doesn't have time to be interested in Leia anymore.
So no, the "love triangle" is only hinted at in ANH but in Empire it's clear that the love story is about Han and Luke.

 

No love triangle? What do you call the relationship between Elizabeth, Norrington, and Will Turner? I would argue that's just as much of a "false triangle" as the one in ESB, for the reasons you cited. And Norrington gracefully yields Elizabeth to Will without anyone having to tell him she's his long-lost sister.

It is clear that while working on ANH Lucas wanted to explore a more standard love triangle for future films. However, by late 1977 (the Leigh Brackett brainstorming sessions) he's already begun to talk about Leia being attracted to Han and not really to Luke. Which I suspect was real life writing the plot, given that not long afterward Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford were living in the same house during the ESB Pinewood shoot.

 

It's definitely possible that Yoda said, "No, there is another," he meant "I had a vision that another will help out," but Yoda didn't know who "the other" in his vision was.