Saga How Would You Write And Make - The Empire Strikes Back

Greetings faithful Jedi Council Forum members, and welcome to the second edition of How I Would Write & Make, where I or any one of you takes a piece of popular culture (a film, television series, novel, video game or whatever) and imagine an alternate perfect universe in which the piece is still successful and or influential to the culture at large, but you list 26 total differences in which the new version would differ from the original and therefore appeal to you. Today, let us continue our reworking of the Original Trilogy by picking up where the previous film - Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back.

Where were you in 1980 when this film came out? What about the times you watched The Empire Strikes Back before the Special Editions in 1997 and onward while Star Trek took over in science fiction movie franchises? At first, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation (20th Century Fox) distributed it, but with the sale of Lucasfilm and future Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies to Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures (Walt Disney Pictures) in 2012, there was always the tiny feeling that Star Wars was sort of a Disney film waiting to become a Disney film. Lucas himself said Disney might have wanted to make it if Walt Disney himself were still alive, saying that Walt had vision and was not risk averse.

In this edition, we are going to take a look at an alternate universe in which Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back has a similar path in terms of development as well as certain author appeal elements that will make it enjoyable and hopefully others are eager to indulge in this and other concepts that would certainly change up the basic story but not too drastically. Reflecting how Disney owns Star Wars now yet and how Fox distributed then, this universe would have Disney and Fox both distributing this film on a $35,000,000.00 budget while pushing the boundaries of PG ratings close to R. Fox would have first retained North American distribution rights while Disney would have international distribution rights.

1) First off, the film would open with the 1985 Walt Disney Pictures logo before fading to black and hearing the 1953 Fox Fanfare with the CinemaScope extension by Alfred Newman over the contemporary Fox logo to see the Lucasfilm logo over the final extension of the fanfare so that it blends almost seamlessly into John Williams' brilliant score. The beginning of the film would play similarly to the version in our universe with the blue on black words "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...." leading into the opening crawl with "Star Wars" and "Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back" anticipating the verbatim worded opening crawl from the original version that will lead off into an Imperial Star Destroyer.

2) We would see the Star Destroyer Avenger performing the task that many others like it are doing in their search for the Rebel Alliance's new base of operations ever since the forced evacuation of Yavin IV. The Avenger is checking the Outer Rim Territories as it sends Viper probe droids to search for signs of Rebel activity. One probe droid or "probot" lands on the sixth planet of the Hoth system also named Hoth and had only a few indigenous lifeforms - the two-legged Tauntaun snow lizards and the ravenous Wampa ice monsters. As the probot goes in search of human lifeforms, three of them are now riding Tauntauns to patrol certain areas of the planet - it is the Heroes of Yavin: Luke, Han and Leia.

3) Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) sees what he thinks is a meteorite which was the probot's hyperspace pod crash in the snow and reports in to his friends Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and Princess Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher) as they report they don't show any life signs near the base. The two of them head back while Luke starts to check out the crashed pod when a Wampa attacks, killing the Tauntaun and dragging it along with Luke back to its cave. Back at the new Echo Base for the Rebel Alliance, Han and Leia check in with General Carlist Rieekan (Bruce Boa) and Leia's handmaiden Lady Winter Retrac (Terri Nunn or Lisa Eilbacher) on Luke's discovery. The droids C-3PO (Anthony Daniels) and R2-D2 (Kenny Baker) are helping Han's copilot Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew) make vital repairs to their ship the Millennium Falcon.

4) Han tells them he and Chewbacca have to take off from the Alliance and get back in touch with Jabba the Hutt, for Han believes the Rebel Alliance has become a little too dangerous since the bounty hunter encounter on Ord Mantell and Jabba might still have use for him even after he paid him off between the Battle of Yavin and now. Rieekan and Leia take the news well and understand Han's predicament, with Leia's only request being that Han and Chewie take care of each other. The verbal arguments and spat Han and Leia have in the finished film are instead transferred to Han and Winter - Winter, who believes every capable person should do their part and risk their lives to bring down the Empire.

5) When it is discovered that Luke has not returned, Han postpones his and Chewie's departure from Hoth so that he and Leia can set out into the cold on Tauntauns to find Luke. Winter finds herself regretting some of the things she both said and did not say to her friends Luke, Han and Leia as she, Chewie, 3PO and R2 watch as the base shield doors are closed for the night. This means that Luke, Han and Leia are trapped out in the cold blizzard for the night and a snowspeeder rescue patrol will have to wait until morning. Like in the film, Luke would summon his lightsaber to his hand using the Force so he could free himself and escape the Wampa's cave before passing out from the cold.

