Unveiling the Original Vision: Return of the Jedi Rough Draft - Geek Culture Explained 

Great point! He seems to really despise Vader, and yet as you said, "hey, screw up, manage our most important project!"

@@JosiahIsWrite and he worked mercilessly to replace Vader through numerous clones and padawans all throughout the original trilogy era some of which is still cannon. Vader's loss to Obi wan and subsequent injuries ruined his original timeline to disband the senate. He therefore had to play politics for 19 years and had to wait till the Death Star became operational to do so, only for Vader to then go and get the thing blown up LOL

100%.

The kids love it as well.

Great point. Also Ewoks were created specifically to sell toys. Which totally worked on me as a kid.

@@JosiahIsWriteI didn’t like Ewoks even as a kid. They made stormtroopers look stupid and a joke. Wookiee’s would have been better and no Death Star but just a large final naval battle with the fleets going toe to toe in a couple locations. He had to know after ESB that Jedi was gonna be huge and make its dough back and then some. Go all out!!

@@chrischreative2245 as an Ewok fan I know that wookies would have been SO much better. I do wish it was a big huge all out battle as you said.

Thank you! It was super fun to build. Hoth is number one for me, but among those choices there are no wrong answers.

Interesting. I haven't heard that but I have read that Return of the Jedi was going to reveal that Uncle Owen and Obi-Wan were brothers. Thanks for sharing!

@@JosiahIsWrite Dialogue from the December 19, 1982 Draft LUKE : I can't kill my own father. BEN :Then the Emperor has already won. You were our only hope. LUKE: Yoda spoke of another. BEN: The other he spoke of is your twin sister. LUKE: But I have no sister. BEN: Hmm. To protect you both from the Emperor, you were hidden from your father when you were born. The Emperor knew, as I did, if Anakin were to have any offspring, they would be a threat to him. That is the reason why your sister remains safely anonymous. LUKE: Leia! Leia's my sister. BEN: Your insight serves you well. Bury your feelings deep down, Luke. They do you credit. But they could be made to serve the Emperor. When your father left, he didn't know your mother was pregnant. Your mother and I knew he would find out eventually, but we wanted to keep you both as safe as possible, for as long as possible. So I took you to live with my brother Owen, on Tatooine...and your mother took Leia to live as the daughter of Senator Organa, on Alderaan. The Organa household was high-born and politically quite powerful in that system. Leia became a princess by virtue of lineage... no one knew she'd been adopted, of course. But it was a title without real power, since Alderaan had long been a democracy. Even so, the family continued to be politically powerful, and Leia, following in her foster father's path, became a senator as well. That's not all she became, of course... she became the leader of her cell in the Alliance against the corrupt Empire. And because she had diplomatic immunity, she was a vital link for getting information to the Rebel cause. That's what she was doing when her path crossed yours... for her foster parents had always told her to contact me on Tatooine, if her troubles became desperate. LUKE: But you can't let her get involved now, Ben. Vader will destroy her. BEN: She hasn't been trained in the ways of the Jedi the way you have, Luke... but the Force is strong with her, as it is with all of your family. There is no avoiding the battle. You must face and destroy Vader!

@@TKToons it's very informative! Is there anything that they decided not to do you wish made it in?

@@JosiahIsWrite Not 100% sure. I really like how they handled a lot of ROTJ in the final cut, to be honest. Though the idea of an eightiespunk proto-Coruscant is really cool, I'm just so in love with the Prequels' interpretation of the capital planet that I'm not sure I'd want it to have appeared in the '83 film. _Usually_ the changes I think would've helped Star Wars films are keeping in a few deleted scenes here and there (e.g. Biggs talking about joining the rebellion in EpIV, Mon Mothma and Bail hinting at the formation of the Rebel Alliance in EpIII... things like that).

@@TKToons yes! Corusant without CGI would be amazing!

Missed opportunities for sure.

That's a great point. The relationship remains central even when they are apart.

It just brought to mind when Luke says "Your overconfidence is your weakness." And the Emperor replies, "Your faith in your friends is yours." They're apart, but their relationship is really what wins in the end.

Thank you so much! It was a fun one to make.

I think those two ideas may have been connected. Meaning, it's the control of the midichlorians that allow him to come back to life. That's purely speculation on my part, but Lucas did say he wanted to explore things on a microbiotic level.

The need to stay gone like it’s a choice seems like the flaw - obiwan was an average in power Jedi. Anakin the chosen one coming back would fit more realistically.

