Saga The Origins of Luke's father - Annikin Starkiller, Anakin Skywalker, or Darth Vader?

Technically speaking, the mysterious or secret identity comes into play in between the third and fourth drafts.

 

This is an interesting wrinkle. I took a look at it. Also in that same scene just prior is this:
"They enter a small gloomy chamber where Darth Vader, the Dark Lord of the Sith, is sitting. Vader speaks in an oddly filtered voice through his complex breathing mask."

It doesn't mention him lifting the mask prior to the bit where he takes the drink. So either the idea of Vader's hidden identity was being worked out in the middle of the draft or it was imagined that he would be able to drink through the mask.

Good spot. I'm trying to compile and analyze all the counterarguments for a video I want to make on the subject.

 

In the fourth draft, a cup floats into Vader's hand in the DS conference scene.
So even there he could apparently drink.
This is in the revised fourth draft, the cup is not mentioned in the public version of the fourth draft but that draft also has the ep IV subtitle which wasn't added to the film until a 1979 re-release. So the draft was apparently altered after the fact.

Also in the fourth draft, Obi-Wan says this;

So Vader is called a "boy" and just young Jedi, not Jedi Knight like Obi-Wan and Luke's father.
Also, Obi-Wan said that he hasn't gone by the name Obi-Wan since before Luke was born.
Why would he need to hide his name? Most likely because the empire was now hunting Jedi down and Vader has now turned evil. If Vader is Luke's father and has turned evil before Luke was even born.
How could he tell Obi-Wan that he wanted Luke to have his lightsaber if Luke was not born yet and by now he has turned evil?

There is also Owen and Beru, both are somewhat old, the actors were in their 50's I believe.
They clearly knew Luke's father and Beru could see how Luke is much like his father.
So that to me implies that Luke's father should be of an age as them, maybe a few years younger.
Doesn't really fit with the implied younger age for Vader.

Some other things;

Does the third draft say that Vader killed Luke's father?
Luke's father was killed at the battle of Condawn, where Darth Vader took the Kiber crystal but I don't recall that Vader was mentioned as having killed Luke's father.
Also Luke clearly knew his father and heard lots of stories from him. So his father might have been dead for maybe 10 years.

So Vader was the pupil of Obi-Wan but earlier Obi-Wan also said that he had never met Luke before.
And Luke was with his father for several years.
How does that work?
Luke's father trains under Obi-Wan, has Luke and yet Luke and Obi-Wan never met?

Except this makes no sense.
If Lucas was on fence about going with Vader as the father, why have a scene that directly contradicts it?
If Lucas had planned for Vader as the father, why didn't he mention that to Brackett?
That was why he hired her, to write the script. And they did have script meetings.
So talk it over with her, get some feedback.
Why let her write a scene that totally changes his plans for Vader?
Even if he is not sure, just tell Brackett to not include Luke's father, simple.

In closing, I think what happened between the drafts is Lucas trying to cut down the number of characters and make the story shorter.
Having both father and son plus several bothers, lots of characters. So make it just Luke.
In the third draft there were several Sith Lords, later just Vader.
With ESB, the father in the first draft serves no real purpose and is a bit redudant.
Most likely Lucas figured this out when he read it and he wasn't happy with the script overall.
But when he contacted Brackett to start to work on a second draft, she was ill and could not work.
So Lucas was left with a script he didn't like and no writer. So he had to work at himself.
And I think here he got inspired, the father character was not needed so why not combine Vader and the father. Kill two birds with one stone.

So from everything I have read and heard, I think Vader became Luke's father with the second draft of ESB.

Bye for now.
Old Stoneface

 

Good luck with the video! But just as a bit of advice, keep in mind that what you are proposing is a theory, a valid one, but one that you can't prove. Offering arguments to back up a theory is great, but don't make the mistake (like many do) of convincing yourself that your theory is the only valid one.

The (sad) truth is none of us can be 100% sure about when Vader became Luke's father, and we will (most probably) never get to know the answer to that question.

This is probably the biggest argument against the idea that Vader was already Luke's father. The wording of the scene doesn't really make any sense if Vader and Anakin are meant to be one and the same.

