While the story of Star Wars was still just a few key scenes in his mind’s eye, Lucas’s completed film American Graffiti was released on August 1, 1973—but only after Lucas had arranged additional screenings and strategies to garner support for his movie, all of which ultimately persuaded Universal to finally book it into theaters. Probably to the studio’s great surprise, the seemingly disjointed film coalesced into one of the biggest moneymakers of all time—even more so in light of its profit-to-cost ratio, because the film was made for so little. For many kids, seeing Graffiti was a revelation: It was one of the first films to have humor that was for kids, while Lucas’s and Murch’s sound work made the music so alive that thousands of those same kids ran out and bought their first soundtrack ever. American Graffiti also sparked what has now become an American tradition of looking back on its immediate past—the 1950s, ’60s, ’70s—with fond recollections.
For Lucas the success of Graffiti meant many things, not least of which was the ability to pay off his many personal debts. He was also able to pay the mortgage on a home he’d bought in a burst of optimism just before the movie was released. Located in San Anselmo, a small town in Marin County (just north of San Francisco via the Golden Gate Bridge), it wasn’t far from a second building he purchased in January 1974—a one-story Victorian house originally built in 1869, which Lucas began remodeling as offices, with its dilapidated carriage house eventually transformed into editing rooms.
The success of the film also led to various obligations and ceremonies, all of which slowed the transformation of the Star Wars treatment into a rough draft. “When I was writing Star Wars, for the first year, there was an infinite number of distractions,” Lucas says. “Graffiti was a huge hit, plus I was restoring my office at the same time. Building a screening room kept me going for nine, ten months.”
Lucas did not hire a writer to work on The Star Wars, despite the myriad preoccupations. It hadn’t worked before, on THX and Graffiti, so there was no reason to try again. Instead, every day he’d walk up the stairs to his writing room at Medway—“it’s like a little tower”—and plug away on a desk he’d built from three doors. “I grew up in a middle-class Midwest-style American town with the corresponding work ethic,” Lucas explains. “So I sit at my desk for eight hours a day no matter what happens, even if I don’t write anything. It’s a terrible way to live. But I do it; I sit down and I do it. I can’t get out of my chair until five o’clock or five thirty or whenever the news comes on. It’s like being in school. It’s the only way I can force myself to write.
Lucas’s office in his former home in San Anselmo, as it appeared in 2006. Sitting at the desk he’d made from three doors (which is still there), Lucas could stare out of 180-degree wraparound windows while writing and suffering through the first drafts of The Star Wars.
Lucas in the early 70s.
“I work with a hard pencil and regular lined paper,” he adds. “I put a big calendar on my wall. Tuesday I have to be on page twenty-five, Wednesday on page thirty, and so on. And every day I ‘X’ it off—I did those five pages. And if I do my five pages early, I get to quit. Never happens. I’ve always got about one page done by four o’clock in the afternoon, and during that next hour I usually write the rest. Sometimes I’ll get up early and write a lot of pages, but that doesn’t really happen much.”
Like most writers, even when not at his desk, Lucas was working. “A writer is, every waking hour, constantly pondering scenes or structural problems. I carry my little notebook around and I can always sit down and write. That’s the terrible part, because you can’t get away from it. I’ll lay in bed before I go to sleep, just thinking—or I’ll wake up in the middle of the night sometimes, thinking of things, and I’ll come up with ideas and I’ll write them down. Even when I’m driving, I come up with ideas. I come up with a lot of ideas when I’m taking a shower in the morning.”
Perhaps to celebrate the release of American Graffiti, Lucas sat down with a group of friends at a restaurant in San Francisco’s Chinatown in 1973: (from left to right) Gary Kurtz, USC professor Ken Miura, Mona Skager, Bob Hall, Aggie and Walter Murch, filmmaker Michael Ritchie, Lucas, and Kurtz’s wife, Meredith.
Watching television also became part of the screenwriting process in the latter part of 1973, when Lucas began to collect real footage of flying planes in anticipation of creating his movie’s aerial space battle. “Every time there was a war movie on television, like The Bridges at Toko-Ri [1954], I would watch it—and if there was a dogfight sequence, I would videotape it. Then we would transfer that to 16mm film, and I’d just edit it according to my story of Star Wars. It was really a way of getting a sense of the movement of the spaceships.
“Because one of the key visions I had of the film when I started was of a dogfight in outer space with spaceships—two ships flying through space shooting each other. That was my original idea. I said, ‘I want to make that movie. I want to see that.’ In Star Trek it was always one ship sitting here and another ship sitting there, and they shot these little lasers and one of them disappeared. It wasn’t really a dogfight where they were racing around in space firing.”
On January 10, 1974, Lucas signed a necessary if somewhat surreal legal agreement with himself, whereby Lucasfilm Ltd. loaned out “George Lucas” as director to “The Star Wars Corporation,” a subsidiary formed to facilitate the upcoming budget and legal dealings with Fox.
Lucas videotaped the aerial battle sequences from films such as Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970) and The Dam Busters (1954) to create his 16mm film.
Throughout the winter of 1973–1974, Lucas worked on the script, writing and living most of the time alone, as Marcia was often in Los Angeles, where she was editing Martin Scorsese’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974). Kurtz was busy trying to get Apocalypse Now off the ground and thinking about developing his own films. In the spring of 1974 Lucas sometimes traveled to Tucson, Arizona, when Marcia was on location cutting the same film. He would sit on the patio, perhaps with a book or two, and write during the day. “I’ve done a lot of reading for this picture. It’s not really research so much as mythology and fantasy are taking over my life. I read everything from John Carter of Mars to The Golden Bough, so obviously all of that influences you in a certain way. I’m trying to make a classic genre picture, a classic space opera—and there are certain concepts that have been developed by writers, primarily Edgar Rice Burroughs, that are traditional, and you keep those traditional aspects about the project.”
“I remember George was writing Star Wars at the time,” Martin Scorsese says. “He had all these books with him, like Isaac Asimov’s Guide to the Bible, and he was envisioning this fantasy epic. He did explain that he wanted to tap into the collective unconscious of fairy tales. And he screened certain movies, like Howard Hawks’s Air Force [1943] and Michael Curtiz’s Robin Hood [1938].”
Lucas on his feelings post–American Graffiti. (Interview by Arnold, 1979)
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In enlarging the treatment to what became a nearly two-hundred-page rough draft, Lucas was continually aided by the transference of his Apocalypse Now ideas to the fantasy realm. Some of his notes scribbled on yellow legal pads are: “Theme: Aquilae is a small independent country like North Vietnam threatened by a neighbor or provincial rebellion, instigated by gangsters aided by empire. Fight to get rightful planet back. Half of system has been lost to gangsters … The empire is like America ten years from now, after gangsters assassinated the Emperor and were elevated to power in a rigged election … We are at a turning point: fascism or revolution.”
