Secrets of the Force

by Edward Gross

  BRIAN JAY JONES

  What I think is very interesting with Star Wars is that it’s not preordained in the sense that when he gets done with Graffiti he wants to do Apocalypse, and then when he can’t get that, he’s like, “Okay, great, I’m doing Flash Gordon.” He’s not like, “I’m going to do the science fiction project I’ve been thinking about for the last seven years.” No, he’s like, “I’m going to get the rights to Flash Gordon,” and then when he doesn’t get those rights, he’s sulking around and Coppola is the one who says, “Why don’t you write your own damn science fiction piece, George?” It came from the fact that he was sort of hunting around for the next project, which is what we all do.

  * * *

  As a kid growing up in Modesto, California, George Lucas had two loves, cars and movies, so it’s not surprising both were on his mind in the wake of his graduation from film school. As he began to conceive his epic sci-fi fable, what began as The Star Wars would gradually evolve into something very different in the years to come as Lucas struggled to produce his homage to the genre movies he grew up with.

  GEORGE LUCAS

  I had the Star Wars project in mind even before I started shooting American Graffiti. On our first vacation after that film, my wife Marcia and I went to Hawaii. That was great except I wrote the whole time I was there. I’d already started thinking about Star Wars. A director can leave his work at the studio; a writer can’t. There’s always a pen and paper available. A writer is thinking about what he’s supposed to be doing, whether he’s actually doing it or not, every waking hour. He’s constantly pondering problems. I always carry a little notebook around and sit and write in it. It’s terrible. I can’t get away from it. I began writing Star Wars in January 1973—eight hours a day, five days a week, from then until March 1976 when we began shooting. Even then I was busy doing various rewrites in the evenings after the day’s work. I wrote four entirely different screenplays for Star Wars, searching for just the right ingredients, characters, and storylines. It’s always been what you might call a good man in search of a story.

  DALE POLLOCK

  I was struck by the incredible detail of George Lucas’s imagination. He could remember things and see what he wanted to do in such tremendous detail. When you talk about the word visionary, someone who can envision their work on the screen, he had that capability. He could envision in his mind exactly what Star Wars was. It looked like he could even envision exactly what Indiana Jones would look like. He really had this capacity to take detail and turn it into a vision that he could then realize on film forever—despite the frustrations he had. Like Woody Allen says, you’re lucky if you get 40 percent of what you want on the screen. Lucas lowered that to about 20 percent and he kept going back in, tinkering with it, to get it closer. Can you imagine a painter who gives his painting to a museum and comes back two years later saying, “I’ve been thinking about it; I want to re-do it. But give me back the original, we don’t want that one out there anymore.” What artist has ever had the ability to do this? Only the guy who owns his own films has that ability.

  GEORGE LUCAS

  I wanted to make an action movie—a movie in outer space like Flash Gordon used to be. Ray guns, running around in spaceships, shooting at each other—I knew I wanted to have a big battle in outer space, a dogfight thing. I wanted to make a movie about an old man and a kid. And I knew I wanted the old man to be a real old man, and have a sort of teacher-student relationship with the kid. I wanted the old man also to be like a warrior. I wanted a princess, too, but I didn’t want her to be a passive damsel in distress. What finally emerged through the many drafts of the script has obviously been influenced by science fiction and action-adventure I’ve read and seen. And I’ve seen a lot of it. I was trying to make a classic sort of genre picture, a classic space fantasy in which all the influences are working together. There are certain traditional aspects of the genre I wanted to keep and help perpetuate in Star Wars.

  DALE POLLOCK

  What emerged from Star Wars that was different from science fiction films that preceded it is that it was more than an action film. It was a personal quest; a story of self-discovery. It’s a coming-of-age story that works on so many different levels.

