What Could Have Been: The Empire Strikes Back

The Empire Strikes Back is considered one of the greatest sequels of all time containing one of the most shocking plot twists of all time however we almost got a very different movie that not only wouldn't have included that iconic twist but would have instead had the forc ghost of Anakin Skywalker actually meet Luke Additionally the film would have introduced Vader's lava Castle as well as revealed that Lando is actually a clone having survived the Clone Wars so let's dive in and find out why the film was changed and what could have been The Empire Strikes Back before we dive in a quick shout out to this video sponsor onus saber.com throughout March 2024 get a free Scabbard with any lightsaber purchase from onus saber's incredible collection simply add both a lightsaber of your choice and a scabard to your cart and the Scabbard will automatically be free at checkout compliments of bonus saber and if a scabber isn't your thing use our special bullets and Blockbusters promo code Linked In the description below to slash 20% off your order on eligible items also be sure to check out all of the cool additions Ona saber have added to their store like the staff bundles and scrapyard collection ction for Unique finds that'll make you the Envy of the Galaxy again just follow the link in the description below to light up your life with onus saber.com and May the force be with you while Lucas was busy directing episode 4 he hired writer alen Dean Foster to pen the novelization of the movie however Foster's contract also required him to write a second novel so when he handed in his novelization of episode 4 during that film's tumultuous production Lucas asked him to write a more modest follow-up that Lucas could then adapt into a low-budget sequel film in case Star Wars was not successful enough to warn a larger bigger budget sequel to keep the budget down Foster set the majority of the story on the planet of mimban which Luke Leia and the two droids crash land on due to an energy storm they encounter in space on route to persuade the planet of Sir carpus 4 to join the Rebel Alliance once on mban they learn of the kyber Crystal from an older Force sensitive woman who strikes a deal with Luc and Leia to help them get them off the planet in exchange for their assistance and locating the crystal which greatly enhances force abilities together they navigate mean's many dangers to find the temple of Pima where the kyber crystal is rumored to be once there they meet Vader also in pursuit of the crystal after Luke gets pinned under a boulder after attempting to fend off a monster Leia takes Luke's lightsaber and tries to fight off Vader who injures her before Luke is able to recover and take over eventually slicing off Vader's arm as the duel ends with Vader falling into a pit Luke uses the crystal to heal Leia before the two Escape into the mids of mimban and while Foster would be given a lot of creative freedom to write the story Lucas would give him a few restrictions a originally the story opened with a space battle which is what forces Luc and Leia to crash land on mimban however Lucas forced Foster to cut this out as he worried it would be too expensive to film on a small budget the other restriction which you've probably already noticed is that the story couldn't include Han Solo as Harrison Ford hadn't yet committed to starring in any Star Wars sequels unlike his two co-stars who had and since there would be no Han Foster figured there shouldn't be any chewy either the book would eventually be called Splinter of the Mind's Eye by the time it was published Star Wars had broke broken box office records leading Lucas to abandon plans to adapt mind's ey into a film as the novel would instead become the first in a long line of Star Wars books that would form the now non-canonical expanded universe however Lucas came very close to abandoning Star Wars altogether while directing the first film he dealt with a difficult crew a cinematographer who wouldn't follow his Direction the droids constantly breaking down and he had to build a visual effects company from scratch which at one point was in total disarray after spending half its budget with nothing to show for it moreover the Relentless pressure to complete what was an incredibly ambitious film on time and for a limited budget further exasperated lucas' stress resulting in him ending up in the hospital with chest pains and while the film ended up being a massive hit surpassing even his wildest expectations unfortunately he wasn't satisfied with the end result in fact he was somewhat embarrassed by it feeling it was only about 25% of what he wanted it to be which is one of the reasons he made changes to it years later for the special editions as a result for the sequel Lucas considered selling the whole thing to fall Fox like he do with Disney years later and just have Fox do it however he became captivated with finishing the story and couldn't stand the thought of someone else doing it wrong especially considering he had already mapped out parts of it and since Lucas was now not only rich but had retained the sequel rights to the film he realized that this time around he could make the film the way he wanted as long as he financed it himself and that's exactly what he did as he'd make a deal with Fox to distribute the film while giving them no creative input to write it Lucas turned to science fiction writer Lee bracket who rowned for her quick paac dialogue an area Lucas famously struggled with you can type this St stuff but you can't say it bracket had also contributed