While these ideas helped Lucas begin to form a plot that would go through several iterations, part of the tension inherent in his writing process stemmed from divided loyalties. On the one hand, he needed a solid structure on which to build his images: “The biggest thing was just finding a story that was interesting but not a gimmick,” he says. “I had to find a story that would do all the things that I wanted it to do.” On the other hand, Lucas’s personal tastes tended toward more abstract storytelling, in the style of Jean-Luc Godard and other directors of the French nouvelle vague. Their filmmaking style, a big influence on Lucas’s student shorts, was known as cinema verité, and it forsook much of what Hollywood had created in favor of a more emotional cinematic language. “I like Godard films. They excite me,” Lucas explains. “In film school I tended away from storytelling; I just didn’t like it—and it grew from a point of dislike to a point of real hatred. Then I forced my way back into storytelling. I thought that maybe I hated it so much because I couldn’t do it. This is one of the reasons why with Star Wars I want to attempt a storytelling film.”
Lucas’s written records from that period bear witness to just how intent he was on plot and character development as he struggled to create a strong tale: “Notes on new beginning … for three main characters—the general, the princess, the boy (Starkiller)—make development chart … Put time-limit in children’s packs … every scene must be set up and linked to next … make scene where Starkiller visits with old friend on Alderaan … Han very old (150 years)…Establish impossibility of attacking Death Star … Should threat be bigger, more sinister?…A conflict between freedom and conformity … Tell at least two stories: Starkiller becomes a man (not good enough); Valorum wakes up (morally speaking)…Valorum like a Green Beret who realizes wrong of Empire … Second thoughts about Plot … Make Owen Lars a geologist or something … The general addresses men … Skywalker leaps across (ramp being pulled away)…thundersaber …”
Lucas’s notes, scribbled before writing the rough draft, make clear the transference of his thoughts from Apocalypse Now to The Star Wars.
When Lucas changed the two bureaucrats into robots, he was tapping into a long tradition of mechanical characters, including the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Silent Running, Forbidden Planet, and even Woody Allen’s Sleeper.
He also made more lists of names and roles—“Kane Highsinger/Jedi friend; Leia Aquilae/princess; General Vader/Imperial Commander; Han Solo/friend …”—and for the first time two others are noted: “Seethreepio” and “Artwo Deetwo.” They are both listed as “workmen.” A later note contains a key transition from treatment to rough draft: “two workmen as robots? One dwarf/one Metropolis type.” The latter reference is to the mechanical woman in Fritz Lang’s silent film Metropolis (1926). The change of the treatment’s bureaucrats into robots may have been a result of Lucas’s sci-fi reading habits. “The law of robotics is obviously where the robots came from,” Lucas says. “Isaac Asimov invented those robots. They may not have evolved very far at all from what Asimov’s position was, or they may have evolved a great deal.”
The idea must have been pleasing to Lucas, because soon the question mark of the first note was replaced by the enthusiasm of a still-later note: “Make film more point-of-view of robots”—a thought that would have ramifications throughout the filmmaking process.
Lucas completed the rough draft in May 1974. It is a sprawling story, though once again many elements that would make it into successive drafts are present—the Jedi versus the Sith, two bickering robots, Princess Leia, Han Solo—but as before, nothing is in its final form yet. Structurally, the story contains two motivating factors that push the characters from one scene to the next: “The princess and the general were going to a neutral planet,” Lucas says, “which made it more of an escape movie, with them trapped in enemy territory and trying to get to safety. But I decided that didn’t work and that it would be much better to have it be a rescue movie instead of an escape movie.” This decision seems to have been made about halfway through the writing of the rough draft: In the first half Leia is part of the escape; once she is captured, her rescue, first on Yavin and then on the space fortress, becomes the plot’s prime mover.
Although Lucas finished the first draft two months after the rough draft, in July 1974, their stories and dialogue are identical. Only the names have been changed for many of the characters and places; Lucas had originally intended those of the rough draft to be only placeholders. One element common to both drafts is “the force of others,” which can be seen as an extension of the idea of “will” in the earlier Journal of the Whills. Lucas actually first wrote of this concept in a deleted scene from THX 1138, in which THX speaks with his friend SRT:
THX
…there must be something independent; a force, reality.
SRT
You mean like OMM. [the state-sanctioned deity]
THX
Not like OMM as we know him, but the reality behind the illusion of OMM.
From an early age, Lucas had been interested in the fact that all over the world religions and peoples had created different ideas of God and the spirit. “The ‘Force of others’ is what all basic religions are based on, especially the Eastern religions,” he says, “which is, essentially, that there is a force, God, whatever you want to call it.” It is the common denominator, a source of strength, and at this point in his writing process only the good guys seem to be aware of it. (In Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays, Laurent Bouzereau points out that the expression is a variation on the Christian phrase May the Lord be with you and your spirit—in Latin, Dominus vobiscum et cum spiritu tuo, which was often written by Saint Paul at the end of his letters.)
Lucas on the importance of myths for children and how Star Wars was designed to fill that gap. (Interview by Arnold, 1979)
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Lucas’s bound copy of this draft has a mock-up cover with Flash Gordon–like characters blasting each other; one is on a jet hover-pad, while the other protects a girl. Interspersed in the pages are occasional illustrations pulled from comic books: Han Solo resembles a swamp creature, while “Captain Starkiller” (Annikin) is clearly a Buck Rogers type. In the rough draft, the first planet seen is Utapau, and, after five moons drift into view, a roll-up appears:
Until the recent GREAT REBELLION, the JEDI BENDU were the most feared warriors in the universe. For one hundred thousand years, generations of JEDI perfected their art as the personal bodyguards of the EMPEROR. They were the chief architects of the invincible IMPERIAL SPACE FORCE, which expanded the EMPIRE across the galaxy, from the celestial equator to the farthest reaches of the GREAT RIFT.
Now these legendary warriors are all but extinct. One by one they have been hunted down and destroyed as enemies of the NEW EMPIRE by a ferocious and sinister rival warrior sect, THE KNIGHTS OF SITH.
As a spaceship orbits the fourth moon of Utapau in the Kessil system, “Annikin Starkiller, a tall, heavy-set boy of eighteen … slowly makes his way across the canyon floor.” On the surface, Annikin tells his father, Kane, who is a Jedi, and his ten-year-old brother, Deak, that they’ve been found. The two brothers watch with binoculars as their father explores the Sith ship after it’s landed.
