[HN Gopher] The Empire Strikes Back First Draft by Leigh Bracket...
___________________________________________________________________
The Empire Strikes Back First Draft by Leigh Brackett (1978) [pdf]
Author : cocacola1
Score : 84 points
Date : 2024-02-11 19:31 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (starwarz.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (starwarz.com)
| slamus wrote:
| Was looking for Yoda bit, saw they named him MINCH !
| slamus wrote:
| Also no sign of "I am your father"
| cocacola1 wrote:
| Yeah, that came in later drafts. In this draft, Vader and
| Luke's father were two different people.
| dylan604 wrote:
| try searching for "soy tu padre, mijo"
| Eric_WVGG wrote:
| yeah, he was originally designed to look more like something
| out of Lord of the Rings https://www.starwars.com/news/5-early-
| star-wars-character-co...
|
| I love these looks at drafts and revisions... I even collect a
| few, I've got Eliot's _The Waste Lands_ and just found an
| edition of J.G. Ballard 's _Crash_ , all with the typewriter
| scratches and penciled in notes. Would definitely grab one of
| these if it got formally published someday.
| thombat wrote:
| Christmas the Minch did steal
| PotatoPancakes wrote:
| Look on page 117 of the PDF (the paper says 113):
|
| > Vader: You're very good, Luke. But I'm twenty years older and
| stronger than you in the use of the Force. You haven't a chance
| with me... any more than your father had.
|
| This draft was written before they came up with the idea that
| Vader could actually be Luke's father!
| saghm wrote:
| Honestly, what strikes me about this line isn't even that Vader
| isn't Luke's father, but how wordy he is. I imagine they didn't
| spend too much time on phrasing and instead just tried to
| capture the gist with the expectation of polishing later, but
| even with the James Earl Jones's trademark slow, menacing Vader
| drawl, this just feels like it would sound weirdly verbose
| coming from Vader, especially in the middle of a fight.
| caslon wrote:
| Much of what you actually see in _Empire_ is written by
| entirely different people.
|
| > George Lucas initially hired Leigh Brackett, the sci-fi
| novelist who also wrote screenplays for Howard Hawks--
| including The Big Sleep (1946)--to write the sequel to Star
| Wars (1977). Brackett died in March 1978 while the film was
| still in pre-production, though, and Lucas wasn't satisfied
| with her script. Lucas wrote the next draft himself, which
| established structure and twists close to the final film, but
| suffered from dialogue. When Kasdan delivered his script for
| Raiders, Lucas asked him to rewrite The Empire Strikes Back.
| Kasdan suggested he read Raiders first, but Lucas reportedly
| said: "If I hate Raiders, I'll call you up tomorrow and
| cancel this offer, but basically I get a feeling about
| people."[9]
|
| Brackett was a sci-fi author, Kasdan was a screenwriter by
| trade.
|
| Despite seeming like similar tasks, screenwriting and book-
| writing actually have pretty distinct skillsets in some ways.
| nyrath wrote:
| Leigh Brackett also wrote the screenplays for The Big Sleep
| (1946), Rio Bravo (1959), and The Long Goodbye (1973)
| SilasX wrote:
| Yeah, it immediately stood out to me how the final film leans
| so much more toward "show, don't tell". Vader doesn't have to
| tell you how powerful he is! He just quips "Impressive" and
| goes on give Luke a smackdown. "All too easy."
| Modified3019 wrote:
| You can experience a verbose Vader for real, thanks to
| Auralnauts bringing Zack Snyder's vision to the Star Wars
| franchise:
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=J9X_FmCbrIA
| kevingadd wrote:
| As a writer it's not uncommon to have a separate person
| (sometimes an editor) trim down/punch up dialogue. Dialogue
| writing is basically a separate skill from prose or
| screenplay writing, though the best writers are good at it
| too.
| bluejekyll wrote:
| What was the relationship then? In a New Hope, it's known that
| Anakin was Vader, right?
|
| And they knew Luke was Anakin's his son. Obi wan mentions
| Anakin being corrupted by Vader. And the fight at the end,
| Vader now the master, etc. Was it really still a question of
| Vader and Anakin were different people until the second movie
| came out?
| Snild wrote:
| > In a New Hope, it's known that Anakin was Vader, right?
|
| I don't think it is. At least not that I can remember.
| dudinax wrote:
| This script is good evidence they made up the connection part
| way through Empire. Also, if Lucas already had it in mind for
| Star Wars, I doubt he'd have Obiwan straight up lie about it.
| pests wrote:
| I don't even consider it a straight up lie. I know we have
| decades of this built into our culture, and its been
| basically ret-conned, but...
|
| "A young Jedi named Darth Vader, who was a pupil of mine
| until he turned to evil, helped the Empire hunt down and
| destroy the Jedi Knights. He betrayed and murdered your
| father"
|
| I could still see Ben making this metaphor for the internal
| struggle Anakin dealt with, not wanting to reveal the truth
| in that setting.
| nemo wrote:
| Pretty sure it was as much a part of planning the first
| episode as his later decision to have Anakin build C3PO.
| The early Star Wars scripts and materials are all over
| the map, there was no plan. This script just makes that
| all the more clear.
| binary132 wrote:
| I always assumed it was written this way on purpose and
| thought it was a cool moment. Oh well.