6) As Leia and Han close in on Luke's position, both Luke and Leia hear the voice of Obi-Wan Kenobi (Sir Alec Guinness)'s Force Ghost telling them to go to the Dagobah system to learn from Jedi Master Yoda. Once the pair reaches a delirious Luke raving about Dagobah and Yoda, their Tauntauns pass out and die from hypothermia. Leia uses her Obi-Wan lightsaber to cut one of them open so that it will keep Luke warm while she and Han get the shelter built. The next morning, Rogue Squadron snowspeeders fly out to pick up their tracking beacons with Rogue Two Zev Senesca (Christopher Malcolm) being the first to sight Leia and Han waving them down from below. Rogue Squadron brings them back to Echo Base with Luke taken in for recovery.

7) Unlike the film, the patients submerged in a bacta tank would be completely nude from head to toe for maximum effect - meaning privates and genitals are on full display. An extended scene takes place as Chewie, Han, Winter, 3PO and R2 watch from the medbay lounge a delirious Luke recovering in one tank while Leia observes from another tank adjacent to Luke's. Over comm, Winter and Leia muse over the creature that attacked Luke and realize the security of the base needs to be boosted. Once the medical droids 2-1B (Denny Delk) and FX-7 report that Luke is now recovering fine, he is lifted out of his tank as Leia swims up out of hers to get Luke situated and resting in the medbay convalescence wing.

8) As Luke waits for a uniform in his medbay robes, his friends enter with Leia still wet and wearing only a towel wrapped around her body as she waits for a uniform as well. Having overheard the spat between Han and Winter the previous day, Leia begins to wonder if Han has feelings for her or Winter. To test this theory, she tries playing matchmaker between the two by taking some of Han's boasts from the finished film for herself as she brags to Luke about Han and Winter's potential relationship. Flustered and frustrated by Han's cavalier attitude and Leia's spur-of-the-moment antics, Winter plants a kiss on Luke just to make Han jealous. They are saved by Rieekan reporting on a probe droid coming.

9) Han and Chewie go out and manage to destroy the probe droid, but realize the Empire knows where they are. Winter and a now-fully clothed Leia determine with General Rieekan that Echo Base must be evacuated for the Rebel Fleet's rendezvous point in the outskirts of the Unknown Regions with a new base to be planned on or near Arbra. It is very much fortunate for the Rebels that the Imperial Fleet of Death Squadron under the command of Darth Vader (David Prowse/voice of James Earl Jones)'s flagship Super Star Destroyer the Executor is currently stationed on the opposite side of the galaxy in the Bastion sector. Like in the film, Vader is obsessed with finding the pilot who managed to destroy the Death Star - Luke Skywalker.

10) Once a course is set for the Hoth system, the Imperial fleet gets underway with General Maximilian Veers (Julian Glover) leading Blizzard Force and the 501st Legion in the eventual ground siege of Echo Base. After Admiral Kendal Ozzel (Michael Sheard) of the Executor inevitably brings the fleet out of light speed too close to the Hoth system, he is swiftly dispatched by Vader and he puts Captain Firmus Piett (Kenneth Colley) of the Star Destroyer Accuser in command of the fleet to be deployed just enough so nothing escapes the system. But the Rebels had been counting on such an assault and have built several ion cannons across the surface of Hoth to screen against and knock offline Imperial capital ships attempting to block the escaping Rebel transports and starfighters.

11) As with the film, Han and Chewie set to work trying to fix the Millennium Falcon to get out of Dodge while Luke leads a ground defense in the Rogue Squadron's snowspeeders against the Imperial AT-AT walkers. The AT-AT (All-Terrain Armored Transport)s would be covered from the ground by AT-ST (All-Terrain Scout Transport) walkers, so Leia in her Y-Wing would hold off her own evacuation to buy time for the speeders by bombing out the AT-ST walkers. Luke would still lose his gunner Dak Ralter (John Morton), Wedge Antilles (Denis Lawson) and Wes Janson (Ian Liston) of Rogue Three would take out one AT-AT walker, Derek "Hobbie" Klivian (Richard Oldfield) and his gunner would eject and ram their speeder into Veers' walker just in time, and Luke would down an AT-AT with his lightsaber and a grenade.

