Saga SW Saga In-Depth In-Depth Discussion Thread

I noticed that this dialogue from the second draft strongly resembles the prequels: "As the Republic spread throughout the galaxy, encompassing over a million worlds, the GREAT SENATE grew to such overwhelming proportions that it no longer responded to the needs of its citizens. After a series of assassinations and elaborately rigged elections, the Great Senate became secretly controlled by the Power and Transport guilds. When the Jedi discovered the conspiracy and attempted to purge the Senate, they were denounced as traitors. Several Jedi allowed themselves to be tried and executed, but most of them fled into the Outland systems and tried to tell people of the conspiracy. But the elders chose to remain behind, and the Great Senate diverted them by creating civil disorder. The Senate secretly instigated race wars, and aided anti-government terrorists. They slowed down the system of justice, which caused the crime rate to rise to the point where a totally controlled and oppressive police state was welcomed by the systems. The Empire was born. The systems were exploited by a new economic policy which raised the cost of power and transport to unbelievable heights."

Also, is it possible that GL intended the Wookiees to be the builders of the Massassi Temple?

 

Only in the first draft when they were positioned as being on Yavin 4. After that, it doesn't seem likely. But yeah, I had pointed out years back that clues to ROTS might be found in that second draft, even though things were going to be different in the end. The race wars angle was dropped in favor of fighting the various guilds, which became the Clone Wars. The attempt at taking out the corruption in the Senate became the fight between Mace and Palpatine. The assassinations became the attempts on Padme's life in AOTC. Rigged elections fell to TPM after Palpatine said that he would become Chancellor, though the rigging detail never made it into the films. The system of justice is referred to with the four trials that failed to convict Nute.

 

ATMachine Do you have any thoughts as to why the fourth draft gave Tarkin part of Vader's role in the third draft?

 

I think I already answered that, but I'll do it again.

Basically, as Lucas himself admits in The Making of SW, the fourth draft was where he first began to imagine Vader as a mutilated cyborg who wears a helmet all the time. In earlier drafts, Vader apparently only wore the helmet designed by Ralph McQuarrie in the opening scene and the climactic space battle--witness him drinking a cup of water in front of Princess Leia in the third draft. (In that draft the cyborg character was actually Ben Kenobi, who has a prosthetic left arm.)

But Lucas was afraid of having the film's main villain be a faceless character--he feared that it would fail to connect with the audience. So he ended up giving Grand Moff Tarkin a lot of lines that had previously belonged to Vader.

 

You did already say,

but I don't recall you ever saying,

 

I added that bit of info to an earlier post with an edit, after remembering its mention in the Making Of book. Sorry!

 

OK, after writing my latest post in the Willow thread, I went back and checked Lawrence Kasdan's fourth draft of ESB, and noticed something quite interesting, which confirms a theory I've had for a long time.

During Luke and Vader's lightsaber duel in Cloud City, we get this exchange:

The scene then cuts to Leia, Lando, and the others trying to unlock the door to the Millennium Falcon's landing pad. After Artoo gets jolted by the power terminal, we cut back to Luke's duel with Vader. Luke is still wielding his lightsaber, but he finally stops swinging out of sheer exhaustion. This is the point at which the script calls for dialogue Insert B, featuring the revelation that Vader is Luke's father.

However, there's no mention of Luke losing a hand in this entire scene. And the special dialogue page, Insert A, which would presumably mention it, is not called for anywhere. So we can assume that, for whatever reason, this idea was temporarily dropped from the fourth draft script.

But we do know what Insert A said in the third draft, because JW Rinzler quotes it in The Making of ESB:

The implication of this dialogue's apparent place in the script is that Luke's loss of his left arm at the elbow was not the end of the duel. Luke still had his lightsaber in his right hand, and kept fighting for a while until he was simply too exhausted to continue.

In the final scene of the third-draft script, Luke gets a new left forearm that has "metal struts and electronic circuits similar to Threepio's." Apparently this is the precursor to Anakin's droid-like prosthesis in the prequels.

Interesting that Luke should retain his father's sword while still losing an arm. I guess Lucas ultimately decided that Vader should cut away Anakin's sword as well as Luke's right hand (as opposed to his left arm), to heighten the tension (and the symbolism) further.

