Luke was going to be a midget?!!

Another bit of trivia I read at IMDB:

"At one point, George Lucas planned for the characters of Luke Skywalker and his aunt and uncle, to be midgets."

Anyone as surprised as me to find that Lucas actually considered something this insane?

 

Didn't Lucas go through all kinds of crazy ideas before he finally then settled with the characters we know? I mean in the DVD commentary he told that at one point Han Solo was supposed to have gills and be this "fish like" creature. And at one point Luke was supposed to be a girl. I guess every director/scriptwriter/artist experiments with ideas untill finally just deciding wich way to go.

 

Yes, those were in fact some of the crazy ideas that GL went through before settling on the right one. Sadly, I think that alot of GL's good sense left him when he wrote TPM.

 

Every great director has stupid ideas at some point or another, but just be happy Lucas didn't go through with it.

 

Well that one movie had a lot of little characters in it, and it turned out ok. Lord of the Rings I believe it was called. In fact the main characters were little folk.

 

I was shocked to hear this about Luke as well,why is GL fascinated with little people so much.Like the Jawas,Ewoks,Willow,etc?

 

An all asian cast was also considered.

BTW, what's with this recent trend of being "shocked" with Lucas' discarded ideas for "even considering them"?

That's just how a creative process works, you start brainstorming without limitations, then you filter out the good ideas.

 

Yoda being a little frogling... that was instructive. Luke did not take Yoda seriously, and he should have. Luke had a paradigm tied to physical appearance, and it was foolhardy. That episode spoke volumes about Luke's maturity.

Ben, on the other hand, greeted Artoo with respect and cordiality, not the usual disregard that would ordinarily befall a small droid.

Good thing he did, too, because the most seemingly-insignificant little being was carrying the keys to the galaxy.

 

Lucas may not have made Luke Skywalker a midget, but he sure got his love of little people in every single other Star Wars movie.

ANH-Jawas, Kenny Baker as Artoo

ESB-Ugnaughts, Kenny Baker as Artoo

ROTJ-Ewoks, Jawas, Kenny Baker as Artoo

TPM-little boy Anakin, Jawas, Kenny Baker as Artoo

AOTC-Jedi children, little boy Boba, Kenny Baker as Artoo

Then look at Willow! A midget stars in the movie and there's a whole village populated by little people! Not only that but there are faeries and brownies who are even smaller! You'd think Lucas would have gotten his bizarre fixation on people of shorter persuasion out of his system with that movie!

Then you've got Howard the Duck, played by a midget.

It's amazing that kids only made it into one of the three Indiana Jones movies, and there are no midgets in sight.

Did 'Tucker: The Man and His Dream', 'THX 1138', or 'American Graffiti' feature any kids or midgets? I've never seen these movies.

 

Lucas eventually was able to make a movie with a midget as the main character/hero. He wrote the story for and produced the movie Willow, starring Warwick Davis(Wicket in Return of the Jedi). It even had a Han Solo-like character played by Val Kilmer.

 

It's hard to imagine a Star Wars trilogy with a midget Luke and the giant Darth Vader as father and son. I mean people get uptight about Hayden being smaller than Prowse imagine a PT with Anakin as a midget.

 

I remember seeing a critic review Willow and make an easy comparison to that of SW. I agreed with him. Willow never should have been made at that time. GL should have waited until now to make it because now he can use CGI to make the film alot better than the way Willow turned out. Of course, GL would then have to defend accusations that he's merely capitalizing on the success of the LOTR. Films which make Willow look like a home movie.