BTS How did we know about Anakin's "volcano planet battle" so long ago?

Title pretty much says it all. I have looked for the answer to this all over, and I can't find a clear answer. I am sure many of the older users on this forum know what I am talking about. I seem to have known that the Obi-Wan vs Anakin battle occurred on a volcanic planet for years. The oldest source I actually own is Star Wars: Behind the Magic, which if you don't know, is sort of a cd-rom encyclopedia of SW. I think it came out in 1999 or 98, and yet I knew about this battle even before then somehow.

Did Lucas reveal it in an interview? Is it mentioned in a novel? How did we know about the volcanic battle 20 or maybe even 30 years ago?

 

It's in the RoTJ novel. Not sure if Lucas ever mentioned it before that.

 

I think it was alluded to in an old interview, or so I've heard.

 

GL talked about a volcano battle involving Ben Kenobi, Luke's father, and Darth Vader in an interview with Rolling Stone shortly after the original film came out, if I recall.

EDIT: "It's about Ben and Luke's father and Vader when they are young Jedi knights. But Vader kills Luke's father, then Ben and Vader have a confrontation, just like they have in Star Wars, and Ben almost kills Vader. As a matter of fact, he falls into a volcanic pit and gets fried and is one destroyed being. That's why he has to wear the suit with a mask, because it's a breathing mask. It's like a walking iron lung. His face is all horrible inside. I was going to shoot a close-up of Vader where you could see the inside of his face, but then we said, no, no, it would destroy the mystique of the whole thing."

 

The first time I've heard of it was on the RotJ novel, as mentioned above.

 

It's from Rolling Stone, August 25, 1977. Full article here:

http://starwarz.multiply.com/journal/item/10/1977_Rolling_Stone_George_Lucas_Interview

 

There's only slight indication in ROTJ's novel actually, when Vader's about to die and remembering things of the past :
"These were memories he wanted none of, not now. Memories of molten lava, crawling up his back...No." No more.
But it sure can be seen as a sort of confirmation.

Everything on this had been leaked and alluded to before, as mentioned by the other posts.

I remember in the early 90's stumbling across a Star Wars Trilogy's novels special issue in some bookstore. Attached was a sort of compendium and index where elements of the backstory were addressed. It was indeed stated again that Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi fought a lightsaber duel near a volcano, and that Anakin fell into a molten pit, being horribly injured and scarred. Thus becoming quasi-official information even more.

 

The ROTJ novel includes more about the 'volcano duel' in Obi-Wan & Luke's conversation on Dagobah:

"'You should not think of that machine as your father.' It was the teacher speaking again. 'When I saw what had become of him, I tried to dissuade him, to draw him back from the dark side. We fought...your father fell into a molten pit. When your father clawed his way out of that fiery pool, the change had been burned into him forever--he was Darth Vader, without a trace of Anakin Skywalker. Irredeemably dark. Scarred. Kept alive only by machinery and his own black will...'"

It's roughly the same as what was in the ROTJ shooting script, although it's unknown if it was ever actually shot.

 

If it was in the shooting script, and providing they shot it, I wonder why they cut it out.

 

Sorry, I was mistaken, the references to the Duel aren't in the shooting script, just more elaboration on hiding the twins (including the reference to Owen as Obi-Wan's brother) and Leia's Alderaan backstory:

 

God damn, you're right !

How could I forget this...Shame on me.

My mistake everybody.

 

I remember there was nothing more satisfying than seeing the fabled "volcano planet" in the trailer for ROTS.

Oh the memories...

 

George Lucas mentioned it somewhere.

To all the prequel bashers, the duel between young, agile, obi wan and vader on mustafar, that epic hellish lava planet, and where Vader was burned to crisps and put in the samurai robot suit for the first time, redeems the prequels from any bad love story dialogue, whiny anakin, jar jar, plot holes, whatever. It was legendary.

 

Uh, yeah, exactly where he first mentioned it is pointed out specifically several posts above.

Sorry if I sound rude, but do you actually read any of the the posts in threads you reply to? Or are you happy to blindly post broad statements like "The Expanded Universe is canon" and "the Darth Plagueis novel is 100% canon" while ignoring a couple of decade's debate and various official LFL statements about just what 'canon' in the SW universe is?

I'm calling shenanigans.

 

Lets watch the snippy comments, people.

 

http://starwarz.multiply.com/journal/item/10/1977_Rolling_Stone_George_Lucas_Interview

That interview is AMAZING. Did you notice that the Wookiee planet was described and promised. One of the scenes he envisioned even ended up being the celebration scene on Endor, with the primitives dancing around the fire!

 

I have a guidebook type thing to the OT somewhere that mentions Vader's mask and other gear and it mentions the battle on a volcanic planet.

 

I wish I could go back in time and watch ROTS for the first time. It's way funner watching it the first time, so much that it can't be put into words.

 

The best, most genuine Lucas interview that exists. The last line almost made me cry.

I hope we make it to mars just so the astronaut can say "I was hoping to find a wookie up here"

 

In one of the earlier ROTJ scripts, Obi Wan comes back from the dead. "In the flesh" which is what it even said in the script, and helps Luke in his fight against Palpatine on or near a volcano with lava. They nixed bringing Obi Wan back as anything fleshy and the lava thing was probably too expensive to shoot so it became Anakin's fate in a reference to his backstory which only wound up in the novel. That's my guess anyways

 

The ROTJ novelization was the first mass public release of the info about the volcano.

The RS interview preceded it but was not as mass market as the novelization.

Sethian Eber, the early Vader/Luke duel ideas included the molten pit inside the planet core of Had Abaddon(Lucas' planet name for what would become Coruscant).

The idea was that the Imperial throne room would be way down into the planet's core and the throne would be surrounded by a lake of lava.

 

Not quite. Vader's/Anakin's backstory regarding the volcano duel dates back to 1977 (probably quite early that year, when the concept of Vader as a 'walking iron lung' came about in post production), as shown in the RS interview above. The lava motif in the rough draft of ROTJ was most likely intended by GL to echo the duel between Obi-Wan & Vader/Anakin (although given that the PT was yet to happen and only serious fans knew about the original duel, such a reference could have been a bit pointless). Ralph McQuarrie art of the throne room:



I'm not sure exactly why it was dropped, probably had more to do with the action being switched to the Death Star & the abandonment of the Imperial planet altogether.

The Brackett draft of ESB also contains similar imagery surrounding Vader's home, although it's not specified that it's lava:

Some McQuarrie artwork for ESB:

 

Thanks for all the posts/clarifications, everyone. I was aware of the reference to the molten lava duel in the 1983 ROTJ novelization (by James Khan), but was unaware of the '77 RS interview.

 

Yeah, when they land on the "Volcano Planet" I thought to myself 'I've been waiting since the sixth grade for this'

 

"We found these great things in Tunisia, little grain houses that were four stories high but with little tiny doors, little tiny windows, it was a hobbit village."

They went back and used these for the slave quarters in TPM.