The unrevised version of the fourth draft of Star Wars (ANH)

Seems that a lot of fans don't know that there's not only the revised fourth draft to be found on the internet, but also the unrevised version.

http://www.starwarz.com/starkiller/...ller-as-taken-from-the-journal-of-the-whills/

A major difference is that Kenobi survives in this version.

 

I've always found it amazing how different the script was so soon before filming started- yet a lot of the dialogue I see so far is very similar to the final product

 

Fascinating....
But Kenobi also survives in the revised fourth draft.

 

Sorry, but that's not true. Ben died like in the finished movie in the revised fourth draft.

https://www.starwarz.com/starkiller...ures-of-luke-starkiller-revised-fourth-draft/

 

Wonder what ESB and ROTJ would have been like and how much influence it would have had on the Prequels if George Lucas didn't kill off Kenobi in ANH, like it still was the case in the fourth draft (before the revisions).

How different would these movies have been in this case? Would Lucas ever had created Yoda and would the Jedi have become the bureocratic order we have seen in the prequels?

Would Star Wars ever have become as succesful as it has and would the second and the third movie actually have any kind of resemblance to ESB and ROTJ?

How much impact on the progressing story would this decission have had?

 

This is probably based on a copy of the script as revised during the shooting. It's well documented that Ben Kenobi dying was a change Lucas decided on while filming in Tunisia. There were presumably earlier versions of the revised fourth-draft script where he survives.

 

The revised draft was updated during the shooting, changing Luke Starkiller's name to Skywalker, and killing off Ben. Both changes happened once filming began (and therefore, after the March 15 revised fourth draft).

 

That's possible, but i suspect that Lucas started the filming with the unrevised draft. Because a lot of the elements of this draft, that were changed later, apparently showed up in the rough cut, according to what i have read about it.

 

No, it was likely some form of the revised fourth draft. In the un-revised fourth draft, Jabba the Hutt isn't a character; instead, there's an Imperial bureaucrat named Montross who tries to prevent Han from taking off. But Jabba was a character in the third draft, and again in the revised fourth draft. Plus, Greedo was first introduced as a character in the revised fourth draft.

 

Wonder if Montross would have returned instead in V and/or VI, if Lucas had used this draft and what his role would have been like in the following episodes, in that case.

 

Fascinating topic.

 

10 mentions of the term "laser sword," plus Han calling Ben Kenobi chopping off some guys in two (rather than just cutting off one guy's arm) as "sword play."

"Good moves old man, not often one sees that kind of sword play on this side of the galaxy. I understand you’re looking for a ship."

 

"Laser sword" is the term used in the fourth-draft script's descriptions of action, but the only mention of swords in dialogue (besides Han's reference to "sword play") has "lightsaber". This is also the case in the third draft, where AFAIK the term "lightsaber" was introduced.

 

Aww, I want to see Alec Guinness say, "A message you say? A message! Wonderful, wonderful."

 

It's interesting how much more in line with the Prequels and New Canon this draft is, in some of the parts, compared to the revised fourth draft and the movie.

"BEN

His lightsber. At one time they were widely used, still are used in some parts of the galaxy."

"BEN

So your uncle told your for your own good, but your father was one of the last of the Jedi Knights. For over a thousand generations Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic… that was before the Empire, before the dark times. That was when the great senate ruled the galaxy and all the solar systems were free… no taxes, no fear. There was order in the universe and the Jedi Knights were the most powerful, most respected force in the galaxy."

 

^ Some of those lines made it into the novelization.

 

Yep, the novelization seemed to use and mix up elements from different versions of the fourth draft.

 

Tarkin informs the Senate that he destroyed Alderaan rather than the Emperor abolishing the Senate. The Imperial Senate still existing would have interesting implications for what happens after ROTJ.

 

It's likely that the novelization was actually written based on the fourth-draft or even third-draft script of the film and later revised to account for subsequent drafts. Lucas first met with Alan Dean Foster to discuss the project in the autumn of 1975, before he'd finished writing the fourth draft.

The cover of Foster's original copy of the text appears in his recent memoir, The Director Should've Shot You, along with some handwritten notes by Lucas - things like "city & ships killed them in pix budget", followed by a note to "keep fighters". Which would suggest that the novelization was originally based on the third draft, where Leia is held prisoner in the floating cloud-city of Alderaan, and that when Lucas altered this as a result of budget cuts he also thought about cutting the space battle with the TIE fighters vs. the Millennium Falcon.

Among other things, there were initially more references to multiple Dark Lords of the Sith (who show up as characters in the third draft), and benevolent Emperors before Palpatine (which, as Lucas said to Alan Dean Foster and Charles Lippincott, was intended in part so that Leia could become "Empress" in the third film). Some of these references were deleted, but a couple survived into the published text: "Fear followed the footsteps of all the Dark Lords" and a mention of "the later corrupt Emperors".

 

And here I thought I was the only one who wished there had been some more ANH style political talk in ROTJ.

 

Not to mention political action. The idea of Leia becoming "Empress" or head of state of a New Republic in an investiture ceremony or something (a parallel to the ending of SW 1977, perhaps?) would IMO probably be more dramatic than dancing around a campfire with teddy bears.

 

I always thought the OT should have ended with her and Han getting married.

 

There was an article in a german movie magazine ("Moviestar") during the 90s that pretended or speculated about that such a scene was shot and cut from the movies. According to them, the marriage would have happened on Endor.

But that doesn't make much sense, considering that none of the ROTJ drafts, we know about, had such a scene.

 

Yeah, that's made up.