Suddenly, something huge moves in front of his field of view. Before either of the two young boys can react, a large, sinister SITH warrior in black robes and a face mask looms over them. He carries a long lazersword which cuts young Deak down before he or his brother are able to raise their weapons.
Annikin manages to fend off the seven-foot-tall Sith Knight till his father arrives—and cuts in half the face-masked warrior. After burying Deak, father and son set out for their home planet, Aquilae.
Meanwhile, on Alderaan, capital of the new Empire, the Emperor and his henchmen plot the final elimination of Aquilae and the last of the Jedi. “Governor Hoedaack has been appointed the First Lord of the Aquilaean System and Surrounding Territories.” Clieg Whitsun watches the Emperor’s speech and then goes to a nightclub where he meets Bail Antilles. During a surprise security check, Antilles is arrested.
Governor Hoedaack talks with “Darth Vader, a tall, grim-looking general,” about the conquest of Aquilae; Vader thinks it will be a difficult fight because General Skywalker is leading the defenses. However, on Aquilae, Count Sandage, a corrupt noble, counsels King Kayos to give in to the Emperor. General Luke Skywalker, a large man in his sixties, interrupts the Senate meeting. They argue about the course of action, with Skywalker pushing for active resistance, and the Senators for capitulation or the status quo, including the Grande Mouff Tarkin, who “wears the long, black robes of the Aquilaean religion.” The meeting is adjourned with the King saying, “May the force of others be with you all.”
The King’s sons, Biggs and Windy, run into the room, and the King invites Skywalker to say good-bye to his daughter, who idolizes Skywalker. They go outside to meet her just as “Princess Leia, about fourteen years old, possessing a soft beauty and iron will, is embracing her mother, Queen Breha.” She bids her family farewell and goes off to Yuell to complete her studies.
The title page for the rough draft with the government stamp humorously added.
Comic-book inspiration came from such series as Weird Fantasy, Weird Science, Shadow Comics, and Amazing Stories.
In the war room, Skywalker tells his aide Montross to put everyone on alert, when Kane Starkiller and his son Annikin arrive. Kane asks Skywalker to take his son as his “Padawan Learner.” When Skywalker asks why, Kane reveals that his arm and chest are mechanical. “There is nothing left but my head and right arm. I’ve lost too much, Luke. I’m dying.” Suddenly Montross reports a giant asteroid or moon detaching itself from the Anchorhead system and heading their way. “It’s as big as our third moon.”
In the Palace of Lite the King and Queen watch two giant twin suns set in the green sky. Skywalker and Annikin arrive and report that Kane has gone to the spaceport of Gordon to meet an old friend, Han Solo, the Ureallian. Skywalker again pushes for war, but the king wants to get the approval of his allies first, and departs on a mission to Amsel to meet with the “full assembly.”
General Skywalker receives word that Whitsun, who had disappeared, has just been admitted to Med Vac. They rush to the emergency room, where Whitsun says that the bad guys are just behind him—“A giant space fortress” is on its way, he explains. The general sends Annikin to pick up Princess Leia. At the Academy, Annikin retrieves Leia but not the handmaidens, one of whom remains as a decoy.
The space fortress attacks Aquilae, and Skywalker has the starships scrambled. “Look at the size of that thing!” Devil Six remarks. A fierce firefight occurs in which the fortress is damaged; inside the space station, people scurry for cover…
Constant explosions rock the interior of the fortress. Civilians, including women and children, scurry for safety in the panic-ridden hallways. Two construction robots, ARTWO DETWO (R2D2) and See Threepio (C3PO), are blown, slipping and sliding across the hallway floor into some freight canisters.
The former is “a short (three-foot) claw-armed tri-ped … Threepio is a tall, gleaming android of human proportions.” The latter says, “This is madness … I’m still not accustomed to space travel.” Artwo can talk, too, and tries to calm the other, but adds, “You’re a mindless, useless philosopher.” C3PO climbs into an emergency lifepod. R2D2 is persuaded to join him by increasingly violent explosions. The lifepod is ejected.
Only two starships are left in the attack. On the planet below, Skywalker is told that the King and his convoy have been destroyed and that the Senate has traitorously called an end to the war. He orders the two remaining starships to break off the attack. They do so—but are destroyed as they retreat. The last to die is Mace, the pilot leader. Vader orders the invasion of the planet.
Meanwhile, the two robots trek across Jundland, or “ ‘No-Man’s Land,’ where the rugged desert mesas meet the foreboding dune sea.” They argue and go opposite ways. R2D2 stumbles upon Annikin and the princess in their landspeeder. They take off and eventually find C3PO, too. The group travels back through the “hidden fortress canyon” entrance. Leia learns her father is dead, but her mother and two brothers are alive.
The Queen instructs Skywalker to flee to the Ophuchi system; the Chrome Companies will give him whatever he needs to get Leia on the throne. In exchange, Skywalker must bring, in tubes, the distillation of Aquilae’s greatest scientific minds (which is what the evil Empire really wants). Annikin Starkiller, Skywalker, the robots, Captain Whitsun, the two young princes Biggs and Windy, and Leia all get into disguised landspeeders. Count Sandage arrives with troopers to prevent them from leaving, but Skywalker cuts him in two. They leave the canyon, as the fortress behind them self-destructs to make sure no one can betray them after the fact.
After traveling a bit, they espy the invasion army stretched out on the dune sea: “a convoy of giant tanks, troop carriers, giant dunebirds … Hundreds of troops ride one-man jetsticks.” They have to wait until the giant army goes by. Meanwhile, back in the palace, General Vader meets with Prince Valorum, a Black Knight of the Sith whose goal is to track Skywalker.
As the heroes continue their trek, a romance develops between Annikin and Leia. “The speeders stop on a bluff overlooking a small cantina on the outskirts of Gordon. The spaceport can be seen in the distance.” The general and Whitsun take one of the speeders to the cantina. A fight erupts there when the General is attacked by three creatures: He cuts the arm off one, cuts a rodent-creature in two, and slices a multi-eyed creature from chin to groin. An observer leaves the cantina, and Skywalker and Whitsun, in an alley outside, meet Han Solo, “a huge green-skinned monster with no nose and large gills.”
Lucas’s notes mention Count Sandage, a corrupt noble.
The others—princess, Annikin, et al.—join them. In the slum quarter they find Kane Starkiller. Whitsun takes the droids into another room to play “chess.” Skywalker, Han, and Annikin meet with Datos and other rebels; they discuss the space fortress, or the “death star.” They will have to flee on a freighter, with the two young princes put in hibernation; to do so they need an extra energy pack, so Kane rips one from his mechanical chest. “May the force of others be with you,” he says just before dying.
