From: umwieb69@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Brent Michael J. Wiebe)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.starwars
Subject: The Star Wars That might have Been (2/3(?))
Date: 14 Sep 92 16:24:26 GMT
Organization: University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

Hello, again.  Well, I was bored so thought I'd post the outline of the
first version of the SW script, taken from "Skywalking-The Life And Films
of George Lucas" by Dale Pollock, copyright 1983 published by Harmony books.
This section is taken from pages  144-145.

"... Lucas's first draft screenplay took a year to complete, until May 1974.
The story pits the Jedi Bendu, formed one hundred thousand years earlier as
the Imperial Space Force, against the evil Knights of the Sith, a sinister
warrior sect.  The hero is Anakin Starkiller, eighteen, sought by his older 
brother Biggs to help rescue their father, Kane.  The reunited family opposes 
the fascist regime of the Emperor, and Kane's daughter Leia is sent to a 
distant galaxy for safekeeping."

"Kane Starkiller and Luke Skywalker, a general in his early sixties, are the 
only surviving Jedi-the rest have been hunted down and exterminated by the 
Sith knights.  Starkiller and Skywalker share a belief in "the Force of Others,"a mystical bond between Jedi that gives them miraculous powers.  The Jedi 
nemesis is Prince Valarium, the Black Knight of the Sith, aided by a tall,
grim-looking general named Darth Vader.  There are also two battered construc-
tion robots, Artwo Detwo and SeeThreepio, both of whom speak, and eight-foot-
tall rebel pilots with gray fur called Wookiees, who live on a jungle planet.
Han Solo makes a brief appearance as a huge, green-skinned monster with gills
and no nose-it's doubtful Harrison Ford would have taken the part in this form."

"As in the final version Star Wars, the ending shows the destruction of the
Death Star, the Empire's ultimate weapon.  The Jedi Knights deliver a 
samurai-warrior yell as they dispatch their enemies with laser swords.  The
Emperor is an elected official who is corrupted by power and subverts the
democratic process-Lucas modeled him after Richard Nixon.  Owen Lars, later 
to become Luke's ill-fated uncle, was an anthropologist studying quaint
Wookiee customs."

"Lucas knew the script was a mess.  He turned the two brothers into Luke and
Han Solo, Ben Kenobi emerged from Kane Starkiller, and Vader became the single
all-purpose villain...."

"There was progress by the time the second screenplay was finished on January
28, 1975.  It had a title, ADVENTURES OF THE STARKILLER, EPISODE ONE OF THE
STAR WARS, and was set in the Republica Galactica, which was convulsed by
civil war and "lawless barbarism."  There was a quest now for the Kiber
Crystal, which controlled the Force of Others, "a powerful energy field...
that influenced the destiny of all living creatures."  The screenplay 
promised: "In the times of greatest despair there shall come a savior, and
he shall be known as the 'Son of Suns.'""

"The Force now had a good side called Ashla (reminiscent of Aslan, the lion
and Christ symbol in author C.S. Lewis's famous Narnia books, and the Bogan,
or para-force, representing evil.  The Jedi Bendu, led by the legendary
Skywalker and his twelve children, controlled the Ashla Force, but they were
being eliminated by Lord Vader, a seven-foot-tall black-hooded knight.  If 
Vader was the Devil, Starkiller was God, complete with long silver beard,    
flowing white robes, and penetrating eyes.  They waged a bitter struggle for
control of the Kiber Crystal, a small diamondlike object that intensified the
Force, good or bad."

"Luke Starkiller, now a young boy, rescues his older brother Deak from the
clutches of Vader.  Leia is the daughter of Owen Lars and his wife Beru and
seems to be Luke's cousin-together they visit the grave of his mother, who
perished with his father on a planet destroyed by the Death Star.  Han Solo
has become a young Corellian pirate, formerly a cabin boy;  he is burly,
bearded, and flamboyantly dressed, a thinly disguised version of Francis
Coppola.  Han also has a girlfriend, a five-foot-tall cross between a brown bear and a guinea pig called Boma.  Chewbacca, Han's two hundred-year-old Wookiee
companion, has baboonlike fangs and large yellow eyes and wears bandoliers,a 
flak jacket, and brown cloth shorts.  The robots begin to resemble their final
form, as they aid Luke in the search for his brother-R2 is now beeping, not
talking."

"Lucas tightened his narrative with more plot twists and character development.
An Imperial warship chases a rebel cruiser across space in the opening scene,
introducing immediate action.  Ben remains a nameless seer who gives Luke 
advice via the Force's mental telepathy.  The Jawas make their debut, and
promptly zap R2-D2.  There is a much-improved space battle for the finale, as
Luke aims at the weakness in the Death Star's construction.  The script ends
with a teaser about the next chapter in the Star Wars saga, in which the Lars
family is kidnapped and a perilous quest ensues for 'the Princess of Ondes.'
Lucas now had enough material for three movies.  He pared the story, blended
characters, and introduced new environments.  Finally, he cut the first
screenplay in half:'It killed me to cut out things that I really loved, so I
decided I would just postpone them a bit,' he explains. 'It was my rationale
to get through the script and get the damn thing done.'

"George was creating an esoteric world that only he understood.  He started anewwith the middle story.  It had the most action and starred Luke, the character
with whom he felt the most secure.  The first trilogy told the story of young
Ben Kenobi and Luke's father and was set twenty years before Star Wars.  The
final three movies feature an adult Luke and the ultimate confrontation between
the rebels and the Empire.  The entire saga spans more than fifty-five years;
C-3PO and R2-D2 are the only element common to all the films."

There, maybe that will hold you for a bit.  I still plan on making another 
post or two, re Skywalking, but this is it for now.  So, what do you think?

Regards,
Brent Wiebe
umwieb69@ccu.umanitoba.ca


-- 
"Infinite:  Bigger than the biggest thing ever and then some.  Much bigger than
that in fact, really amazingly immense, a totally stunning size, real 'wow,
that's big' time.  Infinity is just so big that, by comparison, bigness itself
looks really titchy.  ... huge is the sort of concept we're trying to get across here."