to screenplays like the big sleep for director Howard Hawks as well as real bravo for John Wayne together bracket and Lucas held several story conferences where Lucas shared his ideas for the sequel resulting in the writing of treatment that bracket would use to form the basis of her script after she wrote it and then handed it in however Lucas was was unable to reach her in order to share his notes as he would eventually learn that she had been hospitalized sadly passing away from cancer a few weeks later and while the spine of bracket script largely resembled the finished film there are major key differences let's start with Hoth which is just called the ice Planet here in the original version Ben doesn't appear as a force ghost to instruct Luke to go to dagaba to be trained by Yoda instead Luke accidentally discovers a crystal in his lightsaber hilt that resembles a memory cell which he speculates may hold coordinates to the place where his father was trained and Luke is driven to get more training because in this version It's painfully obvious that he desperately needs it when the rebel base here described as an ice castle is invaded by ice monsters AKA wampas Luke attempts to fight them off but gets humiliated as he gets his ass handed to him leading Haun to tell him that he's not a Jedi Knight and never will be and while we're talking about Han Leia asked him to travel to meet with his stepfather oan maracal to try and convince him to join the Rebellion saying that he's the most powerful man in the Galaxy next to the Emperor as he runs a transport Port Guild and if he joins the rebels so too will all the pilots and Navigators in the commercial space throughout the Galaxy the Empire also doesn't send out prob droids in this version instead on the planet of ton Moon which would eventually become corant Vader interrogates a traitor and learns the location of the rebel base as a side note Vader's dialogue throughout the script is really out of character for him for example when interrogating the traiter he loudly demands the coordinates man the coordinates it seems bracket really didn't have a handle on how to write for the character however this version of the film contain continues to develop the love triangle between Luke H and Leia that was set up in the first film with both men vying for her affection as she makes out with both of them throughout the script with Luke even professing his love for her unfortunately the love triangle feels like it's out of a film from a bygone era possibly influenced by bracket's history of adapting Raymond Chandler novels for the big screen Leia eventually confesses to Han while they're invading the Empire and the Falcon that he's the one she wants however before that Luke feels the Empire approach the rebel base which already has its hands full with the ice monster ERS eventually just like in the finished film Luke and U leave separately from Han and layup however Vader is able to use the force to form a mental connection with Luke choking him unconscious while he's piloting his escape with Vader believing he's killed him however R2 takes over piloting the ship and charts a course to the coordinates from the lightsaber crystal as he and Luke jumped to hyperspace and escaped R2 eventually crashed lands on the bog Planet which was called mimban in Splinter of the Mind's Eye and was one of Lucas's original ideas in his earliest episode 4 script eventually Lucas would rename this planet to dagaba and mimban would end up appearing in Han Solo Standalone film after Luke wakes up he meets Yoda here a frog-like alien named Minch and Lucas created this character because he killed off Obi-Wan in episode 4 something he didn't initially plan to do but after realizing that Obi-Wan mostly just stood around with nothing to do during the Death Star run Lucas decided to kill him off which also added drama to the film but left Luke without a mentor for the second film thus Lucas created Minch AKA Yoda to set him apart from Obi-Wan Lucas has made him small and unassuming and also hundreds of years old it's important to also note that Minch doesn't speak in his famous inverted sentence structure in Brackets draft that would be a Lucas Edition that would come later which Lucas added because he felt that all of Yoda's philosophical dialogue in Brackets draft was somewhat boring in cliche but by making Yoda speak backwards it would set him apart from Obi-Wan and make him seem more alien and also compelling as he had to really pay attention to what he was saying Minch eventually summons Ben's Force ghost as the two have a playful duel that sees Minch get the better of him as Ben reveals that Minch was his teacher eventually after much training with Minch Luke learns how to summon Ben himself who appears before him and introduces Luke to his father now a force ghost like Ben Luke's father informs him that he has a sister and separated them when they were young to hide them from the Empire when Luke asks him her name his dad refuses to tell him worried that Vader could extract the information from his mind the scene ends with Minch Ben and Luke's father nighting Luke with their lightsabers making him a Jedi Knight Lucas would eventually ni this scene completely from the finished film but leave a small trace of it when luk is taking off and his X-Wing on dagaba to go save his friends worried Obi-Wan tells Yoda that Luke is their last hope but Yoda corrects him saying that there's another that other Yoda is talking about was originally supposed to be Luke's twin sister on the other side of the Galaxy who Lucas planned to introduce in her