Thank you so much! To quote Josh Ritter (who sings the brief song clip in the video) "I'm singing for the love of it, have mercy on the man who sings to be adored."

Bah, the inconsistencies were there right from the beginning. Star Wars was never perfectly cohesive film-to-film. I think a lot of people who were there for the original theatrical releases didn't realize it because of the three year gap between films, and a lot of folks who got into the franchise in the late '90s and early '00s don't realize it because of the special edition alterations. I think there has always been a requirement for precision handwaving stemming from all manner of inconsistency... everything from _ambiguous terminology_ to _unforeshadowed familial ties_ to _unclear imperial hierarchies_ … the OT has never been perfect (and quite frankly, it probably doesn't have to be 😅).

Haha. There are so many ways to be weird.

Thanks! It was fun to make on every level, from research, to editing.

UPDATE: Yep, just saw the video game footage, haha. My ears knew that one.

It is! It's also used for the end credits.

@@zooropa04 I wasn't planning on using any clips of it, but after I put the music over the crawl I had to use it somewhere!

Very wise decision, haha.@@JosiahIsWrite

I have not! Can you point me to a copy. I have read The Star Wars story synopsis from May 1973, but it doesn't have that scene in it.

@@JosiahIsWrite this should be it: maddogmovies.com/almost/scripts/starwars_rough5-74.pdf

I can't recall if it's in that book or another, but he Lucas described the process of the film as pushing a boulder up a hill. As a father to kids and with a wife, now being around the age Lucas was at the time you can't discount how significant the pressure of his personal life was. Thanks for the comment!

This is the earliest rough draft I'm aware of and as you said those are the main beats of the story.

@@JosiahIsWriteWhile it is true Lucas originally planned to episodes 4-9. From what I have researched. He always planned to have Vader die in the third movie. Even in 1977. And when the Emperor was defeated by Luke in episode 9, there was still going to be a happy end.

@@lloydshanahan154 I'm curious about how much of the sequels he had in mind at the time of Jedi. Because based on multiple interviews from that time, he was really ready to be done with Star Wars.

@@JosiahIsWrite Interestingly enough his original draft of A New Hope from 1973 has a lot of elements of both Empire and Jedi in it. After two Jedi escape Alderan with princess Leia, they go through an asteroid field and hide in one of the Asteroids just like Empire. But they end up stealing an enemy ship and land in a forest planet were they meet the friendly natives just like Jedi. And of course they are wookies that help them capture an enemy base just like Jedi. and this event is followed by a big space battle as well. It's clear he had a lot of material to draw from. As for the prequels, in 77 he always intended the prequels to be a trilogy. He also wanted them to have a more politically driven plot. He always intended to have Yoda use a lightsaber (based on his original draft of Empire). And Lucas also wanted to have Darth Vader get his suite from a battle with Obi-Wan that caused him to fall in a pool a lava. Plus, his original outline of Star Wars from 1973 actually starts very similarly to how the Phantom Menace Starts.

@@lloydshanahan154 yeah, I mean 7-9, not the original films or prequels.

There already is, it's part of Star Tours.

That is correct, but I'd say the idea of Wookies was there. As you said they were in the earliest of drafts and then after Empire when it was time to write it Lucas knew he was going in a different shorter direction. Thanks for the comment and clarification!

@@JosiahIsWrite I believe what happened is that out of his original longer Star Wars script he kept the ending with the destruction of the Death Star but removed the Wookies flying the X-Wings etc. for the first film, Star Wars. When the possibility arose for sequels he used the same ending again for ROTJ but with Ewoks fighting on the planet instead of Wookies flying X-Wings. Basically his longer version of Star Wars became 3 films but he had already done half the original ending in the first film, with the Death Star, so he just repeated it in the 3rd film. The Wookie planet got lost along the way.

Very true.

I don't mean to imply that, but I think a narrative was created after the fact that it was all planned point by point. At least in this instance, the broad strokes of the story all stayed the same. I think the quote I used from George Lucas about puzzle pieces is really key to understanding his process.

Star Wars was too long to film in one movie so they had to split it up.

@@chrischreative2245 I personally love seeing how it changed and developed as he continued to work on it and how all that resulted in what we now know as Star Wars.

Thank you. I plan on doing a video about it soon. All handmade by me, although it's not quite finished yet.

@@JosiahIsWrite that's some mad crazy skills you've got. I thought it was part of some toy range. 👏👏