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

"Especially when his drafts had the revelation"

Technically, only his hand-written draft had the revelation. The subsequent type-written version he did afterwards omitted the revelation. I don't know if Kasdan's draft(s) had the revelation or not, but I'm leaning towards not, I realize that Kasdan has said that Lucas told him about the revelation (but prior to the film's release?).

" Plus, what Marcia said about it happening after ANH and the nature of the script draft"

Is it possible that Marcia didn't know or wasn't told about the sequel planning "we find out who Darth Vader is" bit from Dec 1975/Jan 1976?

Is that the case? In Rinzler's book, isn't he quoted as saying that April or May 1975 when he wrote the story synopsis between the Second and Third draft is when he made Leia the sister?

More significantly imho if he's telling the truth about that, then the claim that he didn't have the idea of Vader being Luke's father until after ANH was released would be without basis.

The quote actually says this:

"Somewhere the good father (Ben) watches over the child's fate, ready to assert his power when critically needed. Father changes into Darth Vader, who is a passing manifestation, and will return triumphant. Luke travels to the end of the world and makes sacrifice to undo the spell put on his father. He succeeds and happiness is restored."

To me, that doesn't quite square with Brackett's draft where Luke's father appears as a ghost and Vader is clearly a separate character. So, yes, either A) it's an 'interpolation' or B) Brackett's draft isn't an entirely accurate reflection of Lucas' thought processes, especially regarding Vader.

 

Kasdan's drafts of ESB did have "INSERT" notations for special added dialogue where the "I am your father" reveal was meant to go. Luke's hand being cut off and replaced with a mechanical arm was part of those special pages as well. (Vader's reveal was "INSERT B", while Luke losing his hand was "INSERT A" and the description of his prosthesis was "INSERT C".)

In the third draft, the special descriptions have Luke's left arm cut off at the elbow, and in the finale his prosthetic left arm has "metal struts and electronic circuits similar to Threepio". In other words, this is a precursor of Anakin's outwardly mechanical arm from the prequels.

In the fourth draft it seems that Lucas considered having Luke not lose his hand after all - only "INSERT B" for the "I am your father" dialogue is called for, while "INSERT A" and "INSERT C" are absent. In the fourth draft Luke also manages to keep his lightsaber, which he hooks onto his belt after falling from the platform. This may have been true in the third draft as well, since in that draft he lost his left arm rather than his right hand.

The fifth draft/shooting script lacks the "INSERT" text entirely, to avoid alerting people that there's anything missing from those scenes at all. The regular version of the script doesn't mention Vader's reveal, and lacks any decoy revelations in its place. There is some decoy text that describes Vader gashing Luke's right forearm with his lightsaber, so that Luke drops the sword and loses it; in the finale, there's more decoy text where Luke's arm is said to have a "nasty scar".

As for Lucas saying in Rinzler's Making of SW book that he made Leia Luke's sister around the time of the SW third draft in 1975/76, that seems to be a quote from much later when he was talking in retrospect about writing the films, so I wouldn't put much weight in it.

Plus, Lucas telling Alan Dean Foster in late 1975 that "we learn who Darth Vader is" doesn't necessarily mean "we learn that Darth Vader is Luke's father". I'm sure Lucas was already considering that Vader might have a secret identity connected with Luke in some way, but I'm not convinced that he considered merging Vader and Anakin until after the first film was made. Maybe Vader would have been Luke's older brother, for instance, or Anakin's younger brother, or even a son or brother of Ben Kenobi.

 

Understood, though I brought it up in response to @darth-sinister statement that Lucas has admitted multiple times that he didn't make Leia the sister until 1981.

While those ideas are all entertaining possibilities - in an alternate-universe sense - to me, the most parsimonious option is that Lucas would tie that 'secret identity' to an already mentioned character (that of Luke's father). Another uncle, older brother, or 'secret son of Ben' would seem a little random, story-wise.

 

True. Which may be one of the reasons that it eventually got rejected in favor of merging Vader and Anakin.

 

"Vader is completely consumed by the evil side of the Force. He is an instrument of the Force rather than having his own free will in terms of what he does. He really is driven by the Force. When we kill him off in the next one, we’ll reveal what he really is. He wants to be human—he’s still fighting in his own way the dark side of the Force. He doesn’t want to be a bad man, but he is. He can’t resist it. He’s struggling somehow to get out of what he is, struggling with his humanity."

--George Lucas, TESB story conference transcript, 1977.

That's what he meant.

 

That's "what", not "who", so it may or may not refer to the same thing.

 

Also, in that Dec 1975 discussion with Foster, Lucas said that in the second "book" or story, we would find out 'who' Darth Vader is. In that ESB note which you quoted from TMOESB book, he says that in the next film, we would reveal 'what' he is. So, I don't think that later note from late 1977 is necessarily what he 'meant' by what he mentioned to A.D. Foster at the end of 1975 (or beginning of 1976).