  RAY MORTON

  Star Wars is a wonderful movie. First and foremost, it’s a grand and marvelously crafted entertainment. It was also extraordinarily successful at the box office. It became and all these years later remains a pop culture phenomenon. It was highly influential, making science fiction the dominant genre in mainstream American filmmaking and the blockbuster its primary mode. There are some pretty extraordinary accomplishments for a single movie. And it all started with a wonderful screenplay. And in creating that screenplay, George Lucas jumped off from a really unusual place.

  ERIC TOWNSEND

  (author, The Making of Star Wars Timeline)

  In January 1973, Lucas began creating lists of names that could be used in his space story. A second list became a list of locations that could be used in the story: Yoshiro and Aquilae are desert planets; Brunhuld and Alderaan are city planets; Anchorhead, Bestine, Starbuck, Lundee, Yavin, Kiseel, and Herald Square. Aquilae is where the Hubble and Beber people live, Yavin becomes a jungle planet, whose natives are eight-foot-tall Wookies, Ophuchi is a gaseous cloud planet where lovely women can be found, Norton II is an ice planet, and a Station Complex is noted among the space cruisers.

  * * *

  Early in 1973 he also met with artist Ralph McQuarrie to talk about his as of yet untitled space fantasy film. Lucas had met McQuarrie through two former classmates from USC, Hal Barwood and Matthew Robbins. The pair, who were attempting to create their own science fiction film, Star Dancing, hired McQuarrie to create some concept artwork. At the time, McQuarrie had worked mostly for Boeing as a technical illustrator. Lucas had gone with his old USC friends to see some of McQuarrie’s paintings for Star Dancing.

  RALPH MCQUARRIE

  (production illustrator, concept artist, Star Wars)

  Hal and Matthew introduced me to George Lucas about two years before he actually approached me to work on Star Wars. George mentioned at the time we first met that he wanted to look at some of the slides. He said he was interested in doing a science fiction film—he didn’t call it Star Wars at that time—with a kind of comic book subject matter.

  ERIC TOWNSEND

  Lucas also began compiling ideas for his new project in a two-page document entitled “The Journal of the Whills, Part One.” Writing eight hours a day, five days a week, he collected an enormous amount of ideas, some of which would eventually make it into the original Star Wars trilogy, some that would make it into the prequels and others that would be scrapped. Ultimately, though, it was decided that “The Journal of the Whills” was too complicated and confusing, so Lucas decided to start over—although he did keep certain story details and names in later drafts. On April 17, 1973, he started writing a fourteen-page treatment of the project, now called The Star Wars.

  JOHN L. FLYNN

  (author and film historian)

  By May 1973, he had completed a ponderous thirteen-page story treatment, handwritten on notebook paper. It told “the story of Mace Windu, a revered Jedi-bendu of Ophuchi who was related to Usby C.J. Thape, a padawaan leader to the famed Jedi.” His agent, Jeff Berg, and attorney, Tom Pollock, didn’t understand a single word, but nonetheless agreed to submit it to United Artists and Universal, both of which turned it down. What’s interesting is that although it’s somewhat crude and unpolished, the thirteen-page story treatment sketches out most of the action which will follow in the series. The main group’s adventures on Aquilae (in the desert and the cantina), Leia’s rescue from the prison complex, the dogfight in space, and the medal ceremony all survive to the final draft of Star Wars. There’s a chase across space and in the asteroid, and the intrigue on the city-planet of Alderaan which form the basis to The Empire Strikes Back, and a jungle battle that finds life in Return of the Jedi
. The characters also remain surprisingly faithful to their first inception, even though certain changes do occur. Leia continues as a princess, while the character of Luke Skywalker is made a teenager; the aging general in the treatment becomes Ben Kenobi, desert rat and aging Jedi Knight. There are two bumbling bureaucrats who are transformed into two bumbling robots; the furry aliens evolve into both Chewbacca and the Ewoks, and the Sovereign becomes the Emperor. The only central character that is missing from this early screen treatment is Darth Vader.

