CT What Luke's father and Darth Vader would have been like had Lucas kept them seperate?

Jake Lloyd would say, “I’m a person and my name’s Darth.”

 

That doesn't make sense. The narrative that Lucas went for was that Palpatine seduced Vader and Anakin had to convince Obi-Wan that he needed to be stopped. Anakin probably realized that Vader could be saved and paid the price for it, which resulted in Vader’s injuries. Thus when he senses Luke in the Force, he feels as if he knows Luke. This was going to tie into his redemption, as he regretted the one person who believed in him.

This is the impression that the third draft of ANH and the first draft of TESB creates. Plus what Lucas said about the duel.

 

But Vader's line "I feel as if I know you" in the third draft could also mean he "knows" Luke because Luke is related to him in some way.

I think the idea of the redeemed Sith Lord being possibly related to Luke actually originated in the second draft, and not with Vader at all, but the offscreen-but-mentioned character of Prince Espaa Valorum. In the finale of the second draft, Vader dies when he kamikaze-rams Han Solo's starship with his TIE fighter, but earlier in the script Vader mentions that Valorum is his Sith overlord. Naturally, since Prince Valorum was the name of the redeemed Sith character in the rough draft, it suggests that Lucas might have intended at that point to reuse that character idea for Valorum in the sequels. (And while the rough draft was a one-and-done film, the second draft was where Lucas began to plan for a series.)

Of course, the second draft also gives Luke Starkiller a living father and a bunch of older brothers who have been fighting the Empire as well, perhaps for hundreds of years. It's quite possible that Espaa Valorum in the second draft was envisioned as a renegade Starkiller sibling, somebody whom Luke would meet and eventually redeem - in part based on their familial connection - in future installments.

Note that the first name "Espaa" is likely derived from French "esperance" or "hope", referring to the possibility of his redemption. In that regard, it might also be a literary reference of sorts, one that suggests Lucas' thinking about the family connection: to paraphrase a line in Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part 3, one might say that "such hope have all the line of Starkiller".

 

Not sure about this.
In the second draft, Espaa Valorum is the Sith Master, so above Vader. And from what I know, Valorum and some politician/general are ruling the Empire. The Sith Master with a Military man split the power.
So they would be a sort of precursor to the Emperor/Palaptine. No redemption there.

There was a Vader character in the rough draft but he was a human general and died at the end.
Valorum was the "Honorable Enemy" character that changed sides. Possibly a remnant from the Hidden Fortress film. Valroum in that draft is not presented as all-evil and shows respect for the good guys even before he changes sides.
Vader the Sith Lord takes much of Valorum's place in the story in the later draft but he is also shown as much more evil and no good qualities. And he again dies at the end.

So I would guess that Lucas dropped the redemption for one of the villains for now.

What could be done with Anakin and Vader as separate people?
Well suppose that Anakin went with Obi-Wan and left Owen and Beru at their farm. Obi-Wan trains Anakin and Anakin becomes a Jedi. His main skill is as a pilot. The Force is strong with him but not unusually so for a Jedi. So Anakin becomes a Jedi Knight. Some time later, Obi-Wan trains a new pupil, Vader and Vader is a prodigy when it comes to the Force. He picks things up very quickly and is young for a Jedi pupil. Anakin is no longer Obi-wan's pupil but they get together from time to time because they are friends so Anakin gets to know Vader. At first they get along fine, Vader is a bit of a fan of Anakin from his skill and reputation as a pilot and Anakin is impressed with how strong Vader is with the Force. So they are sort of like an older and younger brother with Obi-Wan as the "father" character. So they bond.
But since Vader has it so easy with the Force, he gets impatient and wants Obi-Wan to move along more quickly. But Obi-Wan urges patience and says no. So Vader goes and ask Anakin. Anakin has given some advice to Vader earlier when it comes to the Force and they had sparred on occasion. But here Anakin hesitates. Vader is Obi-Wan's pupil, not his. And he errs on the side of caution and repeats what Obi-Wan said. This starts to form a rift between them. Vader does things on his own and dabbles in dark things.
Anakin catches him and warns him that what he is doing is dangerous. Vader pleads with Anakin to not tell Obi-Wan and Anakin agrees but urges Vader to tell Obi-Wan himself. Vader say he will but he does not. Later Anakin learns that Vader kept quiet and he decides to tell Obi-Wan. That ends the friendship that Vader had with Anakin.

Not long after, Vader leaves Obi-Wan, finds others to train him or goes deeper into the dark side on his own.
Then when Vader starts to work for the emperor and plans to take out the Jedi. He has Anakin as a priority target, both because of his resentment of Anakin but also that he sees Anakin as a big threat.
So he lures Anakin into a trap and murders him. Obi-Wan finds out, is furious and goes after Vader and volcano duel, Vader is thought to be killed but ends up in the suit.

If Vader has some sort of connection to Luke or Anakin. He could be the younger brother of Anakin's wife, Luke's mother. So Vader is Luke's uncle but on his mothers side.

Bye for now.
Blackboard Monitor

 

Except Lucas didn't think that they were related until later, which Marcia confirmed.

Or that Valorum was Palpatine's name. It's hard to tell since Lucas was not preparing for three films. Not entirely as he was still thinking that this one was going to bomb.

True, but then Darth Vader wasn't meant to be Dark Father. He just knew a guy named Vader and thought that it would make an exotic and alien sounding name.

 

The second draft quite literally ends with a second title crawl teasing a sequel.