No. If I remember correctly, the revised fourth draft is the first draft that mentions it.

 

The third draft does say, however, that Luke's father died in the Battle of Condawn, where the last of the Jedi were defeated because Darth Vader betrayed them. (And "Condawn" sounds like it could be the name of a fiery planet in the vein of Mustafar.)

 

We know the idea that Obi-Wan and Vader duelled somewhere volcanic, goes right back to 1977:

STAR WARS: OFFICIAL POSTER MONTHLY #2
Published November 1977 by Galaxy Publications. Text writers Jon Trux, John May, Michael Marten.
http://www.theforce.net/image_popup/image_popup_global.asp?Image=timetales/misc/arcana/post2-02.jpg

As on earth where we have White and Black Magic, so the Force has its dark side and Vader, for reasons that are unclear, became consumed by it. It led him to that fateful day when, in a fierce battle, he killed Luke Skywalker's father.

What is less well known is that Vader himself was then almost killed by Ben Kenobi, who was understandably enraged at his disciple's fall from grace. Vader's life might have ended then and there with a quick stab of a light saber; instead, during the fight, Vader stumbled backwards and fell into a volcanic pit where he was nearly fried alive. What remained was dragged out and preserved by encasing it in an outsized black metal suit - virtually a walking iron lung.

 

And Vader defeating the last remaining Jedi at the same time as he was horrifically burnt would make a sensible explanation for why he might build a castle on that same lava planet.

Also, third-draft Ben Kenobi didn't come out of the Clone Wars entirely unscathed either - he has a skilfully disguised prosthetic right hand like Luke's in ROTJ.

 

Obi-Wan having cyborg parts is likely from the first draft, where the father, Kane, had cyborg parts.

And to me, the third draft implied that Vader betrayed the Jedi at the battle of Condawn and stole the Kiber crystal. So it sounds like he got away.
It did not sound like he was horribly burned there.

Bye for now.
Blackboard Monitor

 

Have to agree with the above.

I respectfully disagree. Vader being a pupil of Ben doesn't rule out him being a father to Luke anymore than than Ben being Annikin's "commander" (per the Third Draft?) would rule out Annikin being Luke's father*.

*Or even the scenario of Lucas' (type-written) draft of the subsequent film (TESB), where Ben is said to have trained Luke's father (in addition to Vader).

To be fair, the argument in this thread isn't that Vader and Anakin* were meant to be one and the same as far back as the first film, only that Vader under the mask would later (in later films/books) be revealed to be a relative to Luke in some fashion - whether as older brother, uncle, or father.

*If Anakin or Annikin is assumed to be the name of the Jedi friend/father character that Ben spoke of in the first film

 

And I don't agree with you.
My argument was about the use of titles, that Obi-Wan and Luke's father were both Jedi Knights while Vader was just "young jedi."
Ex, say instead of Jedi you have;
"Yes I was once a Medical Doctor same as your father....a young med student named Darth Vader, who was a pupil of mine until he turned to evil."

To me the difference in titles, "Medical Doctor" and "med student" are an indication that these are different people.

Luke's father could have been trained by Obi-Wan sure. In ANH we hear about him following Obi-Wan on some foolish crusade. So Obi-Wan could have found Luke's father, convinced him to leave Tatooine, trained him as a Jedi, Luke's father completing it and becoming a Jedi Knight, like Obi-Wan.
Then Obi-Wan starts to train Vader, who was younger than Obi-Wan and Luke's father, but Vader turns to evil before his training was complete. Which Vader himself hints at in ANH.

Bye for now.
Old Stoneface

 

Wait, what?? I read Rinzler's Making of Star Wars book and I can't recall anything like that. Although the R-rated Star Wars does have a certain appeal I admit

 

I love everything about OT unused ideas

 

A poster on these boards years ago had suggested that killing off Ben's character in Star Wars may have 'pushed' Lucas toward making Vader the father. Does anyone remember this? The argument*, briefly stated, was that Ben was the sort of father figure to Luke in the story (a role he would have still had in the subsequent two films/stories), so killing him off meant that Lucas would have to give that role to another character.