Biggs and Windy are put to sleep, and are hidden in microcases. The next day they all go to the spaceport. But Annikin and Skywalker detect the Sith presence. They board the designated freighter; Han and the general are taken to see the captain, who turns out to be Valorum—it’s a trap. They cut down his guards and the three face one another. However, the princess and the others have been gassed and are now prisoners—so the general has to surrender. As soon as they are taken to the prison, they overpower and kill their guards, and release the other captives. They escape and hijack a royal starship, which takes off, smashing through the hangar cover, but they are pursued by “hunter-destroyer spaceships.”
As they are chased the princess confesses that she’s in love with Annikin. He rebuffs her. Annikin and Whitsun man the lazercannons. They are being overwhelmed, so Skywalker directs them into an asteroid belt. The ship makes it through and enters one of the Forbidden Systems. Everyone ejects in lifepods—except Cliegg, who is accidentally killed. They land on Yavin, a jungle planet with enormous trees, an “eerie fog-laden purgatory.”
The general and Han pull the two princes out of their micropacks. Annikin and Artwo go to look for Leia, and the former espies a group of Yourellian trappers who have trapped five Wookees—“huge gray and furry beasts.” The trappers are “slimy, deformed hideous-looking creatures.” In the fight that follows, six of the eight trappers are killed; one ventures too close to a Wookee, and is snapped in two; Annikin is left for dead. One of the trappers escapes with the princess aboard a “jungle crawler,” so Chewbacca, the largest of the Wookees, takes Annikin to the Wookee camp.
The other group finds a small dwelling where they meet Owen Lars, “an aged and scruffy-looking anthropologist.” His plump wife is named Beru. Back with the Wookees, Annikin meets Jommillia, a large, ferocious one. They fight, but eventually Annikin makes friends with the tribe. Riding jetsticks, Han and the general locate Annikin and Artwo. Han can speak Wookee, and confers with Chewbacca. They decide to assault the royal outpost, where Princess Leia is being held. Meanwhile, troopers arrive where the princes are holed up.
The general, Han, and the Wookees take over the Imperial outpost and learn that Leia has been taken back to Aquilae. R2D2 projects an image of the “death star fortress,” which Skywalker and Annikin study. They have enough seized starships to attack, but not enough pilots. Skywalker decides to teach the Wookees to fly. Within the death star, Vader interrogates Princess Leia. Meanwhile, the stormtroopers return to the outpost with their captured princes, only to be captured themselves and have their prisoners released.
Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon comic strip was an early and important inspiration for the kind of hero Lucas envisaged. Here he battles Ming the Merciless.
Annikin goes undercover to the death star. R2D2 “punches his claw arm into the computer socket” and finds out where the princess is being held. Annikin disguises himself as a stormtrooper after punching one out. He fights with the others but is trapped and gassed. Vader tells Valorum to kill him.
Meanwhile, Skywalker leads nine starships in the attack on the death star; the ships have been painted in colorful Wookee designs. Within the death star, Valorum has a change of heart, realizing that the Jedi are nobler than the bureaucrats; he helps Annikin escape, and they rescue the princess together. The trio escapes via a chute into a trash compactor, but the walls close in on them. Fortunately, Skywalker’s aerial attack knocks out the power, and they’re able to get out. Vader wants to abandon ship, but Governor Hoedaack won’t depart. Valorum, Annikin, the princess, and R2D2 climb into lifepods and escape. The couple kisses. The death star explodes.
In the throne room in the Palace of Lite, the heroes gather …
Queen Leia, in all her grandeur, sits on the magnificent throne of Aquilae. Starkiller and the general stand to her right. Several old advisors stand to her left. Han presents Chewbacca and a delegation of Wookees with a treaty, gifts, and a medal of honor. They bow and exit. Han moves to one side of the crowded court. Valorum stands next to him. They watch as the two robots, Artwo and Threepio, approach the queen, and bow.
QUEEN
Your service to Aquilae is greatly appreciated. You are designated class A-4, and will serve Annikin Starkiller, the new Lord Protector of Aquilae. Rise!
The robots rise and exit through the long entrance hall to the throne. The queen turns and smiles at Starkiller and the general. The general and Starkiller salute their new queen.
FADE OUT
Lucas’s sketch shows how he visualized the layout of the Wookie planet, Yavin. His notes indicate that certain shots were already forming in his mind in what is the only known visual representation of his rough draft.
Although the rough draft and the first draft are exactly the same in terms of the story, many of the names have been changed in the later version. Lucas’s notes from the period contain a list of “First Draft (rough draft)” name changes:
Ogana (Utapau)
Dai Nogas (Jedi Bendu)
Legion of Lettow (Knights of Sith)
Justin Valor (Annikin Starkiller)
Akira (father, Kane)
Binks (brother, Deak)
Townowi (Aquilae)
Granicus (Alderaan)
Son Hhut (Dashhat)
Dodonna (Valorum)
Jawas (Wookees)
Hu Tho (Owen Lars)
Also, Whitsun becomes Oxus, the princes Biggs and Windy become Oeta and Puck, Princess Leia becomes Princess Zara, and R2D2 and C3PO become A-2 and C-3. A Padawan Learner becomes a Juwo Learner, and so on. It’s possible that Lucas contemplated changing the general’s name from Skywalker to Starkiller, as one note reads, “Starkiller (Mifune)—a cross between Yojimbo and Seven Samurai…”—the name in parentheses again referring to Toshiro Mifune, the star of the two Akira Kurosawa films mentioned. Clearly, Kurosawa was on Lucas’s mind, because Kane Starkiller does become Akira in the first draft.
One of Lucas’s many lists of names, this one leads off with “Bink” and ends with “Oxus.”
At the time only four copies of the first draft were made. Someone got hold of a government stamp and humorously marked the copy sent to Alan Ladd, who had been waiting for some time, EYES ONLY—DO NOT COPY UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.
“The first draft was a long time coming,” Ladd says. “We had a number of conversations about it, and seemed to be in sync about certain things.”
In addition to Ladd, Lucas gave his draft to several close friends for their feedback. His notes at the time include a list of readers— (1) Matthew Robbins and Hal Barwood; (2) Bill and Gloria Huyck; (3) John Milius; (4) Haskell Wexler; (5) Francis Ford Coppola; (6) Phil Kaufman—all filmmakers.
“I run around with a crowd of writers,” Lucas says, “with the Huycks and with John Milius, and both the Huycks and John Milius are fabulous. John can just sit there and it comes out of him, without even trying. It’s just magic. The Huycks are the same way. With the first draft, I showed it to a group of friends who I help; having been an editor for a long time, I usually help them on their editing and they help me on my scriptwriting. They give me all their ideas and comments and whatnot, then I go back and try to deal with it. All of us have crossover relationships, and we are constantly showing each other what we are doing and trying to help each other.”