12) Just as the last transports are preparing to lift off, the protective shield and turbolasers around Echo Base are destroyed when their main power generators are destroyed by the last AT-AT walker to fall. This would give the signal for Vader and the 181st Legion to move in and try to capture Luke. Han and Chewie would rescue Winter and 3PO by taking them aboard the Falcon along with some extra payment for Jabba's continued support of the Rebellion. Knowing that the others were safe from Vader for now, Luke and R2 in their X-Wing would fly up along with Leia in her Y-Wing to set course for Dagobah. Like in the film, the Falcon would have hyperdrive trouble and need to go into the asteroids.

13) During their time hiding out in the asteroid belt near Hoth, Han projects his feelings for Leia onto Winter in scenes shifted between Leia in the original film to Winter in this version. Winter doesn't really know what to make of this, as she is torn whether to consider herself asexual, a lesbian, bisexual, or just interested in guys who are not Han or Chewie. Luke, R2 and Leia would arrive on Dagobah in a swamp somewhere near Yoda's hut and are found the night after they crash land by an impish green creature who the spirit of Obi-Wan reveals to be Yoda (Frank Oz). Leia mentions that she studied under Ahsoka Tano and that even though her limited Jedi training is incomplete, they should help Luke's training.

14) As Death Squadron searches the asteroid belt for the Millennium Falcon, Vader is ordered to contact Emperor Palpatine himself - Darth Sidious (Ian McDiarmid). Conferring via holonet, the Emperor warns Vader that Luke Skywalker - the son of Anakin Skywalker and Padmé Amidala - could destroy them and everything the Sith worked for. Not wanting to see his own flesh and blood be killed to protect the Sith and wanting to supplant the Emperor, Vader suggests Luke could be turned to the Dark Side and become an asset to the Empire. The Emperor is willing and Vader's mission is clear as they disconnect transmission. But Vader has some second thoughts - remembering a somewhat happier childhood.

15) Unlike the film, it is Leia who gets the sleeveless undershirt for her Dagobah training as she helps Yoda mentor a shirtless Luke in the ways of the Jedi and mastering usage of the Force. As with the film, Luke faces a test in the Cave of Darkness that he and Leia must confront and see the inner darkness if they are to know and defeat it. Luke's test ends with him in a lightsaber duel with a visage of Darth Vader that shows if he gives in and murders the Sith Lord, he will awaken Vader's darkness within himself. Before the duel, he heard a voice similar to both his father Anakin and even Vader's calling his name out and begging him to save him. Luke is left to ponder these and other questions.

16) Leia's test is quite similar, but Leia is able to recognize the visages she sees as mere manifestations of her own feelings and ponders a time when her adoptive father Bail Organa and Vader were friends. When their friends on the Falcon are forced out by a giant asteroid slug, they have to make a run on the Avenger and hide along the rear of her bridge tower. As with the film, Captain Lorth Needa (Michael Culver) of the Avenger goes to personally apologize to Vader for losing the Rebels and is granted a mercifully swift death. The Bounty Hunters Guild made of IG-88 (Paul Klein), 4-LOM (Chris Parsons), Dengar (Maurice Bush), Zuckuss (Cathy Munroe), Bossk (Alan Harris) and Boba Fett (Jeremy Bulloch/voice of Temuera Morrison) are dispatched by the Empire with a reward for the one who brings the Millennium Falcon to the Empire.

17) With a little luck, the Rebels on the Falcon escape when the Avenger dumps her garbage disposal and use it as cover to begin the trip to Bespin where they are followed by Boba Fett in Slave I. Meanwhile, Luke and Leia's fighters sink into the waters of the swamp with Luke being convinced that the Force cannot get them out in his impatience and disbelief. Proving her patience and belief in the Force, Leia uses the Force to lift the fighters out of the swamp and on to dry ground. The Falcon arrives at Cloud City on Bespin where Han and Chewie are greeted by Lando Calrissian (Billy Dee Williams) who takes a shine to Winter. C-3PO gets lost and is some time later rescued in pieces by Chewbacca.

18) Continuing their training, Luke and Leia sense their friends eventual distress and peril on Bespin. Knowing the Falcon will need its light speed hyperdrive repaired, Luke says to Yoda that they need to take R2 to them. Promising to return to finish the training with Yoda and Obi-Wan's spirit, Luke and Leia set off for Bespin with R2 going along with them. Unlike the film, Vader and Boba Fett have traveled to Bespin on their own on the cover of Vader offering to surrender to the Alliance. Lando states that it's Luke that Vader wants to meet - in the hopes that Luke can help Vader overthrow the Emperor. Han and Winter are dumbfounded yet understand that Lando has a city of people he must protect.

