Saga SW Saga In-Depth In-Depth Discussion Thread

Lt. Hija Do you think that the guy who told "you" to "hold your fire" is the same guy who later tells Vader that an escape pod ws jettisoned? Their voice(s) sound the same to me.

 

ATMachine wrote

I posted a new thread on the Anthology Spoilers forum about my thoughts on the possible major plot influence of LucasArts games on anthology film Star Wars: Rogue One. I'd invite you guys to post in it, but the first reply I had was a mod telling me the thread was not notable enough and would be locked.

I found your thread truly interesting and really didn't understand the lock-down decision myself. Please don't leave, your competent and observative input considerably helps quality around here which IMHO far too often lacks investigative research efforts.

 

darklordoftech

That's what I thought for a long time (because of the "captain" reference in the screenplay) but a discussion with another JCF member some weeks ago opened my eyes (he insisted that wasn't the bridge "cockpit" but a gunnery station).

The decisive clue: Commander Praji who tells Vader in ANH that the Death Star plans are not aboard the Tantive IV wears an Imperial black officers' uniform (BTW, I have no issues believing that a "commander" can be the captain - function, not rank - of an Imperial cruiser).

In contrast, the guy telling "me" "hold your fire" just wears a black jumpsuit with the Imperial insignia on his sleeve (that's the giveaway) which usually indicates a lower rank in the Imperial hierarchy, IMHO.

 

Nice catch! The similarities there are too many to be entirely coincidental I think. It makes sense though - Jyn Erso looks a lot like Jan Ors, and after all the first mission of Dark Forces actually has you stealing the death star plans. Honestly this makes me a lot more excited to see Rogue One - I have a lot of fond memories of those Dark Forces games and that some of their ideas might end up in some form on the big screen is pretty awesome. Shame about the thread being closed, I don't really understand that.

 

If it wasn't through PMs, could you post a link to that discussion?

 

darklordoftech

I don't keep track of my input (maybe I should) and wasn't able to find it, again. But I summarized the essence of the rather short discussion.

On the other hand...TIE pilots wear jumpsuits so the screenplay description of a "captain" (i.e. chief pilot) and a "co-pilot" (Lt. Hija) could hint quite a different concept piloting starships (and ESB would constitute a premise change).

Fact remains that Joe Johnston clearly suggested in the 1977 Star Wars Sketchbook that the big starships are mostly (if not almost entirely) "automated", so a chimpanse and a monkey (oops...wrong franchise) a captain and chief pilot could have maneuvered an Imperial Cruiser.

Would like to hear feedback from "Star Wars" (i.e. ANH) purists like Binary_Sunset who consider anything beyond ANH conjecture.

 

Indeed, in the 70s GL did consider that large cruisers could have "chief pilots" - in the 1974 Journal of the Whills outline, Chuiee Two (CJ) Thorpe's father, Han Dardell Thorpe, was "chief pilot on the renowned galactic cruiser Tarnack."

 

Yikes. I'm afraid that I must admit that I have never thought about this.

 

I just remembered that the original storyboard of the Imperial Cruiser "cockpit" featured a set of horizontal window slots and a pilot...with a helmet.

Quite possible we could have seen TIE pilot helmets instead...

 

A proposition submitted for consideration:

George Lucas said in 2007 (when interviewed for The Making of Star Wars), "It was at that moment [while writing the third-draft script in 1975] that I came up with the idea that Luke and the princess are twins. I simply divided the character in two."

He wasn't exaggerating or stretching the truth. He was simply being honest - after all, the 1975 second-draft script of The Star Wars featured Luke Starkiller rescuing his brother Deak from an Imperial prison, with Deak essentially playing the Princess Leia role. And Ralph McQuarrie's sketches of Luke and Leia from 1975 show the two characters as both blonde with identical bowl cuts.

So -- although the idea was likely abandoned during the production of ESB, and then hastily resurrected for ROTJ -- I think GL might actually be telling the truth when he suggests that he considered having Luke and Leia be siblings (well, half-siblings at least) from the very beginning.

With all the incest that implies.

 

In noticed that in both his conversation with Titleman and his conversation with Kasdan, Lucas always says, "The Emperor," never "Palpatine." I wonder why. I always figured that the reason he's never called "Palpatine" in ESB and ROTJ is to make him seem less human and more like a supervillain.

 

Or maybe it's because he wasn't sure if he wanted to go with "Palpatine" (the name from the SW 1977 novelization by Alan Dean Foster) as the Emperor's canon name or not.

 

I think it would have been confusing for general audiences to give "the Emperor" a name, then.

Everybody instantly understood he was top dog of the Empire, and until they introduced the "real" person in the PT, there wasn't a need for a name.

 

It's because The Emperor was He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named before He Who Must Not Be Named.

 

That's probably all there is to it, much as he never really settled upon a name for the galactic capital - until the 1990s EU forced his hand. 'Palpatine' simply became too familiar as the Emperor's real name to go back on.