*Or - restated in the speculative alternate-theory nature of this thread - this meant that Lucas would definitively choose father-of-Luke as being the 'secret identity' behind Vader, rather than that of uncle, older-brother, son of Kenobi, etc.

Thoughts?

 

I honestly think that having Darth Vader and Anakin Skywalker be separate characters even after “I am your father” is just unnecessarily convoluted and complicated, without adding any real depth to the story.

I do think, once “I am your father” happened, the only real story choice was that Vader and Anakin are the same person, and that Anakin was a once-heroic figure who tragically fell to darkness. Nothing else makes sense from a storytelling perspective. I just think having Obi-Wan declare, “Well, Luke, Vader cucked your father” in the 3rd film would’ve just been weird and unsatisfying.

 

While perhaps convoluted and complicated, I think it happens to make more sense of Yoda and Ben's actions and motivations (and dialogue) in ESB.

I agree that it makes ROTJ's ending work better*, but it requires a bit of work in justifying Obi-Wan's ANH/SW 77 dialogue about Luke's father in the scene at his home. The alternate theory being proposed doesn't require such work re: Obi-Wan's lines from the first film.

Edit to add:

*I've tried to keep in mind that, when developing story ideas for the original films, Lucas had to consider both how the individual movies would work from a stand-alone perspective and from a saga/trilogy perspective.

As for myself, I think that if Anakin and Vader are going to be the same person, the "magic spell" idea that Lucas briefly had when developing ESB** makes just as much sense from a storytelling perspective. Or even the idea (per Starlog) that Anakin had actually killed the real Vader and took his identity. Of course, I don't believe either of those ideas would square with Obi-Wan's lines from the first film.

**per Rinzler's 'Making of TESB', the idea being that the Vader persona was the result of an evil spell put upon Luke's father.

Agreed, but technically speaking, as far as the alternate scenario goes, Obi-Wan wouldn't be the one to divulge that revelation to Luke or the audience (for one, he may not have known the truth***, neither would the Emperor).

***per Vader's line from ESB, "Obi-Wan never told you what happened to your father"

As for yourself, do you think that Ben being killed off in the story had any role in Lucas coming up with the whole Vader as father idea?

 

I strongly disagree. Lines such as “Much anger in him, like his father” clearly foreshadow “I am your father”…if you take it to mean that Vader is a corrupted Anakin Skywalker. “Luke, I don’t want to lose you to the Emperor the way I lost Vader” takes on a new meaning if Vader is a corrupted Anakin.

And why would Luke continue saying, “Ben, why didn’t you tell me?” unless it was because Obi-Wan Kenobi KNEW?

Occam's razor dictates that Obi-Wan lied in the 1st film because he didn’t want Luke to join his father. It’s arguably manipulative, but it makes sense.

Since when has George Lucas ever cared about consistency? He had Leia French kiss Luke in The Empire Strikes Back, then had her say, “I’ve always known you were my brother” in the very next movie. I don’t think Lucas intentionally was going for an incest subplot. I just don’t think he cares about consistency.

Not only does that unnecessarily complicate the story, but it also would require a huge exposition dump during what should be a tense, high-stakes encounter.

Clearly. The story simply had too many father figures in it- Obi-Wan, Yoda, Anakin. Making Anakin and Vader the same character simultaneously simplifies things while making it more complex and adding several whole new layers and dimensions to it.

There’s really no way for “I am your father” to work or be dramatically satisfying unless Vader = Anakin.

 

Of course those lines foreshadow that. But I was getting at why, in TESB, do they seem to fear that Jedi student Luke would follow in the fallen student's footsteps rather than in the footsteps of his presumed father? Especially if said father himself had "much anger in him"? Wouldn't his father (Annikin/Anakin) have been a Jedi student himself at one time?

Of course Obi-Wan knew, I'm just parsing out the possible implication(s) of Vader's "Obi-Wan never told you what happened to your father" line on Cloud City.

