We may not have a new Star Wars movie this Christmas season. But we have a Star Wars script review! It’s time to go back to that brief period in history when Jedis enacted revenge!!!
Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Premise: The rebels must destroy a series of Death Stars that are being manufactured outside the Imperial capital planet of Had Abaddon.
About: This is an early draft of Star Wars Episode 6. While it’s technically 82 pages long, that’s only because it was re-typed into a digital document. Since whoever transcribed it didn’t know everything about screenplay format, or Final Draft, the formatting is quite sloppy, particularly on the dialogue side, where the margins are way wider than normal. I would estimate the “true” page count for this script is somewhere around 115 pages.
Writer: George Lucas
Details: June 1981 “Revised Rough Draft”
I vaguely remember hearing, as a kid, that the original title for the final Star Wars movie was going to be, “Revenge of the Jedi.” Something about that title promised the greatest moviegoing experience that I was ever going to have. It was such an in-your-face title that hinted at seeing Luke Skywalker as you’ve never seen him before. So when the title was later changed to, “Return of the Jedi,” and the excuse was that Jedis don’t enact revenge, I was kinda bummed. I mean, sure, it made sense when they explained it. But “Revenge of the Jedi” sounded so much cooler.
It speaks volumes to the problem of over-thinking writers have. We can overthink ourselves into anything. Sure, “revenge” may not be part of the Jedi code, but that’s exactly why it was so exciting. A Jedi doing something he wasn’t supposed to be doing? Count me in! Nobody wants to see a movie where someone does exactly what they’re supposed to do. That’s boring. They want to see a movie where a character does what they’re not supposed to do. That’s not to say the final result here wasn’t great. Only that, one day, I want to see a movie about a Jedi revenge.
Oh, speaking of the final result, George Lucas went full-bonkers for his climactic Jedi battle in this one. Much different from what we saw in the final film. Read on to find out what happened!
“The Rebellion is doomed. Spies loyal to the Old Republic have reported several new armored space stations under construction by the Empire.” This is the first paragraph of the opening crawl, which follows that up by introducing us to the planet, Had Abaddon, the “dreaded” Imperial capitol.
It turns out that in this version of “Jedi,” the Empire wasn’t just doubling down on their Death Stars, they were mass-producing them! Well, maybe not mass-producing. But they’re building multiple Death Stars. Which is where we meet Leia, guiding a rebel pilot in a stolen Tie-fighter towards a nearby sanctuary moon, so they can begin their plan of shutting down the moon’s shield generator, which is protecting Had Abaddon.
Meanwhile, on Tatooine, Luke, Threepio, R2, Chewie, and Lando, are hiding out in a Jawa Inn, where they’re plotting their rescue of Han at Jabba’s palace. Everyone thinks Luke is a little too confident, but go along with the plan anyway. Strangely, in this version, Han is not frozen in carbonite. Once he was sent to Jabba, he was un-frozen and simply kept prisoner. Odd, I know.
The assault on Jabba’s palace is janky only because Lucas had not yet figured out that he should put Leia on the team. As you know, in the finished film, Leia is a pivotal component to saving Han. But here, she’s in charge of the Had Abaddon plan, and therefore can’t be there. One of the stranger moments in the script is that, after Luke escapes the Rancor, Han is thrown into the prison cell with the others. He didn’t even need to be saved. There’s a possibility that Lucas hadn’t nailed down the specifics of the Han rescue yet and was simply creating a placeholder sequence.
Back on Abaddon, Vader and the Emperor aren’t speaking. In fact, Emperor only speaks to Vader through the new Grand Moff JerJerrod, a pompous mothereffer who treats Vader like the dirt underneath his shoes. Vader is determined to find and train Luke, but the Emperor has other plans. He secretly tells Grand Moff JerJerrod to find Luke and bring him to him. JerJerrod is all too happy to oblige, and when Luke and the crew get to the Tatooine space port, he’s lured into a back alley and taken by JerJerrod’s men.
Leia finally gets to the sanctuary moon, where I was disappointed to learn that the Ewok sequence was the same as it is in the finished film, the only difference being that it’s Leia and a bunch of nobodies fighting the biker scouts this time. I’d heard all these stories about how the original plan was to set this sequence on the wookie planet. But I guess it had already been decided it was Ewoks. Oh well. I still have The Star Wars Christmas Special.