I'd say Lucas' fears about the film possibly bombing are much more evident in the fourth draft, which introduces Grand Moff Tarkin as a proxy for the Emperor, a character whose death allows for a feeling that the Empire's defeat is inevitable. It's also arguably evident in the way that he removed some violence - things like Leia being "bloody and mutilated" when the heroes find her in her cell - likely in order to keep the rating down and widen the potential audience.

And I've said repeatedly that Vader wasn't the same character as Anakin until ESB, but that doesn't preclude Lucas already mulling over a possible familial connection of some other type.

 

Leia: Father, I think they’re a trap, sent by an evil Jawa trading lord, or the dark master of the Bogan, or maybe even the Emperor himself.

It seems clear to me that the Emperor and Valorum are separate characters.

 

The second draft also had the idea that the Empire had been established for quite a long while, and that Luke's father, one of the leaders of the Rebellion, was "over three hundred years old". Which probably was why a reference to "the later corrupt Emperors" in the plural survived into Alan Dean Foster's novelization - it's a leftover from the state of affairs in the second draft or thereabouts.

 

Marcia has quoted him saying, "Oh God, now I have to make a sequel". Seems to me that he really was thinking that it was going to bomb.

Anyway, think about the relationship between Anakin, Obi-Wan and Ahsoka in TCW. I'm thinking that was akin to what was in place in 76, only with Vader being Ahsoka with the darkness and Anakin being more like Obi-Wan. That kind of dynamic was going on.

 

I mean, it's pretty clear that Lucas planned for sequels from the 1975 second draft onwards or so. He told Alan Dean Foster later that year that he imagined SW 1977 as the first installment of a trilogy - which apparently could be completed as novels if the film sequels failed to materialize - plus along with maybe someday making a single prequel film.

So Lucas saying "Oh God, now I have to make a sequel," was probably just him fretting about the logistics of actually having to go through with it, rather than not having wanted to do it until SW 1977 became a success.

There were enough story threads left dangling in the first film that Lucas eventually got Foster to write Splinter of the Mind's Eye in case it actually did bomb, so that the novel could be turned into a TV movie that could serve as a conclusion of sorts. But it also seems Lucas hedged his bets and held back some of his ideas, in case the film actually did well enough at the box office to merit a proper sequel. I'm sure that Lucas would have wanted an actual film sequel to be something much more epic in scope and tone than what he told Foster to write. (For instance, there was originally a space battle at the beginning of the novel to explain Luke and Leia's crash landing, which Lucas had Foster cut out since it wouldn't work on a TV budget.)

But once the film was a hit, Lucas had Foster revise some aspects of the novel so it could be published without impeding the plot of a film sequel. This apparently included a change to the ending, where it seems that, judging from the transcripts of Lucas' conversations with Foster about the novel's story, Luke originally killed Vader outright in a lightsaber duel.

As for the relationship in early drafts between the politician/warlord Emperor and the Sith Master (originally Espaa Valorum in the second draft, and perhaps Darth Vader as chief of numerous Sith Lords in the third), I suspect it was rather tense and mutually antagonistic, with each needing the other's skills but wary of them as a rival and hoping to dispose of them as soon as possible. Something very much like the relationship between Thrawn and Joruus C'Baoth in the Thrawn Trilogy, I suspect.

 

Yes. Lucas has often talked about how he wrote a huge script (the first draft), which was too long, and how he cut that draft into different films.
Obviously, we cannot take that statement literally, but you can clearly see how the second draft removes some of the key elements from the first draft (mainly the primitive creatures in the forest defeating the Empire, which was one of the key aspects Lucas wanted to include - an allegory to Vietnam) saving them for a possible sequel.

The "Valorum" character and his redemption is another aspect that was part of the first draft and disappeared afterwards. It's possible that Lucas wanted to save that for a possible sequel (and was eventually transferred to the Vader/father character).

 

I'm not saying that he didn't have plans to do it, but he didn't start to worry about it until ANH came out and was a success. He started to think about SOTME, yes. The most that he thought about was Vader’s redemption, and the meetings for SOTME.

 

There were other meetings with Alan Dean Foster, in January 1976, where Lucas mentions having wanted to make Leia the new Galactic Empress in the finale of the overall movie series, but was telling Foster he'd just then rejected the idea because he'd settled on having a single dictatorial Emperor rather than a long line of them. Publicist Charles Lippincott (RIP), who was also present, posted a transcript of some of those sessions on his blog.

 

“Darth Vader, which is described also... The reason I left him... He started out... there were a lot of Dark Lords and I sort of pared them down to where he was the Disciple as I described. And he just went to the Dark Side of the Force and used that to betray all of the other ones, to kill them and he's the only one left. “

The origin of the rule of two

it's like using Vader as the son of the devil. He is the Antichrist. He is the one who’s come to spread The Force , the evil side of The Force among -- out across the galaxies.

And the chosen one.

 

I haven't read SotME in decades, but I clearly remember it didn't really conclude anything. The ending was still status quo, nothing had changed. It can still fit into the canon between IV and V, just an adventure with L&L while Han was off doing something else for a little while.

 

True, but as I mentioned, the manuscript was revised after the first film came out. In the story conferences from 1976, Lucas and Foster were talking about Luke actually killing Vader outright in the novel's climactic lightsaber duel. In the version that was published it was apparently changed so Vader falls rather anticlimactically and bathetically down a pit.

 

Did not know that. Must read. Thanks.

Which is the ultimate failure of the Jedi. They should have tried to help Anakin instead of killing him. This is why they train Luke to confront Vader and make a sincere effort to save him. Lucas's original intent would have been Luke showing compassion and mercy towards Vader.

 

And indeed there’s other Sith Lords in the 1st 3 drafts, but all of them except Vader were removed when the 4th draft was written.