Fair enough, but I am talking about the difference between Obi-Wan lying-or-being-mistaken about one particular thing re: what he told Luke in the 1st film, versus him being untruthful (or not correct) about pretty much every detail in that expository dialogue at his home in the 1st film.
Edit to add:
I'll highlight the difference that I'm talking about. Scenario A of Ben's 'true history' versus the actual truth: Vader was Ben's student, and did indeed kill Annikin/Anakin, Luke's presumed father. Contrast that with scenario B: Vader did not kill Luke's father, Annikin/Anakin was the only Jedi student that Obi-Wan had (i.e. there was no "young Jedi pupil" named Darth Vader).

Well, if "consistency" means sacrificing a good story in order for everything to line-up just so, you may be right. Kind of dovetails into what I was saying about Lucas concern that the movies work on their own just as much as within a saga/trilogy-as-a-whole framework.

Lucas didn't really elaborate back in (December) 1975 exactly how, "in the second book, we learn who Darth Vader is"...just that we would. Supposedly under that plan, we wouldn't have had to wait until the third book/film to have the truth confirmed.

Would you say the same thing if you had no knowledge of what happened in ROTJ, though?

At any rate, what I've been proposing is along the lines of possible alternate story lines Lucas and co. could* have been considering when making the original trilogy up until he locked things up story-wise when developing ROJT. Not so much about what works best in terms of a better ending or resolution to the story.

*with the emphasis on could

 

For what it's worth; the back of Darth Vader's ESB Topps trading card (from 1980), lists his age as 50.

 

Hello all,

Does anyone remember a rumor that Lucas at one time had intended for Vader and Boba Fett to have been brothers? I seem to remember hearing about it during the lead up to TPM's release in 1999. Pretty sure it wasn't from SW Insider, though. Nonetheless, I find it pretty interesting as to how it would relate to Vader's back-story. A 'secret identity' for both Vader AND Fett...

 

The floating cup scene is included in the original Marvel Comics adaptation of Star Wars, though we never actually see Vader drink from it (several humorous possibilities come to mind). An interesting side note; When Leigh Brackett died, Ray Bradbury (who was a close friend) offered to finish the ESB script, uncredited and for no money, so Leigh could retain her writing credit. Imagine how different ESB would have been, if that had happened.

 

I did not know that about Bradbury . Very interesting. As far as how different ESB would have been in that scenario? I imagine we would have gotten more re: the Galactic political situation and the Rebel Vs. Empire sub-plots, perhaps.

 

About three years ago I started digging deeper into the material in an attempt to respond to some of the questions posed by Samuel Vimes. It was one of those situations where once I pulled one thread another seemed to reveal itself and before long I had a going on 90 page rough draft. I've tried to condense it for the purposes of this format and have gotten it to about 15 pages.

Part 1 of 14

According to Rinzler, on December 17, 1975, Lucas told LFL's licensing and merchandising vp Charles Lippincott:

"My original idea was to make a movie about an old man and a kid, who have a teacher-student relationship. And I knew I wanted the old man to be a real old man, but also a warrior. In the original script the old man was the hero. I wanted to have a seventy-five-year-old Clint Eastwood. I liked that idea.Then I wrote another script without the old man. I decided I wanted to do it about kids. I found the kid character more interesting than the old man. I don’t know that much about old people and it was very hard for me to cope with it. So I ended up writing the kid better than the old man."

A near verbatim variation of the old man and the kid line appears in a different quote from the 1977 theater souvenir program.

"I wanted to make an action movie — a movie in outer space like Flash Gordon used to be. Ray guns, running around in space ships, shooting at each other — I knew I wanted to have a big battle in outer space, a sort of dogfight thing. I wanted to make a movie about an old man and a kid. And I knew I wanted the old man to be a real old man and have a sort of teacher-student relationship with the kid. I also wanted the old man to be like a warrior. I wanted a princess, too, but I didn't want her to be a passive damsel in distress."

From these two quotes, we get a glimpse into the thought process. The characters begin as base concepts. Two decades later, he would say:

"You can take the various drafts of Star Wars. You can find the central characters. They always exist. They [are] given different names. They are given different sizes, shapes, ages, and stuff but the the core of the character is still there and growing."