I'm also inclined to think that his hesitation had something to do with Senator/Chancellor/Emperor Palpatine being gradually merged with the Master of the Sith, a separate character - named as Prince Espaa Valorum in SW Draft Two. It's not entirely clear when the politician and Sith Lord were completely combined in relation to the later drafts, although the Emperor is clearly a Force-sensitive by the time of the first draft of ESB, and powerful enough to intimidate Vader.
GL had to figure out the details of how a Dark Side sorcerer managed to become Chancellor of the Republic, and didn't really do so until he sat down to write the PT in the early 1990s. He might have still been toying with all manner of ideas - perhaps Senator Palpatine was merely a puppet of the Sith and/or the various guilds at the time of the PT, perhaps he was a clone of the Sith Master, maybe he even could have followed his own turn to the Dark Side after being elected Chancellor. He might even have only been Emperor for a brief time and died, succeeded by the one we're familiar with.

Without such specifics entirely figured out, GL probably wasn't sure exactly who 'Palpatine' should be - the novelisation gives the name to a Senator who would become Emperor, but it's quite possible that this wasn't necessarily the same black-cloaked villain we saw in ESB and ROTJ (Obi-Wan refers to "the later, corrupt Emperors" in the novelisation as well).

 

In the ROTJ novelization, Luke addresses him as "Palpatine" and the narration, from Palpatine's own point of view, describes how he rose from Senator to Emperor.

Suggesting that, by 1983 at least, the author had already been told how it would go.

 

I agree with you as far as "Palpatine" being originally the name of the Nixonian master-manipulator politician character. After all, the name was inspired by Senator Palantine in Scorsese's Taxi Driver.

I suspect you're also right in thinking GL wanted another name (probably rather more ominous sounding) for his Sith sorcerer, at least until the characters were merged and the familiarity of "Palpatine" in the fandom tipped GL's hand. Of course "Darth Sidious" in the PT eventually came back to this idea.

Oh, and nice thought re the Emperor being in power only briefly - possibly dying under mysterious circumstances, to pave the way for a successor more pliable to the Sith sorcerer's manipulation? Rather reminds me of how US president William Henry Harrison died after not even a month in office. (This would also nicely explain the 1976 SW novelization's reference to the "later corrupt Emperors").

 

ATMachine wrote

Oh, and nice thought re the Emperor being in power only briefly - possibly dying under mysterious circumstances, to pave the way for a successor more pliable to the Sith sorcerer's manipulation? Rather reminds me of how US president William Henry Harrison died after not even a month in office. (This would also nicely explain the 1976 SW novelization's reference to the "later corrupt Emperors").

That was one of the major rationalizations, back then and long before the PT, why the Emperor in ROJ did not look like the one Vader was talking to in ESB (unless what we saw originally in ESB was Grand Vizier Sate Pestage which Palpatine used as his voice...).

 

"The Mouth of Palpatine". Interesting thought.

 

Also, this image sums up my feelings on a certain issue rather nicely.

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/4hu9jw/original_lucasfilm_vet_reveals_major_news_boba/

Is this true? ATMachine

I was thinking this too. Senator Palpatine, The Emperor who dissolved the Senate, and the evil sorcerer behind everything had definitely all been merged into a single character by the time ROTJ was released.

 

P.S. Maybe at some point prior to GL's Emperor discussion with Brackett, GL intended for The Emperor (and with him the Empire) to die in VI and then the evil sorcerer behind everything would be revealed in the ST. When he decided to end things with VI, he may have decided to merge Senator Palpatine, The Emperor who dissolved the Senate, and the evil sorcerer behind everything.

 

Something about the Empire/First Order. We know they arose from the dark side (Palpatine/Snoke), but the names of their ships and weapons prove their devotion to the dark side: Star Destroyer, Death Star, Starkiller Base. While none of those weapons actually destroy a star, their names imply an aim to snuff out the light that stars provide.

 

It occures to me that Maz Kanata in TFA - a mysterious character who lives in a large castle on a relatively secluded planet - is probably inspired by the diminutive Elf King, Sorsha's father in the unfinished animated version of Willow GL worked on with the French comic veteran Moebius. Like Maz, the Elf King lives in a place the heroes are guided to by their mentor (Han Solo/Fin Raziel), and in both cases their arrival triggers an assault on the citadel by the villains who've followed them.

Maz's design, like that of the Elf King, is almost certainly inspired by Arthur Rackham's drawings of the Dwarfs, Mime and Alberich, from Richard Wagner's Ring Cycle operas. And fittingly, Maz is female whereas the Elf King was male, fitting into the gender dichotomy between the respective worlds of SW and Willow. After all, the heart of Star Wars concerns the paternal relationship between Luke and Vader, while in Willow it's Bavmorda's conflict with her daughter that's at issue (and much more so in the initial version of the story).

 

The SKB does snuff out stars