Somehow, Lucas is able to get Han, Chewie and the droids to the sanctuary planet, where they team up with Leia (and yes, we still have the “Threepio is a deity” sequence). But the real fun is the Emperor/Luke/Vader battle, and that’s because two additional characters are involved. That would be Obi-Wan and Yoda! Yes. So while Luke is fighting Vader, Obi-Wan is occasionally getting between them, using the “netherworld” powers to protect Luke. At one point, the Emperor shoots lightning at Luke, only for Obi-Wan to get in the way and use the force to create a shield. And when his shield starts to weaken, we see a second shield. And it’s Yoda, standing in front of him, doing his best to protect Luke as well. It’s pretty badass.
But gone is all the father-son stuff. And, of course, that’s what made the fight in the movie so emotional and affecting. It’s actually a great lesson for action screenwriters. The tendency is always to start with “cool” and “badass” shit. But what’s really going to land with the audience is emotion. So go ahead and get creative with your big set pieces. But note, especially when it comes to the climax of your movie, that it’s going to feel empty unless you anchor it in some kind of emotional catharsis.
Oh, but Lucas didn’t stop there. Yoda COMES BACK FROM THE DEAD! Yeah. He ends up saving Vader from going into Force Hell or something. And, as a reward, he’s brought back to life. I know. Crazy, right? Rian Johnson would’ve loved to film that scene.
This was really fun to read because it shows just how much of a process writing a script is. For example, it makes total sense to keep Leia at Abaddon. She’s the rebel commander. You need a main character to take care of this stuff. However, you don’t want one of your main characters away from your other main characters, especially her love interest, for 70% of the movie. Not only that, but it’s for the very reason that Leia is a high-class commander of the rebellion, that it’s so cool that she gets down and dirty to save Han at Jabba’s palace.
Another thing you see the value of when reading early drafts is how unnecessary character prep is. It’s preferable to just throw your characters into the plot. I made this same point with the original Star Wars script. We don’t get four scenes of Darth Vader talking about how he needs to stop the Rebel ship. We meet him AS HE’S STOPPING THE REBEL SHIP.
Likewise, here, there’s this whole scene at a Jawa Inn where Luke and the rest of the crew are prepping to save Han. It’s a boring scene. Characters are standing around (never a good thing in an action movie). In the final movie, we meet Luke AS HE SHOWS UP TO SAVE HAN. We meet him in media res. And you see that all over this script. There’s a lot of “before” stuff. Whereas in the final film, it’s all “during” stuff.
That was a huge problem with the prequels. There are way too many scenes “before” the scenes that matter. It makes me think that Lucas just filmed the equivalent of whatever this draft was for his prequel movies, instead of continuing to improve them and get the stories to a place where the plot was charging forward in every scene.
Another problem with this draft is GRAND MOFF JERJERROD. Full-disclosure. I love Grand Moff Jerjerrod. I still don’t know what a Grand Moff is. I don’t even know what a Moff is. But I wanted my own Grand Moff JerJerrod toy within a second of meeting him. With that said, creating an intermediary between the Emperor and Vader made JerJerrod the active one and, in the process, Vader the passive one. Vader basically just sits around and waits while JerJerrod gets to do the fun stuff like kidnap Luke.
By eliminating this character for the final film, it made Vader and the Emperor have to work together. And this is how you want it. You want your big boys interacting with one another. You don’t want bottom of the toy shelf characters getting to do all the fun stuff. This is another great screenwriting lesson. Sometimes you have to eliminate characters you like for the greater good of the story. I liked JerJerrod. But he was in the way of the more interesting storyline that occurs between Vader and the Emperor.
Another thing Lucas clearly had no idea what to do with was the Death Stars. Unlike a lot of people, I love Death Stars. I want to see as many of them as possible. So when I found out the Emperor was mass-producing them, I had a Stargasm. The problem was that you had three entities. You had Had Abaddon, which was the capital of the Empire. You had the sanctuary moon. And then you had the Death Stars. It’s unnecessarily complicated.
What do I tell 90% of the writers who come to me for notes? SIMPLIFY. The answer is almost always to simplify. And you see that’s what they did here. They got rid of Had Abaddon. They got rid of multiple Death Stars. And the reason that was so key is that it allowed them to put the Emperor on the Death Star, making him much more vulnerable. Everything became streamlined once they consolidated all of those things.
Sadly, I didn’t get any revenging. I really wanted some Jedi revenge. I suppose the good news is the emergence of Star Wars TV. Maybe one of these days, I’ll yet get my revenge.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Place your character in situations that contrast with who they are. Leia is a high-level commander. So it’s cool to see her in an underground cess pool of scum and villainy trying to save her boyfriend. Likewise, a homeless person is going to be more interesting if he’s placed inside of a black-tie fund raiser. Put your characters in locations they’re out of place in and watch great scenes write themselves.