The general public reading the 1977 souvenir program at the time would understand the kid to mean Luke. However, only Lucas and anyone close to the production would have known that the kid student went by a different name in the 1974 rough draft: Annikin Starkiller.

Only those close to the production would have known what Lucas had named Luke’s father two drafts later: also Annikin Starkiller.

Regardless of whatever other details Lucas might have added, Annikin's main purpose ("the core of the character") is to be the young student of the old warrior. That idea never really goes away. The very first time the general public hears that name — or its soundalike, Anakin — it is in context of his having been the old man's student.

When that underlying concept is stripped out of all its specifics, as with Lucas’s 1975 "old man and a kid" quote, we can see a potential problem with deciphering his specific meaning.

Namely, which student was he talking about?

 

Part 2 of 14

There is a persistent pattern in the development of these movies of words being swapped out between otherwise identical writings. The parallels created by the swapped words just so happen to become plot points later on.

For example, Lucas had wanted to introduce a super-stormrooper in TESB. A design was made which Lucas then decided to use instead for his bounty hunter character. This appears in issue #5 of Bantha Tracks from the Summer of 1979:

"Not much is known about Boba Fett. He wears part of the uniform of the Imperial Shocktroopers, warriors from the olden time. Shocktroopers came from the far side of the galaxy and there aren't many of them left. They were wiped out by the Jedi Knights during the Clone Wars. Whether he was a shocktrooper or not is unknown."

This is from Donald F. Glut's novelization of TESB published in April of 1980:

"He was dressed in a weapon-covered, armored spacesuit, the kind worn by a group of evil warriors defeated by the Jedi Knights during the Clone Wars."

The Empire Strikes Back Sketchbook, published in June of 1980 adds a new idea:

"Originally the Boba Fett costume was intended to be worn by a squad of supercommandos, troops from the Mandalore system armed with weapons built into their suits."

The 1987 sourcebook for the role-playing game published by West End Games says:

"He wears a weapon-covered armored spacesuit similar to those favored by a group of warriors (from the Mandalore system) who were defeated by the Jedi Knights during the Clone Wars."

And so the super-stormrooper becomes Boba Fett who becomes a member of a group of evil warriors that become Mandalorians. Boba Fett is later revealed to be a clone of the original stormtroopers.

Here's another.

In the second draft, Luke has to rescue his brother from an Imperial prison facility. This appears in that script:

"Suspended inside the cell by invisible rays, a bloody and mutilated Deak Starkiller hangs upside down. A strange yellow glow radiates from his eyes. Chewbacca rushes into the cell past the dazed Han. The Wookiee yells something and Han comes to, firing his pistol at a small control box in the wall. The unconscious Deak drops like a rock into the giant Wookiee’s arms. Chewbacca slings him over his shoulders, and joins Han in the hallway."

Compare this to the scene from draft three:

"Suspended inside the cell by invisible rays, a bloody and mutilated Leia Organa hangs upside down. A strange yellow glow radiates from her eyes. Chewbacca rushes into the cell past the dazed Han. The Wookiee yells something and Han comes to, firing his pistol at a small control box in the wall. The unconscious princess drops like a rock into the giant Wookiee’s arms. Chewbacca slings her over his shoulder and joins Han in the hallway."

And so Luke rescuing his brother becomes Luke rescuing Princess Leia who is later revealed to be his sister.

 

Part 3 of 14

Since the release of the first film, we have always understood that Darth Vader was Ben's student. That wasn't always the case though.

In draft two, Vader was just a Sith who shows up a couple times to cause trouble for the Starkiller brothers. He's an amalgam of two different characters from the rough draft: An Imperial general named Darth Vader and an unnamed 7-foot tall Sith from the opening scene who kills Annikin's younger brother Deak.

The fact that Vader wasn't the old man's student until draft three shows that it was a decision that had to be made. And from the various quotes and scripts themselves, we can see that it wasn't so much a brand new, out-of-nowhere idea being added to Vader. It was Vader being combined with an already existing idea.