I also suspect that Lucas originally intended to have an echo of this early conception of the ESB duel in Willow--with Madmartigan losing his left arm to King Kael in the final battle, but still managing to kill Kael with the sword in his right hand.

 

In AOTC, the striking golden color of Anakin's prosthetic arm clearly reflects the idea, seen in the third-draft script of ESB, that Luke's prosthesis would resemble See-Threepio's golden arm:



In AOTC the arm was a physical prop. For ROTS it was entirely digital, and underwent a redesign which eliminated much of the gold color.

If I'm right about this idea also being considered for Willow, then Madmartigan too would likely have ended up with a flexible golden prosthesis. (Rather like that of Jaime Lannister on Game of Thrones, only much more functional, along the lines of what Götz von Berlichingen wore in real life.)

 

Having just watched the 1982 version of Conan the Barbarian, I can't help but wonder if director John Milius got some of his casting ideas from his old USC film school buddy George Lucas.

In Milius's Conan, we have the title character, played by Arnold Schwarzenegger; his friend and ally (invented for the film), a Mongol thief named Subotai; and the villain, Thulsa Doom, played by James Earl Jones.

This is quite similar to the casting ideas I suspect Lucas had in mind for the 1974 SW rough draft. There the principal hero, Annikin Starkiller, was to have black hair and blue eyes, like Robert E. Howard's literary Conan; the hero's mentor, General Luke Skywalker, was apparently Japanese; and the villain, Prince Valorum, was likely meant to be cast as black.

In fact, James Earl Jones may have got the nod for Thulsa Doom precisely because of his turn as Darth Vader--the successor character to Valorum.

 

Mace Windu's bald head in the prequels may actually be a reflection of a hairstyle originally planned for Prince Valorum in the 1974 SW rough draft. (It's my deep suspicion that Lucas wanted to cast Valorum as an African-American.) At any rate, Valorum's later incarnation, Darth Vader, was certainly bald when unmasked.

The association of baldness with the Prince Valorum villain-turned-hero character also shows up in early ideas for Willow. Initially Sorsha--Valorum's gender-flipped equivalent in that film--was going to start out with a full head of golden hair, but she'd end up completely bald by the end of the movie. She would also lose an eye, likewise something originally planned for the unmasked Vader in ROTJ.

In both Vader's and Sorsha's cases, a scarred face and bald head is associated not with villainy, but rather with redemption--an idea drawn from Valorum's predecessor, General Tadokoro, in Akira Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress.

 

Might Lucas and/or Kasdan have intended Palpatine's death to parallel what happened to Vader?

 

Good catch! The death of the Emperor might indeed be a reuse of that earlier idea. Although for Vader's backstory, by ROTJ the concept of the volcano duel was firmly in place--the nuclear reactor was gone for good.

Actually, the idea that Vader fell into a nuclear reactor is a direct steal from the ending of Dr. No, in which James Bond knocks the titular villain into the cooling vat of his own reactor.

Also, in Lawrence Kasdan's first pass at the ROTJ script, Vader actually hurls the Emperor out the throne room window into space. Which I guess makes more sense than the Emperor conveniently having a Radioactive Death Pit in his throne room.

 

Also keep in mind that at one point Vader was supposed to tackle Palpatine into the lava of the Had Abbadon throne room. This makes me think that Palpatine's death was a deliberate parallel of the Mustafar duel before the Death Star II replaced Had Abbadon.

The Death Stars have always has always given me a James Bond vibe. Then again, falling into your own reactor/chasm is an extremely common way for villains to die.

Makes you wonder where Kasdan intended for Palpatine to land.

 

It seems to me that Mandalorians resemble the first draft ("The Star Wars") Sith. Both are warriors who serve the bad guys, but follow a code of honor. Both are also rivals of the Jedi.

 

They're also both mercenary groups, not necessarily affiliated with the Empire itself. This carried through to the finished film of SW, hence why Motti showed such contempt for Vader.

 

You've done so much nice work in this forum, ATMachine!

Very perceptive observation there. Of course, in the PT, Lucas links Anakin and Threepio in various ways; Anakin being Threepio's "maker" is merely the most obvious.