In a spiritual continuation of the temporarily defunct American Zoetrope, Lucas’s converted Victorian house, now known as Park Way, became a haven for many of these same friends and colleagues. “I came up and started working at Park Way in 1974,” recalls Lucy Wilson, Lucas’s first hire (who still works for Lucas), whose office was on the main house’s sunporch. “Hal Barwood and Matt Robbins shared an office there, and Michael Ritchie was there on and off. Matt and Hal were writing their movie The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings [1976]. Michael Ritchie had just done The Candidate [1972], and he was working on Smile [1975]. I think he had props down in the basement of the house. Anyway, that was fun because they were all very entertaining. George had invited these filmmakers basically to share his house with the same goal: that it would be a film community.”
“George rented out rooms in his house to various filmmakers,” Hal Barwood recalls. “And George of course had his offices there. He was living in another little house down in San Anselmo. And we would all stroll down the hill and walk off to various venues in San Anselmo and have lunch. And it was just a wonderful way, through enthusiastic conversation, to keep our interest in the movie business alive. Because the movie business is very difficult for most of us; we don’t usually get a majority of our projects to completion. Most of our dreams turn into screenplays, but then stall out at about that stage. So it was a great way for us to encourage each other.”
At Universal Studios, Lucas examines a script with friends Steven Spielberg and John Milius.
Lucy Wilson at Park Way.
Although experienced filmmakers, Lucas’s friends struggled to visualize his consecutive written drafts. “When people read Star Wars originally, they didn’t have a clue really,” Willard Huyck says. “It wasn’t until George acted it out or told you what a Wookee was, and what it was going to look like, that it started to make sense. Because it was really a universe that nobody could understand from the scripts.”
Nobody included Ladd, by all accounts. But by August 1974 Lucas was a well-known and respected director of a giant hit: American Graffiti had been nominated for five Academy Awards and had won several other awards, including a Golden Globe. “Fox had a very good deal,” Jeff Berg says, “a hot new name in Hollywood for very little money, and it didn’t matter too much what he wanted to do. I think that influenced Fox a great deal, because several times Laddie read the screenplay and said he just wasn’t sure what George was trying to say.”
“After Graffiti became a big hit, they couldn’t refuse it,” Lucas says. “They couldn’t not do it. Just in terms of politics and the political intrigue of Hollywood. That’s what it came down to in the end.”
Not surprisingly then, Fox decided to go to the next step in the process of making The Star Wars: a second draft, which was actually Lucas’s preference, because the movie he wanted to write into existence was proving elusive.
“I find rewriting no more or less difficult than writing,” says Lucas. “Because when you write, sometimes you rationalize away particular problems. You say, I’ll deal with that later. So I struggled through the first draft and dealt with some of the problems. But now the next step is even more painful, because I have to confront the problems in a more serious way.”
Even as he went through the headaches of writing a second draft during the summer and winter of 1974, another source of disquiet began to gnaw at Lucas: the contract. Although he had an agreement with Twentieth Century-Fox, they were hesitating before taking the next legal step. Standard practice at that time in Hollywood was for the production-distribution contract to follow two or three months after the initial agreement, as had been Lucas’s experience with Universal on American Graffiti. But the question of how The Star Wars was going to get made, and how much that answer was going to cost, was causing anxiety at Fox. So in lieu of doing something decisive, they delayed doing anything.
“I got mad about a year after I had started working on it,” Lucas says, “working and working and working, and they wouldn’t give me a contract. They were saying, ‘Well, he didn’t really finish the script, either’—but writing a contract is different from writing a script. A script is a creative work that you are trying to eke out while coming up with something good.” Or as Lucas’s lawyer Tom Pollock puts it: “It was not until late 1974 that we even got a piece of paper out of Fox because they are so fucking slow.”
Lucas used the law offices of Pollock, Rigrod and Bloom to translate his anger into what were to become harder- and harder-edged negotiations—if Fox was going to be nonresponsive, he was going to concede nothing. Pollock instigated several discussions with studio exec William Immerman, followed by a meeting with Immerman and Jeff Berg on August 23, 1974. The upshot was Pollock’s summation letter dated September 4, with further amendments to the Memorandum Agreement (deal memo), some of which had long-ranging implications. Paragraph 1 states: “The Star Wars Corporation will own … all sequel rights [to] the screenplay ‘The Star Wars.’ ” Paragraph 5 addresses “merchandising rights and commercial tie-ups,” with 5.B stipulating that “Either party may license merchandising rights … subject to the other party’s bettering the licensing deal.” Item 5.D states “SWC shall have the sole and exclusive right to use … the name ‘The Star Wars’ in connection with wholesale or retail outlets for the sale of merchandising items.”
Fox responded with another period of silence, followed by a second letter from Pollock, written on December 17, 1974: “It is very important to me and to George Lucas that these matters be settled at once.” Immerman finally replied on December 27, optimistically writing, “I believe … we can therefore proceed with preparation of a formal contract.”
But at that point, with nothing actually agreed upon, the correspondence petered out. Oddly, the rights being argued about were not considered potentially valuable, as the studio, with the exception of Ladd, had very little faith in the film or its director. Other forces were at work. “My perception is, there was a lack of respect for George,” Warren Hellman says. “The movie industry is a very vituperative and petty industry most of the time—and part of the negotiations was just to see how much they could push George around because they felt like they could.”
Though Lucas was not pleased with how things were going with the contract department, he dutifully did his part in advising the studio’s production department on his own progress. “George went off to write and the next draft was to be delivered twelve weeks later, according to the deal memo,” Alan Ladd says. “In twelve weeks’ time, George called to say he hadn’t forgotten about it and that it would be here soon. Then some more time went by, but I always kept thinking to myself, Well, next week it will be here…”
While Marcia helped edit Scorsese’s next film, Taxi Driver (1976), Lucas spent more time alone, making notes before committing to the second draft. “Sith knights look like Linda Blair in Exorcist [1973],” he wrote, as the bad guys are rechristened the Sith. “Vader—do something evil in prison to Deak,” he wrote, as General Vader becomes a Dark Lord of the Sith, and Deak reappears as a brother, this time to Luke—the name of a boy, not a general, who replaces Annikin/Justin as the story’s main character. “Luke reluctantly accepts the burden (artist, not a warrior, fear); establish Luke as a good pilot … farm boy: fulfills the legend of the son of the sons; pulls the sword from the stone. All he wants in life is to become a starpilot.” Leia is also brought back from the rough draft, as Luke’s cousin, a secondary character: “Leia: tomboy, bright, tough, really soft and afraid; loves Luke but not admitting it.” Lastly, Solo metamorphoses from alien to humanoid in Lucas’s notes: “Make Han in bar like Bogart—freelance tough guy for hire.”
