Proves Everyone's First Drafts Are Usually Crap
10. Yoda’s name was originally going to be
Buffy. No lie. Buffy or Bunden Debannen. Lucas said that Luke was going
to meet a spiritual entity named Buffy and would become “the human
Buffy” lol. In later drafts he thought of Yoda as a frog and picked out a
full name. Minch Yoda.
9.Lucas considered having Luke’s face get injured. In 77 Luke’s actor
Mark Hamill was injured in a car accident and had to have a facial
reconstruction done. So up until filming he was going to have Luke’s
face get damaged somehow and a droid was going to patch him up.
8.Luke’s journey to become a Jedi Knight was originally much
bumpier. One idea that got tossed around a lot in the early stages of
planning ESB was the notion that Luke’s light saber had a crystal hidden
in the hilt, with secret encrypted information on it — including the
coordinates of Minch Yoda’s planet. And Luke would have been
“humiliated” when he couldn’t use the Force to stop an attack by a bunch
of ice monsters on the rebels Hoth base. (With Han telling Luke,
“You’re not a Jedi knight, and you never will be.”) Meanwhile, Darth
Vader senses that Luke used the force to destroy the Death Star and
there’s a new wannabe Jedi in town — so Vader uses telepathy to choke
Luke in his spacecraft, nearly killing him — except that R2D2 jumps the
ship into hyperspace and takes it to Yoda’s planet.
7. We would’ve visited more planets. In the early days Lucas had
plans to visit a water planet with a city built underneath. A city
planet was going to be visited as well where the entire planet was built
over. At one point Lucas considered visiting the Wookie Home world and
seeing a young Chewbacca.
6. Vader had a castle. It was going to be a fortress of evil with
lava surrounding it and gargoyles as Vader’s pets….I’m being 100%
serious right now.
5.Vader wasn’t Luke’s father at first. In Leigh Brackett’s first
script draft, Luke meets his real dad, who says he sent away Luke and
his secret sister for their own safety. (Luke’s sister has been training
to be a Jedi knight in secret, just as Luke has.) And Papa Skywalker
administers the oath of a Jedi Knight to Luke, in which Ben, Minch,
Anakin and Luke cross lightsabers, and Luke swears to “dedicate my life
to the cause of freedom and justice.”
4.The love triangle between Luke-Leia-Solo was a much bigger deal in
the earlier scripts. It’s at the root of Luke’s struggles for self
respect and his humiliations. When Darth Vader is trying to win Luke
over to the Dark Side in the second draft, written by Lucas himself,
Vader says, “You’re in love with Leia. You don’t want to lose her to Han
Solo… But you will, if you lack the courage to use the strength that’s
in you. A strength as great as mine, Luke.” And then at the end, Leia
flat-out tells Luke that he’s not the one she loves, because she’s into
Han. Also in this version, Han doesn’t get frozen in carbonite —
instead, he just flies off to take care of business, leaving Luke and
Leia watching the Millennium Falcon disappear.
3.They almost had a monkey in a mask to play Yoda. They thought of
everything for certain creatures and beings. Yoda was a monkey in a
mask, a midget, or even a child. For the Tauntauns they tried a human
suit with what they called “hilarious if not film-worthy results.”
2.The Shining almost Axed The Empire. During the filming of Star Wars
and The Shining there was a fire that burnt down Stage 3 where the
Shining was being made. So Star Wars had to share their studio with them
and it made space a real issue. Not to mention the fact that the
Shining ran well over its schedule.
1. Miss Piggy had a cameo in the movie. When Mark Hamill first met
Frank Oz, he asked him to do a brief Miss Piggy cameo during rehearsals
on set, as a practical joke — but when the time came much later, it
caught even Hamill off guard. During one scene, Yoda tells Luke to
follow his feelings. Luke protests that he has followed his feelings —
and suddenly, Frank Oz whips out a Miss Piggy puppet, saying “Feelings?
You want feelings? Get behind the couch and I’ll show you feelings,
punk. What is this hole? I’ve been booked into dumps before, but never
like this. Get me my agent on the phone!”