Gold robot men are also being assembled by the title character in a production line in "THX-1138". Well, they're not golden, per se, but they're lit that way when THX is "operating" on his (amber lighting tone).

 

In the Willow thread I noted that, as part of her gradual disfigurement in the early script, Sorsha would lose her front teeth during the battle of Tir Asleen.

Sorsha also suffers an eye injury, a motif drawn from the 1975 third-draft script of The Star Wars. In that version Leia (who was then imagined as a blonde, like the early Sorsha) was to receive a swollen-shut black eye as a result of Imperial torture.

Given the similarity of Leia's injuries with Sorsha's in Willow, I suspect that the third-draft Leia would likely also have lost several teeth as a result of being beaten up by Darth Vader.

In that case, Luke would first see Leia in all her beauty (from her hologram). Later on, when Luke meets up with her in real life, Leia would be disfigured--but he would still find her attractive, because of her commanding presence. This is echoed by Madmartigan in the early Willow, who first sees Sorsha as an attractive woman but continues to love her even after her disfigurement.

In the finale, Leia would undoubtedly have had her teeth fixed, and her black eye would be healed.

 

I can't help thinking that this is a none-too-subtle poke at the state of America (or Lucas' perception of it) at the time -- chiming with what Lucas scribed explicitly in his first proper draft when he wrote that "the empire is like America ten years from now".

And there had, indeed, been a major oil crisis in America (and other so-called "developed" countries) beginning in October 1973 (ironically, the year of "American Graffiti"'s release -- a film with a sharp focus on casual night-time cruising from an early post-war age; but with obvious applicability to the present age). There would be a second energy crisis in 1979.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970s_energy_crisis

Well, I mean, I don't normally hear those events mentioned in relation to the genesis of Star Wars and the original trilogy.


And darth-sinister had a very good take on the rest of it:

Very interesting to see lots of foundational aspects sublimated into the prequels.


I still think this is a good question:

Never really given that much thought before.

Cool, however, that just by asking the question, you have now interlinked those entities in some fashion.

The role of the Wookiees in Star Wars has started to intrigue me. I was inclined, perhaps, to think of them more as a random/throw-away idea in the past, but that was almost certainly naive on my part. The whole idea of them seems to have stayed with Lucas over the years; even if their inclusion in ROTS can feel a bit perfunctory, maybe. I guess I now am starting to see them more as one of those "mystery" aspects with more to reveal -- like the droids, the Whills, midi-chlorians, lost parents, remote planets, and whatever else.

This is also interesting stuff.

It does seem -- more often than not -- that Lucas' earlier ideas tend to be more graphic and/or violent, and he then moderates them. In the development of all six extant movies.

FWIW, I think that Leia appearing completely unharmed after being tortured by Vader is, in some sense, a more effective critique of torture; at least, once contextualized against a backdrop of brutality, suffering, and woe in the other films.

I guess -- well, in my opinion -- it's a bit like the "Anakin has a comfy slave existence" criticism of TPM. The apparent absence of physical abuse does not obviate the evils of slavery.

Lucas seems to like to play it cool with a lot of the horrors and torments contained within the carapace of space fantasy. Maybe it does render the presentation a bit more anemic on some levels, but perhaps there is also a certain eroticization or fetishization of violence that is assiduously avoided -- a slightly torrid, quasi-sexual undercharge that is brought under some degree of control.

How many times do characters appear battered, bruised, or bleeding in the movies? It's not often. Half the time, they don't even appear to perspire. Neat to catalogue what seems to be conscious shaping of the canvas at work.

 

Leia's injuries in the third draft seem to have also been inspired by CS Lewis's Narnia novel The Horse and His Boy.

The protagonist of that novel is Shasta, a boy who was kidnapped at birth from his rightful parents, the king and queen of Archenland. At one point Shasta unexpectedly meets his twin brother Corin; the two boys look exactly alike. Both Shasta and Corin have golden hair, but during their first encounter Corin bears "the finest black eye you ever saw" and a missing tooth, souvenirs of a recent scuffle.

As I mentioned elsewhere, in the SW third draft Lucas had the idea that Luke and Leia should look almost exactly alike, to indicate that they were soul mates. Both of them would have had golden hair in a bowl cut, like Shasta and Corin. So Leia's bruise makeup would also emulate Corin, in that she'd have a swollen-shut black eye and missing teeth.