Other notes for the second draft contain pieces of scenes and ideas that didn’t make it into the actual script: “Jabba in prison cell”; the love relationship between Leia and Luke Starkiller is divided into “seven stages/crucial scenes,” with her being crowned queen at the end; “Han Solo a Wookiee? Wookiees talk to plants and animals.” Lucas also analyzed and wrote notes on films he saw, such as John Ford’s They Were Expendable (1945) and Ben-Hur (1959).
Lucas’s habit of working and observing no matter where he was helped create and crystallize the character of Chewbacca the Wookiee. For many years, Lucas had an Alaskan malamute named Indiana, who would often sit in the passenger seat of his car. People driving by would sometimes express surprise that what they perceived from behind to be a person turned out to be an enormous canine. Amused, Lucas slowly combined Indiana, the Wookiees of Yavin, and the name Chewbacca into Han Solo’s copilot: a great big, intelligent, friendly-but-fierce dog-creature sitting by his side.
As the weeks and months wore on, however, the difficulties of facing the blank page only increased for Lucas. “You go crazy writing. You get psychotic,” he says. “You get yourself so psyched up and go in such strange directions in your mind that it’s a wonder that all writers aren’t put away someplace. You can just get so convoluted in what you’re thinking about that you get depressed, unbearably depressed. Because there’s just no guideline, you don’t know if what you’re doing is good or bad or indifferent. It always seems bad when you’re doing it. It seems terrible. It’s the hardest thing to get through.”
Lucas struggled to meld many diverse influences into one story: swashbucklers, comic books, science fiction—and creature features, such as The Wolfman (1941). Tod Browning’s Freaks (1932) had been banned in the U.K. for thirty years and in many cities and states in America, but was notably revived during the 1960s, when it played in the LA area at the Cinema Theatre.
Still in a state of dissatisfaction, knowing it was still far from a shooting script, Lucas finished his second draft on January 28, 1975. A copy in the Lucasfilm Archives features a red cover with a Frank Frazetta–like illustration of a man holding a sword with an adoring, voluptuous woman wrapped around his leg.
Lucas had clearly made major changes to the structure of his story between the first and second drafts. It’s at this point that the well-known break occurred, when, having written something that was far too long for one movie in the first draft, he decided to begin the second draft in the middle of the first—at the moment the robots escape. In the first draft, they flee the Death Star; in the second, now on the side of the good guys, they flee a besieged rebel starship. One of his notes summarizes Lucas’s thinking: “Whole film must be told from robots’ point of view,” a further development of the device of the two peasants in Hidden Fortress.
While at one time Lucas contemplated making two movies out of the first draft—ending the first with the escape from the Death Star, and having the second start with the crash landing on the jungle planet, and close with the attack on the space fortress—instead he combined and juxtaposed many of the more exciting scenes into a shorter, tighter single film. Another of his notes on structure reads, “time lock” to add suspense: “the empire has a terrible new weapon, a fortress station so powerful it can destroy a planet, possibly even a sun. It must be stopped before it can be put to use.” By transforming the space fortress from a floating, somewhat meandering locale, in the first draft, into a horrific planet-destroying weapon, Lucas turned it into a character as well as an all-important structural element.
Though augmenting the role of the two robots, he jettisoned other Hidden Fortress elements. The general is no longer a major character, literally sleeping through some scenes, and the princess has disappeared completely; in their place, the character of Justin/Annikin, now Luke, has taken center stage. His adventures with the robots, while still picaresque, form the line that goes through the story. Indeed, the character of the young Jedi Annikin/Justin has been split in two: Han Solo takes on his womanizing ways and cavalier attitude, while Luke embodies his serious side, his metaphysical side. Both possess the attributes of the time-honored bildungsroman character—the one who comes of age before our eyes.
Luke’s journey is told in part through his relationship with the Force, which in the second draft is more thoroughly analyzed. It now has a dark side, which the bad guys can use—thus enhancing their power to almost equal that of the good guys, conforming to Alfred Hitchcock’s observation that the greatness of a hero is defined by the magnitude of the villain he or she must overcome.
This time the story opens with a prophecy and a different roll-up.
“… And in the time of greatest despair there shall come a savior, and he shall be known as: THE SON OF THE SUNS.”—Journal of the Whills, 3:127
The REPUBLIC GALACTICA is dead. Ruthless trader barons, driven by greed and the lust for power, have replaced enlightenment with oppression, and “rule by the people” with the FIRST GALACTIC EMPIRE.
Until the tragic Holy rebellion of 06’, the respected JEDI BENDU OF ASHLA were the most powerful warriors in the Universe. For a hundred thousand years, generations of Jedi Bendu knights learned the ways of the mysterious FORCE OF OTHERS, and acted as the guardians of peace and justice in the REPUBLIC. Now these legendary warriors are all but extinct. One by one they have been hunted down and destroyed by a ferocious rival sect of mercenary warriors: THE BLACK KNIGHTS OF THE SITH.
It is a period of civil wars. The EMPIRE is crumbling into lawless barbarism throughout the million worlds of the galaxy. From the celestial equator to the farthest reaches of the GREAT RIFT, seventy small solar systems have united in a common war against the tyranny of the Empire. Under the command of a mighty Jedi warrior known as THE STARKILLER, the REBEL ALLIANCE has won a crushing victory over the deadly Imperial Star Fleet. The Empire knows that one more such defeat will bring a thousand more solar systems into the rebellion, and Imperial control of the Outlands could be lost forever …
The story begins with a small rebel space fighter that is being overwhelmed by four giant Imperial Star Destroyers. The smaller ship manages to destroy one of them.
The chaos of battle echoes through the narrow, main passageway of the starfighter. An explosion rocks the ship, and two construction robots, ARTOO DETOO (R2-D2) and SEE THREEPIO (C-3PO) struggle to make their way through the shaking, bouncing passageway.
The two robots are blown under a computer console; from there they see only the legs of their captain, Deak Starkiller, when he arrives. R2-D2 now communicates through beeps and whistles, which only another robot can understand. Meanwhile, one of the Star Destroyers maneuvers above the rebel ship close enough so that it can be reached through space.
With fascist precision, ten stormtroopers wearing ominous armored spacesuits drop onto the top of the disabled rebel craft.
A fight ensues between the rebels and stormtroopers, with neither gaining the advantage, until a mysterious stranger appears:
The second draft had several mock-up covers, including a gold-colored one.