19) Boba Fett states to Han that the war between the Rebellion and the Empire has gotten too dangerous for Jabba to continue to offer his support - not even with an extra bribe. Many of Jabba's businesses have been hit badly in the crossfire, and wants Han to pay for it. When the lives of Chewbacca and Winter are threatened, Han offers himself up to become Jabba's prisoner in carbonite to protect his friends - now his family. Knowing that Luke and Leia are arriving, Vader summons a garrison of the 181st Legion to eliminate all opposition and take control of the planet. After they set down, Luke and Leia activate return codes to set their ships to return on their own to the Rebel Fleet's meet point.

20) In the carbon freezing chamber, Vader meditates as he waits for Luke - thinking of happier memories of a young man; two Jedi Knights named Anakin Skywalker and Padmé Amidala, happily in love - all those times before he became the monster he was. An Imperial patrol is arrested by the Bespin security guards and Lobot (John Hollis) as Lando frees 3PO, Winter and Chewbacca as they attempt to recover Han and stop Boba Fett from escaping in Slave I. As the city erupts into chaos, Luke orders Leia and R2 to go find their friends while he holds off Vader as long as he can. He will find a way to escape Vader, somehow, as he goes in search of the Dark Lord and arrives in the giant carbon freezing chamber.

21) As Leia tries to protect R2 and fight their way to their friends, she comes across some of Vader's elite Force-sensitive Stormtroopers all wielding red lightsabers slaughtering and throwing the bodies of innocent Cloud City aliens and droids off ledges. The duel between Luke and Vader gets underway with the implication that they have had at least one or two prior lightsaber duels in which Obi-Wan's spirit interfered to help Luke escape. For a while, it seems that Luke is able to hold his own as long as Vader's concern is with him and not his friends in peril. In the meantime, Leia takes the Force-sensitive Stormtroopers head on and is able to come on top as she and R2 finally chase down Boba Fett.

22) In the bowels of the city, Luke and Vader continue their duel which alternates between frantic blows and parries and a slow, tense and meticulous cat and mouse game being played. Vader continues to taunt the young Skywalker to unleash his anger in order to destroy him - but Luke tries to honor what his masters Obi-Wan and Yoda have taught him, even going so far as to rub the fact that Vader could not find Yoda if he tried in his face. Harbingers of Anakin Skywalker being revealed as Darth Vader come before the revelation through music cues interwoven between movements of Vader's "Imperial March" theme that imply that Vader once was a happy, loyal and very friendly child like Anakin was.

23) Leia and R2 meet up with Lando, Winter, Chewbacca and 3PO as they fight their way to the Falcon after failing to prevent Boba Fett from escaping with the frozen Han. With Star Destroyers and their Stormtrooper landing parties closing on the planet and the city, Lando makes an address telling the people of Cloud City to evacuate before the Empire takes complete control of the city. Proficient in using the Force and Obi-Wan's lightsaber, Leia and Winter lead the others to the Falcon. R2 drags 3PO off to be fixed in the passenger compartment as Leia and Lando take off and leave the Imperial ground forces and TIE Fighters in the dust until Leia senses Luke's current peril as they have to go back for him.

24) Vader has Luke at his mercy in the belly of Cloud City as Luke refuses to join the Dark Side. Ultimately, Vader is forced to reveal that he is Luke's father Anakin Skywalker. Instead of Luke screaming "NO!" in frantic denial, Luke remains silent as Vader suggests he can destroy the Emperor, and then instead asks why Vader refuses to kill his enemy. Vader can't bring himself to kill his own flesh and blood even if his own son hates him - making Luke realize there may still be good left within his father if he cannot bring himself to kill him. Luke promises to return to free his father from the Emperor and the Dark Side soon as he leaps into the shaft until he reaches the weather vane underneath Cloud City.

25) The Falcon arrives in time to save Luke as Leia and Lando pilot her out and away from Bespin while R2 finishes up work on 3PO. Once that is done, R2 helps Chewbacca in trying to get the hyperdrive reactivated in time to escape the Executor preparing its tractor beam and a boarding party to capture our heroes. Luke and Vader each beseech the other to come run away with them, trying to hold mental fortitude in bringing the other over to their side. R2 gets they hyperdrive turned on in time for the Falcon to roar into life and jump back for the Rebel fleet's rendezvous. Vader signals that he needs time to himself as he uncharacteristically lets Piett off the hook, knowing he is not at fault.