own solo film before teaming her up with Luke to take down the emperor this plan would eventually be scraped in favor of wrapping up the series with Return of the Jedi as Leia would be made to be the other Yoda was referring to with Lucas retconning her into being Luke's sister the idea of Luke having a long lost sister was also revealed to Mark Hamill when he asked Lucas if he would have been recast if he died in the car accident that badly injured his face for those unaware Hamill fractured his nose and cheekbone in a car crash while on his way to shoot final pickup shots for episode 4 forcing a plastic surgeon to take cartilage from his ear in order to rebuild his nose forever changing his face to explain why he looked different in Empire Lucas wrote in the wa attack at the start of the film and told Hamill that if he died he wouldn't have recast him but introduced produced a long lost Force sensitive sibling instead in respect to the scene in the original script with Anakin's Force ghost it's worth pointing out that Lucas kept the true identity of Vader pretty close to his chest and never told bracket his plans so if she had lived to write the second draft of the script it's likely the scene with Luke meeting a force ghost of his father would have been cut anyway Lucas not only withheld the revelation of Vader being Luke's father from Lee bracket but he also kept the secret from David prous the actor who portrayed Vader prow had a reputation for leaking plot Secrets at conventions so to counter this began giving prous dummy scripts leading him to say lines that weren't really in the movie even the famous reveal where he tells Luke he's his father was said differently by prous on set with Vader claiming that Obi-Wan killed Luke's father which upset prous when he eventually saw the finished film as he complained that he would have delivered the line differently with his body language had he known Vader's lava Castle also would have been introduced in this version of the film which is where Vader lives with his pet gargoyles while here he would have formed another mental connection with Luke as he learns that he's still alive these Force bonds continue to happen happen throughout the story and are similar to what we'd eventually see between kylo Ren and Ry in The Last Jedi from here Vader would have facetimed the emperor with the news who instructs Vader to kill Luke once and for all or he'll kill Vader however Vader has other plans and wants Luke to join him to rule together and bring peace back to the Galaxy doing away with the emperor unlike in the finished film where Luke leaves dagaba against Yoda's wishes and with his training incomplete here he leaves a Jedi Knight and makes his way to Cloud City here called orbital city as he senses Leia's in danger there are several differences once Han Leia chewy and 3PO arrive at orbital city which hovers in the clouds above a ruined City where tall ethereal milky white- skinned aliens live and ride on flying mantis similar to Avatar these are the cloud people and Lucas would repurpose them for Attack of the Clones as the people who live on Camino Lando's last name is Kadar in this version and not calisan as he reveals to Lea that he's a clone of the ashard family but since the wars there are not many of his kind left remarking solemnly it didn't seem strange to us to see our own faces endlessly repeated in the streets of our cities it gave us a sense of Oneness a belonging now when every face is new and different I feel truly alone just like in the finnished film Lando betrays Han but there's no torture scene no bounty hunters and Han is never frozen in carbonite instead everyone's allowed to go about their business but aren't allowed to leave which seriously lacks tension compared to the final version of the film when Luke finally arrives he goes to the cloud people for help who give him a flying Manta to ride as he sneaks into orbital City before confronting Vader in this version Luke channels the dark side to help him in his duel with Vader but obviously there's no I am your father moment and Luke doesn't lose his hand eventually Luke Falls over a railing but is saved by the Falcon as everyone escapes similar to the finished film the movie ends with Luke and Leia wishing good luck to Han as he leaves with Chewy to find a stepfather and convince him to join the Rebellion unfortunately when luc's Red Bracket script he didn't like it although in her defense it was a first draft with Lucas even admitting that his ideas during their story conferences were weren't fully formed before she went off to write it still it does hit many of the same beats as the final film while retaining the same story structure but lacking many of the elements that made Empire so iconic with bracket in the hospital Lucas had no choice but to write the second draft himself introducing things like Yoda's unique backwards way of speaking as well as the character of Boba Fett inspired by the man with no name from Sergio Leone's dollars Trilogy hence why he wears a poncho Lucas also wanted to end the film on a cliffhanger in an effort to mirror the movie serials he watched as a kid which often left audiences waiting eagerly for the next chapter the film's Cliffhanger would be heightened by Harrison Ford only signing on for one sequel leaving his status for a third film in limbo which is why he's put in carbonite whereas Hamil and fiser had signed on not only for Empire and a third film but a fourth one too after writer Lawrence cin turned in his draft of Raiders of the Lost Arc Lucas asked him if he would do a rewrite of Lucas's recent