| stevep98 wrote:
| But the "I am your father" wasn't in the shooting script
| anyway. The script said "Obi-Wan killed your father", and
| it was changed to "I am your father when James Earl Jones"
| said the line for the voice of Vader. Maybe it is that way
| in subsequent published scripts but not the original.
| canjobear wrote:
| Lucas only came up with the idea that Anakin = Vader after
| the original Star Wars was out, when he was revising the
| script for Empire. Before that we were supposed to take Ben
| Kenobi at face value when he said that Darth Vader betrayed
| and murdered Luke's father.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Wow.
|
| So basically, if one line of dialog in _A New Hope_ had
| been less ambiguous as it happened to be written... Vader
| wouldn 't have been Anakin?
| lupusreal wrote:
| More likely it would just be left to the fans to come up
| with their own justifications for the retcon, like most
| other inconsistencies in Star Wars.
| hgs3 wrote:
| I'd say the original already isn't ambiguous: Kenobi
| directly tells Luke that Vader murdered his Father. The
| "from a certain point of view" scene had to be added in
| ROTJ to explain away the retcon.
| canjobear wrote:
| Ben Kenobi does pause in a pregnant way right before
| delivering the fateful line. In a way that almost looks
| like he's thinking about how to hide something. It works
| perfectly with the later revelation.
| taejavu wrote:
| Yes, and I'm struggling to imagine why you think it is even
| implied that they could be the same person, from the first
| film alone. Could you explain further?
| mmustapic wrote:
| > What was the relationship then? In a New Hope, it's known
| that Anakin was Vader, right?
|
| From a certain point of view.
| cryptoz wrote:
| I haven't read the script but, couldn't that be interpreted the
| same way it would be in the movies today? That is, the idea
| that Vader 'killed' Anakin by converting him to the dark side;
| Anakin is gone and now Vader exists - so different that the
| identity is different.
| cocacola1 wrote:
| A bit of context: Leigh Brackett was a sci-fi author and
| screenwriter that George Lucas hired to write the first draft of
| The Empire Strikes Back in 1977. She wrote it based on a story
| conference the two had but unfortunately passed away from cancer
| a month after submitting it in 1978. Lucas then wrote a few
| drafts himself but wasn't satisfied. Eventually, he brought on
| Lawrence Kasdan, who would also write Raiders of the Lost Ark and
| Return of the Jedi. This draft is a lot different from the movie
| that would eventually get made but you can still see hints of it
| in the final film. Both Kasdan and Brackett got a screenwriting
| credit for the film.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Warning, a kind of fucked up story:
|
| I remember Sci-Fi conventions in the late 70's and there was this
| one character who was always around that gave off a hint of
| illegal activity. For example, he had plenty of 35mm trailers to
| sell at the convention that someone along the supply chain must
| have pinched from a local movie theater.
|
| But I remember he claimed to have a script of, as I recall, the
| not-yet-released sequel to Star Wars. I think he wanted $25 or so
| for a copy of it. I read the first page but now don't remember
| what it conveyed. It was a typed thing and xeroxed like the
| linked document. It occurred to me pretty quickly though that the
| guy could just be passing along fan fiction (which I admit wasn't
| really a thing as far as I knew back then) and trying make cash
| off it. I mean even after the film came out he could claim the
| script must have been rejected....
|
| A year or so later I read in the newspaper about him having been
| stabbed to death by a Star Wars fan who had befriended him --
| someone he had lead along with a whole string of lies like
| claiming he knew George Lucas and how he could pass along the
| kid's story ideas to him -- things like that. The kid finally
| figured out he was being had and snapped.
|
| The thing kind of freaked me out at the time but I had forgotten
| it until this xeroxed script just appeared on HN.
| geor9e wrote:
| How long until you drag this PDF into an AI chatbot and it spits
| out a 1 hour movie
| gedy wrote:
| I suspect right around the time government hops in to "regulate
| AI" for "safety" and other "harmful content" reasons.
| binarymax wrote:
| 10 years
| aethelyon wrote:
| 2 years
| apples_oranges wrote:
| I always wondered how the empire explained they had blown up
| alderan to all the planets. When part 5 began one could
| reasonably expect the rebellion to be much bigger..
|
| Maybe the answer is in this PDF
| BHSPitMonkey wrote:
| The point was to instill fear in any would-be dissidents; This
| effect might have cancelled out any increase in determination
| the attack might have spurred.
| jmann99999 wrote:
| If you like things like this, you might also like The "Making of
| Star Wars" books by J.W. Rinzler [0]. They provide a view of how
| the story was made, the people who made it, and many interesting
| facts.
|
| [0] https://www.amazon.com/Making-Star-Wars-Definitive-
| Original/...
| cocacola1 wrote:
| Can vouch for J. W. Rinzler's books. All of the ones I have are
| phenomenal and really help contextualize the creation of some
| of the best movies of the past 50 years.
| xdavidliu wrote:
| back in 1993, I had just immigrated from China to State
| College, PA, and was just starting to eat cereal for the first
| time in my life. One of the offers on cereal boxes back then
| was a "making of star wars" VHS tape, which I collected
| barcodes and received by mail order. Of course, that video is
| currently on youtube
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSuDjjlIPak
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-02-11 23:00 UTC)