26) Back at the Rebel Fleet which is parked on the outside of the galaxy heading towards a new secret base, our heroes' ships are docked with the lead Nebulon-B escort frigate converted for medical duty the Redemption. As Luke receives his new and lifelike prosthetic right hand, he and Leia comfort Winter as Lando and Chewbacca prepare to set off aboard the Falcon in search of Jabba the Hutt and Boba Fett in order to rescue Han. It looks like a return trip to Tatooine is in order for our heroes, as Luke ponders whether Vader really is his father and what he would do when they would meet again. The Falcon, Luke's X-Wing and Leia's Y-Wing enter lightspeed to an uncertain future. Roll credits.

And that's another edition of How I Would Write & Make for Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980). It does not stray too far from the source material, but gives just enough to make it feel fresher and more innovative in my opinion. We may still have Terri Nunn or recast her with Lisa Eilbacher as Winter, Leia's handmaiden, as well as an increase in the chemistry and emotional depths between the characters along with a new reaction. The potential for this version to pass the Bechdel-Wallace Test (with the Anita Sarkeesian addendum) before the term "Bechdel test" would even be coined might make this version a bigger success with more people over the many decade Star Wars would be popular.

I also wanted the scenes of the Echo Base Medical Center to be more explicit and challenge a PG rating; and the Empire taking over Cloud City on Bespin to have much more explicit undertones of diverse good guys fighting the KKK-resembling Stormtroopers - since Lucas wrote Star Wars in the 70s during Watergate and the Vietnam War. This is just an Alternate Universe that I have proposed which is fun to imagine if things turned out differently. But as TV Tropes gleefully points out, Your Mileage May Vary on this - so fellow Jedi Councilors, let me know what your opinions on this idea would be and feel free to offer your ideas on how you would change this film if you wanted to or politely point out what you don't like about my ideas for the saga starting with this film.

 

I'm fairly certain that the trip to Bespin together on the Millennium Falcon was envisioned as a means to get Han & Leia together. ("Oh no, there's only one bed!") So if you want to pair up Leia & Han rather than Winter & Han, I think it would be best to have Leia be the one on board the ship.

On the other hand, if Luke and Leia were training together on Dagobah, I think it's very possible that only one of them would go to confront Vader. Obi-Wan and Yoda would probably insist on one of them staying behind in case the other one died, or worse, Fell. In this case, with Luke being less experienced, Leia would probably volunteer to go. So she might end up being the one to hear Vader's revelation - I'd say with just as much resistance as Luke in the 1980 film - and might lose her hand the same way as well.

Incidentally, did you plan on having Luke lose his hand in this film? It was something that George Lucas and Larry Kasdan apparently went back and forth about.

In Kasdan's third draft, Luke lost his left arm at the elbow (but apparently not his lightsaber), and later had it replaced with a droid arm "similar to Threepio" that prefigured Anakin's droid arm in the prequels. Both of these were signaled by calls for special insert pages in the script - Inserts A and C - while Insert B was the "I am your father" dialogue. In the fourth draft the idea of Luke losing an arm was temporarily deleted, so the script only calls for Insert B, and it also notes that Luke "has hooked his lightsaber back on to his belt" during his fall down the shaft.

In the fifth-draft shooting script Luke apparently lost both his right hand and his lightsaber, but the calls for special insert pages in the regular scripts were deleted entirely, to avoid letting people know there was something missing at all. The script instead has decoy text, where it says that Vader's saber gashes Luke's forearm (implied to be his right arm) and causes him to drop his lightsaber and lose it. Later on, the decoy text mentions a "nasty scar" on Luke's forearm during the scene on the medical frigate. (This is what's depicted - though on the left arm - in Ralph McQuarrie's concept paintings.)

Talking to Leigh Brackett in the 1977 story conferences (as transcribed in JW Rinzler's Making of ESB), Lucas suggested he'd had a very different idea for ESB at one point: "The film was originally set up as a spooky movie, as a horror kind of film; now the emphasis is on the love story. Luke in the desert sequence was really a horror film sequence, like The Exorcist, dealing with the devil. This can be developed into a good conflict—basically Jesus’s temptation in the desert scene. It would be interesting, a good idea, if in this one Vader tries to tempt Luke."