draft of Empire prompting Kasen to ask Lucas don't you want to read Raiders first to see if you like it to which Lucas jokingly replied if I hate Raiders are reive the offer from here both Lucas casden and director Irvin kersner held several story conferences to further develop the script with both men also challenging Lucas when his ideas didn't work or made little sense which Lucas was receptive to although he did the same when he didn't like their ideas Lucas also had other ideas for Empire that never made it into the final script but would be used in later films such as a water planet with an underwater city which we'd see in the form of Cino and nabo respectively a city Planet which would become corusant and Force lightning which Lucas originally wanted Vader to use in his duel against Luke and since directing the first Star Wars film nearly killed him when it was time to do the second one Lucas wanted to hire someone else to sit in the director's chair while he oversaw rebuilding ilm which had been virtually disbanded since the previous film and Skywalker sound and that someone as just mentioned was Irvin kersner an older but fellow USC Alum who Lucas had met while he was still a student there in fact Not only would kersner return occasionally to teach at USC but he was one of the judges at the 1968 national student film festival in which Lucas a short film THX 1138 won the top prize as director of empire kersner was extremely enthusiastic and constantly looking for ways to improve the picture which meant he was often coming up with new ideas and making last minute adjustments that would slow things down and when he was pressured to speed things up that would apparently slow him down even more resulting in the shoot falling behind schedule kersner would be further delayed by frequent technical problems such as special effects or the robots not functioning or sets being very difficult to work in like the carbon freezing chamber complicating matters was the fact that Empire was fighting for soundstage space with Stanley cuck's The Shining at El Street Studios which saw stage three burned down right before Empire was to begin shooting forcing them to shoot the film on one less stage screwing up their schedule and delaying them further in charge of this mess was producer Gary CTS who Lucas was initially reluctant to rehire after being unhappy with how CTS handled some issues while producing episode 4 however kurts fought for the job arguing that he had worked with Lucas since American Graffiti was loyal and knew Star Wars against his better judgment Lucas hired him to produce Empire a decision he would come to regret as Curts was unable to speed up his slow moving director in fact he hardly had a relationship with kersner at all under kurts Empire would find itself well over schedule and budget to the point where they were unable to make a 1 million payroll one week unless they went to the bank and asked for more money which they did but the bank refused in need a $5 million to finish the picture and to meet that Friday's payroll Lucas had two options a go crawling back to Fox and hand over the rights to the film in exchange for more money or B find another bank to Lucas's horror once Fox got wind of this they began threatening to call in a completion Bond and take the film away from Lucas luckily for Lucas eventually he was able to secure the additional funds by refinancing the movie with the First Bank of Boston while also getting a little more money from Fox in return for giving Fox a largest share of the profits with Lucas ultimately retaining the rights to his creation still it was an incredibly tense situation as Lucas came very close to losing the rights to Star Wars which he had worked so hard to get not only that but but he had to keep this situation from the cast and crew in order to keep the production moving so it wouldn't fall further behind schedule and while kurts would argue that going over budget was worth it as the film was even better than the first one and that the sequel to Star Wars was going to be a big hit no matter what that's easy for CTS to say when it's not his money on the line as Lucas had invested his entire Fortune into Empire and bet the farm on it if Empire had failed Not only would it ruin Lucas financially but he loses independence from the studio system which is exactly what would end up happening to his buddy Francis for Opa a couple of years later with one from the heart ultimately Curts would not be asked back for Return of the Jedi fortunately Empire would be a massive success and since it ended on a cliffhanger it left audiences hotly anticipating the next one which Lucas promised would conclude this Trilogy while teasing two more saying the prequel stories exist where Darth Vader came from and the whole story about Darth and Ben Kenobi and it all takes place before Luke is Born the other Trilogy what happens to Luke afterward is much more ethereal I have a tiny notebook full of notes on that sadly we'd never get to see what Lucas would have done had he directed The sequels as he'd end up selling Star Wars to Disney like he almost sold it to Fox before making Empire which likely would have robbed us of one of the greatest sequels of all time and forever changed Star Wars as we know it thanks for watching everybody and don't forget to like And subscribe to bullets and Blockbusters for more great content

Channel: Bullets & Blockbusters

Views: 298,022

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Id: l9Z-Yk4PyhY

Length: 18min 19sec (1099 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 09 2024