  RAY MORTON

  Inspired by the plot of Akira Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress, this seminal version of Star Wars was set in the thirty-third century. The galaxy is experiencing a civil war between the ruling evil Empire and the members of a growing rebellion. Following a successful rebel attack on the Empire’s giant new battle station, the Emperor puts a price on the head of the young rebel Princess Leia. Rebel General Luke Skywalker is tasked with escorting the Princess and her retinue of courtiers to a safe haven on the planet Ophuchi. Traversing the desert planet Aquilae, the band joins forces with a band of young rebel boys. Escaping Imperial forces in a stolen spacecraft, the rebels fly through an asteroid field and land on the planet Yavin, where Skywalker battles aliens as Leia is finally captured by the Empire. In the final act, Skywalker and the boys raid the Imperial prison and rescue the Princess. A massive space dogfight between the rebel and Imperial spacecraft ensues. In the end, the rebels triumph, defeat the Imperial pilots, and finally deliver Leia to Ophuchi and the story ends with a great celebration.

  ERIC TOWNSEND

  At the end of May or early June of 1973, Lucas presented the new draft of The Star Wars to Universal, which had recently financed American Graffiti and still had Lucas under contract. Although Lucas was not thrilled with the way Universal had handled American Graffiti, by contract he had to give the studio ten days to decide on his next project. After ten days, he hadn’t heard anything, so he informed them that their time was up and he was looking into other options.

  * * *

  Just ten days later Lucas met with Fox’s Alan Ladd, Jr., who had previously been contacted by Lucas’s agent, Jeff Berg, to fill him in on this proposed project, and the exec was genuinely interested in it and its potential. The result was an eight-page deal memo that stated Lucas would receive $150,000 for writing and directing, Gary Kurtz would receive $50,000 to produce, and Lucas’s wife, Marcia, and Hollywood veteran Verna Fields would come on as editors with Walter Murch as production supervisor.

  RAY MORTON

  Lucas then developed his treatment into a rough draft, which he then revised into an official first draft that changed the story considerably and added an important metaphysical element. In these drafts, the protagonist is sixteen-year-old Annikin Starkiller, son of Kane Starkiller. Kane is one of the last of the legendary Jedi Bendu—an order of noble priests/warriors who utilize a mystical energy field called the Force of Others. Most of the rest have been hunted down and killed by the Knights of the Sith, evil agents of the Empire. Seeking to avoid the Sith, Kane—who due to severe injuries is now half-man/half-machine—lives in exile on the remote planet Utapau with Annikin and his youngest son Deak, where he is training Annikin to be a Jedi.

  * * *

  As the story begins, a Sith warrior discovers Kane on Utapau and attacks the Starkiller homestead, killing Deak. After Kane destroys the Sith, he and Annikin travel to the rebel planet Aquilae, one of the last free planets holding out against the Empire. There they meet up with Kane’s old friend and fellow Jedi, Aquilaen General Luke Skywalker. Kane tells Skywalker that he is dying and asks him to take Annikin on as his Padawan learner (apprentice Jedi) and complete his training. Skywalker agrees and makes Annikin a captain in his army. When the Empire attacks Aquilae using their giant new battle station, Skywalker and Annikin help Aquilae’s young Princess Leia and her two young brothers to escape the destruction. Along the way, they meet up with two stranded Imperial robots—R2-D2 and C-3PO (mechanized versions of the Imperial bureaucrats depicted in the treatment). They then set out to deliver the royal siblings to safety on the neutral Ophuchi system. During their journey, they travel across a vast desert to a grungy spaceport and steal a spaceship, then fly through an asteroid field and crash on a planet populated by fearsome furry giants called Wookies. The rebels join forces with the Wookies to fight off the Sith, but Leia is captured and taken to the space fortress. Skywalker trains the Wookies to fly space fighters. Annikin sneaks aboard the space fortress to rescue Leia as Skywalker and the Wookies conduct an aerial attack on the fortress. In the course of a titanic battle, Annikin rescues Leia and escapes from the space fortress with her just before Skywalker and his furry pilots blow up the fortress. In the end, Annikin and Leia fall in love and Annikin is named the protector of Aquilae.