 

continued:

That note about Father 'changing into Darth Vader' - if it is indeed from the early stages of writing what would become ESB - would obviously not be meant for public consumption as it would spoil the ending of the trilogy (let alone just the Father-Vader revelation). However, the note that you quoted in post #280 while maybe not for the public, had it been leaked to the public, wouldn't have revealed too much to audiences that wasn't already *known. I will say, however, that the note does foreshadow a bit Vader's "it is too late for me, Son" from ROTJ.

*I think Lucas was already on record back then saying that Vader would be killed off in the third SW film.

 

Lest people think that note was really a ROTJ-era note deceptively back-dated to ESB's development; it mentions a "spell" being put on Luke's father, and that LUKE makes a 'sacrifice' to undo that spell. It's not exactly what transpires in ROTJ, though it's close.

As far as Huyck coming up with the Father Vader idea - I can see the appeal of believing that. It would seem to remove the probabilistic hurdle of Lucas seemingly not coming up with the idea when writing the first SW, only for him to come up with it out-of-the-blue in early 1978 when he wrote his draft of the script.

 

I see no reason for Marcia Lucas to lie. Nor believe that she is misremembering it. The explanation works and fits the narrative. Lucas has admitted that the story went through a lot of changes as he went. Why Brackett had so many things that differed with his notes, which could have been back dated after the fact. Something that we know that he did do,

 

I found the link about Marcia Lucas/Willard Huyck inspiring Father Vader

Marcia also says this:

“When I was his wife, I never knew there were nine stories,” Marcia Lucas says in the new docuseries Icons Unearthed: Star Wars. “I never knew there were two stories.”

If we're going to use Marcia as the yardstick for historical accuracy/truth, then does this mean George never planned any (post-ROTJ) sequels* until after they got divorced? I'm not saying she's lying either. What I'm saying is that she wasn't necessarily told everything about what was being planned.

*she says she never knew there were even TWO stories.

Huyck very well could have made the joke/suggestion to Lucas about making Vader Luke's father. But he could have meant**, "make Vader Luke's real father, instead of Annikin". Meanwhile not knowing that Lucas had already come up with the idea of Vader being the result of a 'spell' but on Annikn/Anakin, and possibly before that, back when writing the Third Draft, had an idea of Annikin actually killing Vader and taking the latter's identity.

**I realize that this wouldn't have solved Lucas's 'dilemma' of too many Force-Ghosts, what with Luke's father showing up as a Ghost/Spirit.

 

continued from Post #286:

In short, if Marcia wasn't privy to a 9-or-12-episode plan (or even 2), she most likely also wasn't privy to Lucas's discussion with Foster about 2 follow-up sequels to Star Wars, involving a reveal of 'who' Darth Vader is at the end of the 2nd 'book'.

As for Lucas's ESB 'dilemma', according to the 'Icons' article, it had more to do with the third act of ESB rather than the Ghost(s) on Dagobah scene.

Edit:
I didn't catch this earlier:

"George Lucas farmed out the screenplay to science fiction novelist Leigh Brackett, but Brackett passed away after she handed in her first draft. As has been documented in many different sources, Lucas then collaborated with Lawrence Kasdan to rewrite Empire, and it was during this process that the big twist about Vader was invented."

Here, the article implies that the Father-Vader twist was 'invented' when Lucas collaborated with Kasdan for the re-write. It totally fails to mention that Lucas wrote a draft prior to this by himself, and that said draft had the twist in it.

 

Given that Marcia Lucas was never overly enthusiastic about Star Wars from the start, I have to say it makes some sense that George wouldn't talk too much about the details of his various plot ideas for the series with her. People like the Huycks, Steven Spielberg, and other friends of theirs were more interested in the series and probably would've made better sounding boards when he wanted to brainstorm ideas.

 

If that joke suggestion over dinner actually happened, I find it somewhat intriguing that Dale Pollock failed to mention it in his book "Skywalking" (1983).

 

Just because she didn't know that he was planning multiple films beyond the OT, doesn't mean that she was not aware of other things.

PAUL SCANLON: "Was the studio upset when you told them Kenobi would die?"

GEORGE LUCAS:"Everybody was upset. I was struggling with the problem that I had this sort of climactic scene that had no climax about two-thirds of the way through the film. I had another problem in the fact that there was no real threat in the Death Star. The villains were like tenpins; you get into a gunfight with them and they just get knocked over. As I originally wrote it, Ben Kenobi and Vader had a sword fight and Ben hits a door and the door slams closed and they all run away and Vader is left standing there with egg oil on his face. This was dumb; they run into the Death Star and they sort of take over everything and they run back. It totally diminished any impact the Death Star had."

SCANLON : "It was like the old Bob Steele westerns where they all had about fifty shots in their six-shooters."