At the far end of the passageway, a door swings wide revealing a rebel warrior wearing a breath mask and dressed in the distinctive uniform of an AQUILLIAN RANGER. A long, deadly laser sword glows in his right hand, while several chrome ping-pong sized balls magically appear in his left. Tiny antennas project from the chrome balls, and before the stormtroopers can raise their weapons, the balls fly out of the ranger’s hand. One of the balls stops in the middle of the troops and explodes. Three other balls shoot through the hole ripped in the side of the ship.
One of the balls blows up the hovering Star Destroyer—but the Ranger falls in battle. Realizing his situation is desperate, Deak sends a number of R2 robots from his starship to the surface of the nearby desert planet Utapau to search for his brother Luke at the home of Owen Lars. R2-D2 is one of those sent, and he embarks with the ever-complaining C-3PO in a lifepod. Back on the ship, Deak and his comrades do battle with the stormtroopers, until…
The remaining stormtroopers bow low toward the doorway. An awesome, seven-foot BLACK KNIGHT OF THE SITH makes his way into the blinding light of the cockpit area. This is LORD DARTH VADER, right hand to the MASTER OF THE SITH. His sinister face is partially obscured by his flowing black robes and grotesque breath mask, which are in sharp contrast to the fascist white armored suits of the Imperial stormtroopers …Taking a deep breath, he raises his arms and every object that isn’t bolted down is picked up by an invisible force and hurled at the young Jedi …Slowly Deak is forced to his knees as all his energy is drained from his being. Finally, he collapses in a heap. The sinister knight lets out a horrible, shrieking laugh …
Deak is taken prisoner by Lord Vader, who assumes that he is the son of the suns (Starkiller) and that they have altered the prophecy. On Utapau, R2-D2 and C-3PO argue and separate; the former is eventually captured by dwarf-like Jawas and put in a sandcrawler—where he discovers his companion, who had been found earlier. Other prisoners in the sandcrawler organize a break, and, in the confusion, the robots escape to a small settlement. A slimy mechanic directs them to the house of Owen Lars; however, he also reports their presence to a “gray Tusken.”
The robots eventually find their way to a moisture ranch owned by Luke’s uncle and aunt, Owen and Beru Lars. They meet there Luke’s young twin brothers, Biggs and Windy, and his sixteen-year-old cousin, Leia, the daughter of Owen and Beru. The robots explain that they are looking for “Angel Blue,” the code name for Luke. When they meet Luke Starkiller, he interrupts his laser sword training to introduce himself as “the Skywalker.”
R2-D2 projects a hologrammic message from Deak, who asks Luke to take the Kiber Crystal (a plot device similar to the ring in J.R.R. Tolkien’s trilogy) to their father, “The Starkiller,” on Ogana Major. In council with Owen, Luke learns that their planet is under siege by the Imperial Legions of Alderaan, and that his brother is probably imprisoned on Alderaan itself. Owen has trained Luke, but he is not yet a Jedi, though he is a good pilot. Luke’s feelings are divided: He’d like to stay and complete his archaeology studies, but he decides to accept the challenge. He visits his mother’s grave as the twin suns of Utapau set. He then has a frank talk with his twin brothers:
LUKE
The time has come for me to tell you of your heritage, as Deak told it to me and as his older brother Cliegg told it to him. In another time, long before the Empire, and before the Republic had been formed, a holy man called the Skywalker became aware of a powerful energy field which he believed influenced the destiny of all living creatures …
BIGGS
The “FORCE OF OTHERS”!
LUKE
Yes, and after much study, he was able to know the force, and it communicated with him. He came to see things in a new way. His “aura” and powers grew very strong. The Skywalker brought a new life to the people of his system, and became one of the founders of the Republic Galactica.
WINDY
The “FORCE OF OTHERS” talked to him!?!
LUKE
In a manner different from the way we talk. As you know, the “FORCE OF OTHERS” has two halves: Ashla, the good, and Bogan, the paraforce or evil part. Fortunately, Skywalker came to know the good half and was able to resist the paraforce; but he realized that if he taught others the way of the Ashla, some, with less strength, might come to know Bogan, the dark side, and bring unthinkable suffering to the Universe. For this reason, the Skywalker entrusted the secret of THE FORCE only to his twelve children, and they in turn passed on the knowledge only to their children, who became known as the Jedi Bendu of the Ashla: “the servants of the force.” For thousands of years, they brought peace and justice to the galaxy. At one time there were several hundred Jedi families, but now there are only two or three.
Undated notes reveal Lucas’s thinking about character and environment.
WINDY
What happened to them?
LUKE
As the Republic spread throughout the galaxy, encompassing over a million worlds, the GREAT SENATE grew to such overwhelming proportions that it no longer responded to the needs of its citizens. After a series of assassinations and elaborately rigged elections, the Great Senate became secretly controlled by the Power and Transport guilds. When the Jedi discovered the conspiracy and attempted to purge the Senate, they were denounced as traitors. Several Jedi allowed themselves to be tried and executed, but most of them fled into the Outland systems and tried to tell people of the conspiracy. But the elders chose to remain behind, and the Great Senate diverted them by creating civil disorder. The Senate secretly instigated race wars, and aided anti-government terrorists. They slowed down the system of justice, which caused the crime rate to rise to the point where a totally controlled and oppressive police state was welcomed by the systems. The Empire was born. The systems were exploited by a new economic policy which raised the cost of power and transport to unbelievable heights. Many worlds were destroyed this way. Many people starved …
BIGGS
Why didn’t the “FORCE OF OTHERS” help the Jedi to put things right?
LUKE
Because a terrible thing happened. During one of his lessons a young PADAWAN-JEDI, a boy named Darklighter, came to know the evil half of the force, and fell victim to the spell of the dreaded Bogan. He ran away from his instructor and taught the evil ways of the Bogan Force to a clan of Sith pirates, who then spread untold misery throughout the systems. They became the personal bodyguards of the Emperor. The Jedi were hunted down by these deadly Sith knights. With every Jedi death, contact with the Ashla grows weaker, and the force of the Bogan grows more powerful.
WINDY
Where are the Jedi now?
LUKE
They’re hidden; but many are still fighting to free the systems from the grip of the Empire. Our father is a Jedi. He is called “The Starkiller” and is said to be a great and wise man, and tomorrow I am on my way to join him and learn the ways of the “FORCE OF OTHERS.”
He then takes the diamond-like Kiber Crystal from his uncle. He also loads the robots into his speeder. On the way to the spaceport, he stops and uses his binoculars to check if they’re being followed—they are, by the Tusken agent. At Mos Eisley, Luke meets two key characters…
Luke is standing next to HAN SOLO, a young Corellian pirate only a few years older than himself. He is a burly-bearded but ruggedly handsome boy dressed in a gaudy array of flamboyant apparel …Han turns to his companion, CHEWBACCA, an eight foot tall, savage-looking creature resembling a huge gray bushbaby-monkey with fierce “baboon”-like fangs. His large yellow eyes dominate a fur-covered face and soften his otherwise awesome appearance. Over his matted, furry body, he wears two chrome bandoliers, a flak jacket painted in a bizarre camouflage pattern, brown cloth shorts, and little else. He is a two-hundred-year-old “WOOKIEE,” and a sight to behold.