  In Lucas’s next draft, the Princess is reduced to a minor character. Instead, evil Sith Lord and imperial operative Darth Vader captures twenty-five-year-old rebel leader Deak Starkiller at the outset of the story. Vader drains Deak—a Jedi—of his powers, but not before Deak dispatches R2-D2 and C-3PO to find his eighteen-year-old brother Luke on the planet Utupau. After traveling across a desert, the robots find Luke, an archaeology student, and show him a holographic message from Deak instructing Luke to take a mysterious object called the Kyber Crystal to their father, a legendary Jedi Knight and a leader of the rebellion. Jedis use the Kyber Crystal to control the Force of Others, which has two distinct halves—Ashla (the good side) and Bogan (the bad side). After some initial hesitation, Luke accepts the mission. He and the robots travel across the desert to a grungy spaceport, where Luke hires pirate Han Solo to take them to his father on the planet Organa Major. Solo steals a spaceship and the band travels into space. They arrive at Organa Major, only to find it has been destroyed by the Empire’s new weapon, a giant battle station called the Death Star with the power to destroy an entire planet. Next they travel to the planet Alderaan, where they find that Deak is being held in an Imperial prison contained within a floating city suspended in the clouds. Luke and Han rescue Deak and use the Kyber Crystal to restore his powers. The group then journeys to the jungle planet of Yavin, where the rebels have their headquarters and where they find Luke and Deak’s father, a wizened ancient called The Starkiller. Luke’s father trains Luke to be a Jedi, after which Luke leads a squadron of rebel starfighters (piloted by humans, not Wookies) in an aerial attack on the Death Star. Darth Vader leads a squadron of Imperial fighters into a dogfight with the rebels. Ultimately, the rebels prevail and Luke blows up the Death Star.

  By the third full draft of the script, the narrative began to resemble the one we’re familiar with: young farm boy Luke Starkiller, son of the late, great Jedi Anakin Starkiller, teams up with exiled Jedi Knight Ben Kenobi and space pirate Han Solo to rescue rebel Princess Leia from the clutches of Darth Vader, after which Luke joins the raid on the Death Star and uses the Force (no longer “… of Others,” no longer controlled by the Kyber Crystal, and now unified into a single entity with both a good and bad side) to destroy the battle station. A fourth draft refined this storyline further and became the production script.

  BRIAN JAY JONES

  If you read the first drafts—plural—of what finally became Star Wars, I’m astounded that anybody green-lit it. I mean, again, thank God he’s got Alan Ladd, Jr., from Fox in his corner, because the first Star Wars script is, in my opinion, unreadable. It’s got too many ideas, there’s way too much backstory. Lucas is very into backstory. He’s like Jim Henson in the sense of world-building, and you’re like, “Get on with it. You’ve got to get on with it.” So the first few drafts of Star Wars are really draggy and you can’t really tell what it’s about. And, again, Lucas’s elevator pitch on this is terrible. One of the first times when somebody is asking him, “What are you working on next?,” he’s like, “Well it’s kind of like James Bond with sword and sorcery” and you’re like, “What?” First of all, not even close to what it finally became, but you
’re left asking, “Who approved this?” Thank God somebody did, but it’s like a dog walking on its back legs. What’s astounding is that it happens at all, and I think that’s kind of what Star Wars is. I mean, it’s amazing it happened at all. It kind of had everything working against it for a long time, until suddenly it didn’t. But the element of time was against them and money was against them and the suits were against them, and it kind of seemed like nothing was falling into place. Again, amazing he found someone to believe in him enough to be like, “I can’t make heads or tails out of this; I can’t tell who the hero is and you’re changing it as we’re going along, and every single draft is different, but, okay, we have faith in you.”

  * * *

  The first draft of The Star Wars would eventually see the light of day in an adaptation by Jonathan Rinzler in an eight-part comic book series for Dark Horse Comics, published in 2012, that adapts Lucas’s earliest version of the film.