 

I'm very very glad that's toned down. Violence definitely tends to be sexually fetishised in certain media (comics, videogames, animation), some of which has had a close association with SW (both in terms of its origins and of course tie-ins). I'm thankful that the movies themselves don't participate in that.

Speaking for myself, I don't need gore to feel horrified by the implied torture and genocide (etc) that occurs in the movies. To me, the "anemic" (ie, bloodless, heh) presentation of inhumane violence is of a piece with how emotion is generally portrayed in the writing: very elliptical, ritualistically gestured at with words/expressions that often seem deliberately formulaic, or unladen of conventionally-supplied emotive baggage. The AotC love story is the most obvious example of "formulaic", of course, but I also liked the use of "younglings" rather than "children" in RotS --- the outline of Obi-Wan's horror and grief is there for you to fill in yourself, his words don't bludgeon you over the head with them.

 

Perfectly said. Thank you. Couldn't agree more.

 

A counter to this specific bit of frequent criticism-- the "Anakin has a comfy slave existence" motif actually does a good job of presenting something like a modern middle-class life under the label of slavery. He looks like a normal American kid-- a room full of toys, a bookbag slung along one shoulder, even his job at Watto's isn't so unusual for some kids who have to get a part-time job after school. Yet it's all presented under the label of slavery. And in an age where wages keep falling and opportunities for rising above the class you're born into keep disappearing, something as subtle and subliminal as that is pretty interesting.

If lil Anakin is a slave, what does that make you?

 

Just returning to this...

Yes -- absolutely. I've seen you say it before, but very nice spot and accompanying observations.

The truth is that Star Wars deals with slavery on all levels of its narrative. The biggest and sincerest question it may be asking is, "What is freedom?"

We see characters enslaved to ideals, to base passions. We see characters enslaved at the level of their perceived worth, characters enslaved to a hierarchy. We see characters enslaved to their biology, their physiology. We see enslaving visuals, enslaving motifs, enslaving memes. The ships are enslaved, the planets. Even the text of the tale represents enslavement. The story of Star Wars is cyclical: a pure manifestation of slavery. And, indeed, the very act of seeing can be enslaving. Different lenses permit different planes of seeing, different experiences, different ideologies.

Our very addiction to Star Wars and obsessiveness at this level (a "normal" viewer doesn't post to a message board, let alone in posts measured in the thousands) is the ultimate expression of slavery on one level, though very much a measure of freedom on others (still billions on this earth don't get the luxury to indulge in mental masturbation as we do). It's provocative in having the would-be hero/villain start in conditions that other characters recognize to be slavery in the first act. And crafting Anakin's visual and situational circumstances to be similar to that of modern-day western children is -- on the part of the saga's "maker" -- quietly profound.

Perhaps what we make of it all can only be as present or as probing as what we bring to the artwork when we enter into it.

"What's in there?"
"Only what you take with you."

 

I wouldn't dare pin something as majestically sweeping and culturally "public domain" as Star Wars to a single fundamental "big question", but personally I agree completely.

For me, the Saga shows that freedom in the sense we usually think of it -- very cursorily speaking, the absence of physical, political and social constraints on one's power to causally affect the world according to one's will -- is almost meaningless when it is attempted to be taken absolutely. Or, if not meaningless, it is at least a very frightening prospect (which is worse than meaningless). A completely unconstrained volition = the abyss of the existentialist void.

[I've been quite vocal about my disdain for Stover's RotS novelisation and his views, but there's a line in there which I think puts the idea well: "yourself is all you will have", IIRC. Iron_lord can correct me if I got it wrong; haven't read it in yonks since the first time I sped through it ]

I guess what I'm saying is that the Saga's lesson is that we can't escape bondage of one sort or another. And if we stick to a simplistically 'negative' (ie, absence of external constraint), absolute concept of freedom (our usual thinking about which is often inevitably tied to power in some sense), it's easy to delude ourselves into thinking we've chosen freedom when we're in fact more enslaved than ever. Accepting the impossibility -- in fact, the conceptual/logical absurdity -- of absolute freedom (and the concomitant notions of power), is essential if we are to make a clear-eyed choice as to what manner of servitude we will submit ourselves to.