A "desert sequence" for Luke's Jedi training? Presumably this was replaced by the scenes on Dagobah - whose name evokes "days gone by" in a stereotypical African-American/Southern US accent, suggesting the idea that Luke's mother perhaps gave birth to her twins while in hiding on that planet. ("There's something familiar about this place," as Luke puts it in ESB.)

In the same way, Lucas notes about Yoda in the story conferences that "I also want to use another teacher. The original idea was to have that person be an alien, strange and bizarre, an old Indian in the desert type, a desert rat—which is what Ben started out as. (I decided to keep him very noble after casting Alec Guinness.) I’m intrigued with the idea of not taking something on surface value. Instead of a withered old man, we can use a withered old space creature. The way to think of it is as this crazy little nitwit that scurries around like a rat, which in the end teaches Luke a lot of stuff about the Force."

Lucas also mentions in the story conferences that one possible locale might be "Ttaz" - a "rock/desert (caves) planet", presumably different enough from Tatooine to be visually interesting. Maybe taking its cue from Monument Valley in Arizona instead of the sand flats of the Sahara? In any case, this was probably the planet deleted in favor of Dagobah. (For some reason JW Rinzler didn't record that name, but "Ttaz" is mentioned, along with other planets noted by Rinzler, in Laurent Bouzereau's SW Annotated Screenplays book.)

Also, talking to Alan Dean Foster back in 1975 (as quoted in Rinzler's Making of SW), Lucas said of the second film - or second book, with the remaining two chapters in the trilogy to be written as novels by Foster if the first film flopped - that "I want to have Luke kiss the princess in the second book. The second book will be Gone with the Wind in Outer Space. She likes Luke, but Han is Clark Gable. Well, she may appear to get Luke, because in the end I want Han to leave. Han splits at the end of the second book and we learn who Darth Vader is … In the third book, I want the story to be just about the soap opera of the Skywalker family, which ends with the destruction of the Empire."

If we keep in mind Irvin Kershner's dictum that "a kiss in SW is equivalent to a sex scene", then it's obvious that Luke would probably end up romantically paired with Leia in this concept - though Han would certainly give him a run for his money. But Han would leave for some as-yet-unspecified reason at the end of the second film - probably to return heroically, and maybe die heroically, at the climax of the third film. Of course, Lucas deciding to pair up Han and Leia instead (as he mentioned to Leigh Brackett in 1977), probably based on Carrie Fisher & Harrison Ford's offscreen affair, changed that, as did his decision to up the dramatic stakes by freezing Han in carbonite at the end of ESB from the second draft onward.

As for the question of "the other" in ESB - then envisioned as Luke's twin sister who wasn't Leia - the name "Nellith Skywalker" in Leigh Brackett's 1978 rough draft of ESB doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. It's a combination of Lilith, Adam's evil first wife and mother of demons from Jewish folklore, with Nell Gwyn, mistress of Charles II of England (whose name here contrasts with the Marian Catholic imagery associated with Leia: as Nell Gwyn allegedly once said to disarm a mob who mistook her for Charles' Catholic mistress Louise de Kéroualle, "Good people, calm yourselves! I am the Protestant whore!").

But "Nellith" isn't very punchy. Perhaps another name would do better, something sharing Yoda's connections with Buddhism, as well as the evil connotations of "Lilith" (and thus the suggestion of a possible Skywalker twincest plotline - something half-suggested in Dune Messiah, as well as featuring in the Germanic legends of Sigurd/Siegfried and Arthurian legend). Maybe a name borrowed from the evil spirit that tempted the Buddha. "Mara", perhaps.

 

I actually did intend that Luke would lose his hand and father's lightsaber like in the final film as well as for Han and Leia (who is still Luke's sister) to get together while not wanting to jettison Winter altogether because it allows for Winter to undergo taking levels in kindness and make her more approachable to Han, Leia, Lando and Luke.

 

For ESB I wouldn't really change anything. The only things I would change are:

Make the Hoth battle more elaborate, involving more imperial and Rebel forces on the ground and in the air. This of course is only a visual change. Then, I would have some sort of time jump, where Han and Leia end up having to stop somewhere (or perhaps a couple places) in between Hoth and Bespin, since they can't use hyperspeed. It would ultimately take about a month or two, and Luke would be spending a couple months training with Yoda, rather than a couple weeks. And lastly, we would see more of Yoda's training during this time.

Oh and maybe instead of a galaxy at the end that they are looking out at, rather a nebula or something.

That's about it.

 

Remove the Luke Leia kiss. Other than that I wouldn't change a thing.

 

Oh yeah-forgot about that
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