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krpalmerWorking my way through the early drafts of Star Wars available online, I've now reached the "second draft." With some ideas from before packed away for future development and use, the story is now recognisably that of the first movie: General Luke Skywalker and Annikin Starkiller seem to have been merged into the single protagonist "Luke Starkiller;" the Force is taking form as its own entity, making the Jedi and the Sith more themselves as well; and with a good selection of scenes from it recognisable as some of Ralph McQuarrie's earliest production paintings, the story has started to take on visual form as well... and yet for all of that, there's something about this particular version of the story that's long seemed to me an odd step away from Star Wars as we all know it.
The big difference to me is that the person captured by Darth Vader at the very beginning of the story is Luke's older brother, Deak Starkiller. As a more powerful warrior than Luke, once he's rescued he more or less has to be carried around unconscious for the rest of the script. Leia is still around, but as the daughter of Owen and Beru Lars, her role in the story is reduced to seeing Luke off on his way. The "boys' own adventure" aspect of the story just doesn't compare to me to the resonances of rescuing a princess, and maybe too I'm conscious of the careful yet suspicious parsing some apply to the female roles in the movies themselves... but perhaps the especially strange feeling I should admit about it is that, for all that Luke and Leia aren't related and Han Solo lives with the short, fur-covered female Boma Oeeta (whose role in the story is also more or less to see the heroes off), the story just might have inspired that much more "Luke/Han" slash than already exists...
With that admitted, though, there are other interesting points to the draft. Luke's character is beginning to work towards a Campbellian "refusal of the call": at first, he seems as much a naturalist as a warrior in training, unaware as Leia points out of even "the grip of tython" or "the seven moves." Once the supportive Lars family has convinced him to be on his way, though (and he's said goodbye at his mother's grave), he seems as ready for adventure as he finally became, and functions quite well without a "wise and helpful guide," except perhaps for the brief, cryptic advice of a nameless "seer" just outside the cantina. It's Luke himself who proceeds to chop up the threatening aliens inside, while Han Solo is the person who gets tossed into a corner. Perhaps a tiny bit weary of the insistence of some that Han Solo as we know him now is the be-all and end-all of Star Wars, I find this version of Han a little refreshing. Now a young human instead of his first, perhaps infamous form of "a huge, green skinned monster with no nose and large gills" (although I'm somehow reminded of a younger Dexter Jettster there), but in fact the mere "cabin boy" of a pirate starship, he manages, after promising Luke more than he can deliver, to chase off the rest of the pirates with the help of Chewbacca and Montross the science officer. (Montross may show some of the cynical attitude Han wound up with. This time around, he's the one who breaks his artificial arm open on a railing...) It's also interesting to me that the opening crawl seems to talk about the Empire (which has now deposed the "Republic Galactica") as crumbling of its own accord, but there are now seventy rebel systems (as opposed to just one), hoping to add a thousand more to their number.
After a space battle now moved all the way to the end of the movie (in which Threepio and "Aquillian ranger" "Bail Antilles" fire the fatal shots against the Death Star, with Luke their pilot), there's a final roll-up that talks about the kidnapping of the Lars family and the search for "the Princess of Ondos." As things turned out, that was sort of what was returned to in the next draft...
The big difference to me is that the person captured by Darth Vader at the very beginning of the story is Luke's older brother, Deak Starkiller. As a more powerful warrior than Luke, once he's rescued he more or less has to be carried around unconscious for the rest of the script. Leia is still around, but as the daughter of Owen and Beru Lars, her role in the story is reduced to seeing Luke off on his way. The "boys' own adventure" aspect of the story just doesn't compare to me to the resonances of rescuing a princess, and maybe too I'm conscious of the careful yet suspicious parsing some apply to the female roles in the movies themselves... but perhaps the especially strange feeling I should admit about it is that, for all that Luke and Leia aren't related and Han Solo lives with the short, fur-covered female Boma Oeeta (whose role in the story is also more or less to see the heroes off), the story just might have inspired that much more "Luke/Han" slash than already exists...
With that admitted, though, there are other interesting points to the draft. Luke's character is beginning to work towards a Campbellian "refusal of the call": at first, he seems as much a naturalist as a warrior in training, unaware as Leia points out of even "the grip of tython" or "the seven moves." Once the supportive Lars family has convinced him to be on his way, though (and he's said goodbye at his mother's grave), he seems as ready for adventure as he finally became, and functions quite well without a "wise and helpful guide," except perhaps for the brief, cryptic advice of a nameless "seer" just outside the cantina. It's Luke himself who proceeds to chop up the threatening aliens inside, while Han Solo is the person who gets tossed into a corner. Perhaps a tiny bit weary of the insistence of some that Han Solo as we know him now is the be-all and end-all of Star Wars, I find this version of Han a little refreshing. Now a young human instead of his first, perhaps infamous form of "a huge, green skinned monster with no nose and large gills" (although I'm somehow reminded of a younger Dexter Jettster there), but in fact the mere "cabin boy" of a pirate starship, he manages, after promising Luke more than he can deliver, to chase off the rest of the pirates with the help of Chewbacca and Montross the science officer. (Montross may show some of the cynical attitude Han wound up with. This time around, he's the one who breaks his artificial arm open on a railing...) It's also interesting to me that the opening crawl seems to talk about the Empire (which has now deposed the "Republic Galactica") as crumbling of its own accord, but there are now seventy rebel systems (as opposed to just one), hoping to add a thousand more to their number.
After a space battle now moved all the way to the end of the movie (in which Threepio and "Aquillian ranger" "Bail Antilles" fire the fatal shots against the Death Star, with Luke their pilot), there's a final roll-up that talks about the kidnapping of the Lars family and the search for "the Princess of Ondos." As things turned out, that was sort of what was returned to in the next draft...