The fight in the cantina, this time, has Solo ineffectively trying to defend Luke, who then lights his “laser sword” and dispatches the bad guys. Solo agrees to take Luke and the two robots to Ogana Major—if Luke’s father will pay him a million credits on arrival; for Han, it turns out, is in debt to someone called Oxus, who is of “the grossest dimensions.” Han does not, however, have a ship of his own, so he fakes a reactor overload on a pirate ship he serves on, causing the captain and other crew members—including one Jabba the Hutt—to flee in terror. Han then steals the ship, maintaining Chewbacca and science officer Montross Holdaack as his only crew. Holdaack is almost entirely robotic, with only his head and right arm organic. Luke and the two robots climb aboard and the starship heads for Ogana Major, making the jump to “hyper-skip.”
But Ogana Major has mysteriously vanished—destroyed in an enormous attack—so Luke asks Han to head instead for Alderaan, where Deak is being held. Within a city suspended in a sea of cirrus methane, Luke and Han steal the white uniforms of Imperial stormtroopers and, with Chewbacca posing as their prisoner, they rescue the dying Deak. They have a close encounter with vicious Dai Noga creatures in the bowels of the city and almost get squashed, while fleeing two Sith Knights, in a huge trash compactor. Back in their stolen ship, they are pursued by four fin-winged Imperial TIE fighters, but they again make the jump to hyper-skip. The Kiber Crystal keeps Deak alive on the journey to their next destination—the rebel stronghold on the fourth moon of Yavin—but they are now being pursued by a giant space station.
Instead of landing—which the dense jungle terrain won’t allow—the heroes use lifepods to descend to the Massassi Outpost, where Luke and his friends meet three Aquillian rangers, one of whom is Bail Antilles. During a big meeting, General Dodana debriefs the rebels on the imminent attack against the approaching Death Star…
The GRANDE MOUFF TARKIN, a thin, bird-like commander of the outland Kesselian Dragoons, stands, and Dodana sits down, revealing behind and to one side of him a wizened old man with long silver hair—THE STARKILLER. He is apparently asleep; but as the Grande Mouff rises, the Starkiller’s crystal-clear eyes open knowingly. An aura of power radiates from the ancient Jedi that almost knocks Tarkin over. The Starkiller is a large man, but shriveled and bent by an incalculable number of years. His face, cracked and weathered by exotic climates, is set off by a long silver beard and penetrating gray-blue eyes. Luke stares at him in awe. He’s at once proud, moved and slightly frightened …
The Kiber Crystal revitalizes Luke’s father, who tells his son that he intends to train him as a Jedi. Luke joins the combat mission to strike at the exhaust port on the surface of the Death Star, which they learn was responsible for the destruction of Ogana Major. Han receives eight million in payment for his services, but refuses to join the rebels.
Luke flies toward the Death Star, with C-3PO, R2-D2, and Antilles aboard his ship. He keeps the Kiber Crystal in his pocket, as the rebels concentrate their attack on the dual poles of the fortress. Darth Vader leads the defense of the Death Star, ordering the men to their ships, but he soon senses the presence of the Kiber Crystal. He and his cohorts blast away at their enemies, and they nearly trap Luke’s ship when Han, Chewbacca, and Montross come to the rescue. Vader crashes into Han’s ship, kamikaze-like, killing himself and disabling the pirate craft. As Luke pilots his ship with expert precision, aided by the robot’s advice on the necessary angle for a successful shot, Antilles and C-3PO fire the blasts that enter the exhaust port and destroy the Death Star.
The small craft veers sharply away from the Death Star as ominous rumbles and explosions can be heard coming from within the huge super fortress. The rebel ship speeds past the small lifepod from the pirate ship as it slowly drifts toward the green calm of Yavin’s Fourth Moon. Han, Montross and the furry Chewbacca watch the ominous fortress grow smaller as they drift further and further away. Suddenly, a great flash replaces the fortress and rubble streaks past the lifepod and lone rebel starship. Several giant explosions follow, until there is only a smoke cloud where the mighty fortress once orbited Yavin’s Fourth Moon.
Back on the fourth moon of Yavin, the Starkiller tells his son:
THE STARKILLER
Your achievement will be sung through the ages. The Kiber Crystal has stopped the onslaught of the Bogan forces so that brave warriors can once again show their merit …The revolution has begun.
A ROLL-UP TITLE appears:
…And a thousand new systems joined the rebellion, causing a significant crack in the great wall of the powerful Galactic Empire. The Starkiller would once again spark fear in the hearts of the Sith knights, but not before his sons were put to many tests …the most daring of which was the kidnapping of the Lars family, and the perilous search for:
“THE PRINCESS OF ONDOS.”
All in all, the second draft is a radical reworking of the first. “While I was writing the rough draft, they ended up in this cantina about halfway through; they walked in and there were all these monsters,” Lucas says. “When I wrote the second draft about the only thing that remained was the cantina scene and the dogfight.”
The cinematic swashbuckling element was represented by Errol Flynn in Captain Blood and The Adventures of Robin Hood (with Basil Rathbone), and by Stewart Granger in Scaramouche.
A photo of George Lucas taken in March 1973.
On a rare snowy day in Marin County, Matthew Robbins and Hal Barwood pose for a photo taken by Lucy Wilson in front of Park Way house.
Not surprisingly, Alan Ladd was a bit perplexed. “In came another script and it had a lot of different scenes and a lot of character changes,” he says. And though the script was more streamlined, Lucas’s idea of the serial—crystallized with the addition of Episode I to the title, and an end roll-up that promises more adventures—must have added to Ladd’s confusion. For that matter, anyone reading through these drafts would be alternately amazed and thoroughly befuddled by the constant shifting of sands, the experience affording a glimpse into the mind-set that Lucas consistently describes as unsettling.
Even Coppola was startled: “My recollection was that George had a whole Star Wars script that I thought was fine,” he says, “and then he chucked it and started again with these two robots lost in the wilderness. I remember thinking that the first script he showed me was really good and I was sort of curious as to why he was, you know, dumping that.”
“It started off in horrible shape,” Hal Barwood says. “It was difficult to discern there was a movie there. It did have Artoo and it did have Threepio, but it was very hard for us to wrap our heads around the idea of a golden robot and this little beer can. We just didn’t know what that meant. But George never gave up and he worked and worked and worked.”