LUCAS: "Right, but those kind of things dissipate without having a lot of real cruel torture scenes and real unpleasant scenes with the bad guys in order to create them as being bad or make them a threat. I was walking that thin line between making something that I thought was vaguely a nonviolent kind of movie, but at the same time I was having all the fun of people getting shot. And I was very careful that most of the people that are shot in the film were the monsters or those storm-troopers in armored suits. Anyway, I was rewriting, I was struggling with that plot problem when my wife suggested that I kill off Ben, which she thought was a pretty outrageous idea, and I said, 'Well, that is an interesting idea, and I had been thinking about it.' Her first idea was to have Threepio get shot, and I said impossible because I wanted to start and end the film with the robots, I wanted the film to really be about the robots and have the theme be framework for the rest of the movie. But then the more I thought about Ben getting killed the more I liked the idea because, one, it made the threat of Vader greater and that tied in with the Force and the fact that he could use the dark side. Both Alec Guinness and I came up with the thing of having Ben go on afterward as part of the Force. There was a thematic idea that was even stronger about the Force in the earliest scripts. It was really about the Force, a Castaneda Tales of Power thing."

--George Lucas, Rolling Stone interview; 1977.

So he ran ideas by her, when he was stuck. My guess is the same thing happened with Hyuck, which lead to the meeting with Kasdan where it was became the big revelation. That's different from speaking about long term plans.

 

True. However, it is still a distinct possibility that she didn't know about the (first?) story meeting with Foster, specifically the part about learning who Vader is in the following movie(s). That is, if she really believes that Lucas never had the idea of Vader being Luke's father prior to Huyck supposedly suggesting it (of which, judging by the article, the timeline is a little sketchy).

First, the difference is that we know about the Kenobi thing and have known about it for years. Whereas with the Huyck suggestion, we are on less firm ground. For instance, on the timeline: the article presents it as though Brackett turned in her draft, passes away, then Huyck suggests it and Lucas has the 'meeting' with Kasdan for the re-writes and it becomes part of the story. The problem is that it totally omits that Lucas wrote his own draft in between Brackett's draft and hiring Kasdan, and that his (hand-written) draft had the Father Vader revelation in it, already before Kasdan came on board. That's not a minor over-sight.

 

Unless the Hyuck suggestion happens before Brackett turned in her draft. But then, maybe Lucas replaced the page after the fact before making it public.

 

It's like they (the editor/author of the article) thought Lucas being 'stuck' for ideas (i.e. the third act/ending of ESB, just like the latter half of SW) being the inspiration for the Huyck suggestion sounded better to them. But, leaving out the crucial detail that Lucas wrote a draft after Brackett - and that it contained the revelation - almost makes it sound like they had an agenda.

 

I found this pretty interesting, from the doc "From Star Wars to Jedi: The Making of a Saga" (1983)



The part where Lucas said, "that was the one I really liked the most" regarding the idea of Vader being Luke's father, I've always found intriguing.

 

“As that evolved as I did the first film, I didn’t know how the public would take all this and that it would be as successful as it was and Darth Vader would become the character he became. And so when I got down to the second film, I had to make a decision about whether I was really going to go through with this thing, of him being his father. And I finally decided that that really was the way, that was the original story and that was the one I really liked the most and so I had to stick with it.”

That video is from 1983. The "Art of Star Wars Galaxy" (Topps) from 1993, has a very similar quote from Lucas. Then in 1997's "Annotated Screeplays" (Bouzereau) we have him talking about 'going back and forth' with the revelation of Vader being Luke's father. He seems to have been pretty consistent about that over the years.

 

(continued)

I think it's not implausible (and certainly not without precedent) that Lucas in the end went with an earlier idea that he liked best, after trying out an alternative*. For example, when writing the Fourth Draft and shooting the film to have Luke make his first on-screen appearance much earlier in the film - after having listen to his friends' suggestion that he do so. But when subsequently cutting the film in the editing stage, with Marcia, Richard Chew, and Paul Hersch, he takes out those earlier scenes with Luke, going back to having the droids lead the opening of the film (along with Leia and Vader's introductions) finally leading to Luke's introduction to the story.

*although I agree with @patbuddha that even here Lucas was able to make the Vader-killed-Luke's-father idea work to his advantage, both at the time of the first film's debut, and later on with the subsequent two sequel films.

 

I'm going to just say it:

Supposing for the moment, that Lucas adopted a suggestion made by a film colleague regarding Luke's father, to me it's more likely that it was the concept of Vader-killed-Luke's father.

 

Why do you say that?

 

Because the "Vader kills Luke's father off-screen in the past" scenario seems to me less like a Lucas idea than the secret Father idea, I suppose. That being said, whatever the truth, this idea does rather work to Lucas' advantage, in more ways than one, in that: A) it gave Lucas the means to push the father character's demise into the (unseen) past, which would perhaps be one way to mitigate the possible circumstance of Lucas not being able to make the two planned sequel stories - and B) it worked to conceal - and at the same time, *set-up - the "Vader as father" reveal in the subsequent films.

*no less than Lawrence Kasdan said around the time ESB was released or shortly thereafter:
"The things that happen to Vader are a logical step from STAR WARS and will vastly alter the audience's perception of that character." from page 117 of "The ESB Notebook", published November 1980. I don't think that Kasdan was referring to Vader's propensity to choke people in that quote.

 

True, but that doesn't confirm that Vader was always the father. Just that the confrontation with Luke was inevitable and his redemption was on the table.