In other words, Lucas put into Vader the concept of a character that he had named Annikin at the same time that he turned Luke’s father into someone named Annikin. Father Annikin, like his earlier namesake, also just so happened to have been a follower of the old man.

Is that a coincidence?

There are curious bits of verbiage Lucas wrote into the drafts subsequent to his conversation with Lippincott. He has Ben say in draft four, "A young Jedi, Darth Vader, one of my disciples..." In the revised draft four, Ben refers to him as, "A boy I was training, one of my brightest disciples, one of my greatest failures…" In the final film it's stated as, "A young Jedi named Darth Vader, who was a pupil of mine until he turned to evil..."

Kid student, young disciple, boy disciple, young pupil...these all mean the exact same thing. Lucas is literally just switching out words with their synonyms.

The old man's young student is both Annikin and Vader. Irrespective of what Lucas’s intent may have been, they are simultaneously existing parallel ideas.

For the sake of argument, assuming he didn't do this initially because he had turned Vader into the father, the associations caused by his having done so just so happen to be what is revealed later on. Vader, the old man's student, is revealed to be Anakin, the old man's student, who shares a similar sounding name with Annikin, the old man's student.

 

Part 4 of 14

In the third draft, Luke knew his father prior to his death in battle some undefined time prior. That we are never shown this event is suspicious because it fits into a well-worn trope: any character who dies offscreen is alive.

Not only does Annikin's death happen offscreen, his entire existence happens there as well.

There are any number of examples of this trope that Lucas probably saw. The one we can be sure of is from a film he specifically mentioned to Leigh Brackett in the TESB story conferences: Doctor Zhivago. In it, we see a character named Pasha appear to die in battle. Later, the main character has to pass through territory controlled by a viscious commander named Strelnikov who is talked about but not seen. Finally right before intermission, his identity is revealed. Strelnikov is Pasha.

Of course, just because Lucas would have known about this trope all by itself doesn't mean he was actively thinking about it while writing the first film. And it would be hard to prove that he was intending to use it with the father were it not for the fact that he actively incorporated the trope into the plot of ANH.

The first time we hear about Luke's father it is in tandem with Luke wondering if Ben and Obi-Wan are the same person. Owen says of Obi-Wan, "I don't think he exists anymore. He died about the same time as your father." And so from this point until Alec Guinness appears onscreen, as far as we know, Ben and Obi-Wan must not be the same person because one of them is clearly alive and the other is clearly dead.

Except, how can we be really sure since we've never even seen either one of them let alone been given visual confirmation of one or the other's deaths? If, on first viewing, you were suspicious at this point, you would have been justified. We soon learn Obi-Wan is not dead and is the same as Ben Kenobi.

Ben having a former identity that Luke believes to be dead first appears in the revised draft four, dated to March 15, 1976. Prior to this, in draft three and the original draft four, Ben was just Ben.

What this means is that when Lucas wrote Owen's dialogue, he was in no way planning for Obi-Wan to be a separate individual who is dead. What this also means is that when he wrote, "He died about the same time as your father," he had to have known he was employing a trope. And because he was writing the trope into the same sentence declaring both father and Obi-Wan to be dead, he had to have been aware that the trope was equally as applicable to the father as it was to Ben.

And so if Obi-Wan didn't really die at the same time as Luke’s father, then what about Luke's father?

Ben Kenobi is the third version of the old man warrior/mentor. The version in the previous script, described as "a wizened old man with long silver hair" named the Starkiller, was Luke’s father. Lucas would tell TESB unit publicist Alan Arnold in 1979:

"Ben started out as Luke’s father and became the friend of Luke’s father. I wanted a character who was an old warrior, very stately, a father image for Luke. He evolved out of that."

Two years before this conversation, Lucas had refered to Ben as being "the good father" in his notes for TESB.

What this means is that when Lucas gave Ben Kenobi a supposedly-but-not-really-dead-former-identity, in his mind he knew that he was giving Luke’s father a supposedly-but-not-really-dead-former-identity. Owen's line, at a conceptual level, is akin to, "Your father died at the same time as your father." Neither of which ends up being true.