When I first heard Dark Horse was doing an adaptation of George Lucas’ May 1974 rough draft of “A New Hope,” I had two reactions: 1) How cool!, and 2) In retrospect, how obvious! Laurent Bouzereau gave insights into the various drafts of the original trilogy in his 1997 gem “Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays,” and J.W. Rinzler went a step further by providing chunks of the scripts in his comprehensive “Making of” books for “A New Hope” (2007), “The Empire Strikes Back” (2010) and “Return of the Jedi” (2013).
But the eight-issue “The Star Wars” (2013-14), plus an Issue 0 that’s a handbook of characters and locations, brings the rough draft to vibrant life. (It’s available in trade paperback now, with the hardcover version also including Issue 0.) It makes sense to do this as a comic book – adapted by Rinzler, with movie-like art by Mike Mayhew, based on early concept designs by Ralph McQuarrie, Joe Johnston and Colin Cantwell — because a movie would be too expensive and a published script would be too bland.
Of course, because it’s a rough draft, it wasn’t ready-made for a comic adaptation, so Rinzler adds and subtracts dialogue here and there for the sake of clarity. But mostly, fitting with the historical purpose of the project, he leaves the flaws and oddities in place. For example, an Aquilae snubfighter pilot is named Chewie, and later in the story, we meet the Wookiee Chewbacca, nicknamed “Chewie.”
The first thing that jumps out is that Lucas thinks in terms of action sequences first, and considers plot, character and theme as secondary concerns. Many familiar sequences are in the rough draft, but the overall plot does not link together in a tight filmic structure. Still, it’s remarkable how many of these sequences could be copied and pasted into the more fully formed scripts, so obviously there was something to all of this from the beginning.
In “The Star Wars,” a fan will recognize the following sequences, in chronological order:
- Freedom fighters on Aquilae (which essentially became Alderaan and/or Naboo) fly snub fighters against an Imperial space station (later the Death Star), like the end of “A New Hope,” but with less of a strategy. Later in the story, a rebel force primarily comprised of Wookiees does the same thing.
- The Empire’s invasion of Aquilae via its space fortress is similar to the Trade Federation’s invasion of Naboo via its droid control ships in “The Phantom Menace.”
- Annikin Starkiller goes off to retrieve Princess Leia from her university, and their journey back to the Aquilae underground bunker is reminiscent of Anakin and Padme going into hiding in “Attack of the Clones.” Later, another undercover journey is even more similar to “Episode II,” as Queen Breha asks Luke Skywalker to take Princess Leia and Leia’s two younger brothers to Ophuchi, where “they will be safe.” Unlike with the Naboo journey, the group never arrives at Ophuchi, although Lucas teases “The Saga of the Ophuchi!” in the closing crawl of the rough draft.
- R2-D2 and C-3PO, initially Imperial droids, take an escape pod out of the battle station to the Jundland Wastes of Aquilae. They exchange some of the “A New Hope” bickering, then are picked up by “a transport” — Annikin and Leia in a landspeeder.
- At a cantina in the Aquilae spaceport Gordon (think Mos Eisley), Skywalker cuts down the aliens who threaten him, a la Obi-Wan in “A New Hope.” Then our heroes meet Han Solo and other trusted allies of Skywalker and Kane Starkiller.
- In Gordon, the Imperials torture folks right out in the open by blasting electricity through them. This concept made it into the finished films in a number of ways, the first of which is the smoldering corpses of Luke’s surrogate parents. We might presume scenes like this happened off-screen on Naboo in “The Phantom Menace,” but by 1999, Lucas was fully in “‘Star Wars’ is for kids” mode, and didn’t have concentration-camp torture scenes in any drafts.
- The now-quite-large group of rebels fights through the Imperial spaceport on Gordon to get to an available ship (which looks like a Rebel Blockade Runner and was McQuarrie’s first design for the Millennium Falcon, although that name isn’t used here). This sequence is reminiscent of the Death Star escape, as is the later sequence on the battle station where Annikin and Valorum rescue Princess Leia.
- Leia’s kid brothers, who have Jedi potential, are put in carbon-freeze canisters for transport (so the adults don’t have to put up with their whining, I’m guessing). This, of course, is similar to Han being carbon-frozen in “Empire.”
- While flying away from Aquilae, the rebels’ ship is attacked by TIE fighters much like the “Here They Come” sequence in “A New Hope.” Annikin is blasted out of his gunnery turret, and R2 reels him back in. Leia notes that Annikin “almost suffocated,” but he is in remarkably good shape for spending several seconds in vacuum without a spacesuit.
- Up next, the rebels fly through an asteroid field, similar to “The Empire Strikes Back.” An asteroid breach forces them to take escape pods down to the nearest planet, Yavin (which would become Endor and/or the version of Kashyyyk outside of “Episode III”).
- In the woods of Yavin, the rebels encounter slavers (who look like Boba Fett and Bossk) and Wookiee slaves. Our heroes rescue the Wookiees, who become their allies, as do human settlers Owen and Beru Lars.
- Darth Vader tortures Princess Leia (who was nabbed by Imperials on Yavin) on the space fortress, similar to “A New Hope” and the torture of Han in “Empire.” But here, Vader aims to “crush (her) spirit” rather than obtain information.
- Annikin, Valorum and Leia jump into a garbage chute as part of their escape from the space fortress.
- In a closing ceremony, Chewbacca, Skywalker and Annikin (the new “lord protector” of Aquilae) receive medals from Princess Leia.
In the rough draft, the characters and their motivations are often shallow. Lucas knows the broad role and purpose of each character, but struggles to get into their heads and understand them. Most of the characters are quite different from what they would become:
- General Luke Skywalker is a cross between Obi-Wan Kenobi and General Dodonna. He’s a big-picture guy: Ordering people around and inspiring them, but not doing so much as taking the controls of a ship.
- Annikin Starkiller is brash and headstrong – and he awkwardly but successfully romances the princess — but there’s not much hint that he’s in danger of turning to the dark side.
- Annikin’s dad, Kane Starkiller – like the future Darth Vader and General Grievous — is a cyborg, who notes “There is nothing left of me but my head and right arm!” Because of this, he wants Skywalker to take over Annikin’s Jedi training from him. There’s a vague suggestion that being a cyborg is making Kane less human and more evil.
- Princess Leia doesn’t take crap from any of the guys, but she’s more of a traditional damsel in distress here, as she rarely picks up a gun and joins the fray.
- Windy and Biggs are Leia’s little brothers. They have Force potential, and therefore must be protected for the sake of the galaxy’s future, similar to the concept of Qui-Gon finding Anakin and bringing him to the Temple for training in “The Phantom Menace.”
- When R2-D2 and C-3PO banter, they land jabs at each other in equal measure. 3PO is no pushover. Also, R2 speaks Basic here rather than using beeps and whistles, and he’s smaller, closer in size to “Rebels’ “ Chopper than the films’ R2-D2, which of course had to accommodate Kenny Baker.
- Han Solo is a green reptilian alien who is sympathetic to the Rebellion from the get-go. He understands the Wookiee language, but Chewbacca is not his sidekick here. They meet for the first time on this adventure.
- The characters who look like Boba Fett and Bossk are slavers rather than bounty hunters.
- Owen and Beru Lars are settlers in the forest of Yavin rather than Tatooine moisture farmers.
- Chewbacca and the other Wookiees on Yavin are initially primitives, closer to the Ewoks of the finished trilogy or the Yuzzems in Alan Dean Foster’s novel “Splinter of the Mind’s Eye” (which, as recent transcripts in Star Wars Insider revealed, had surprisingly substantial input from Lucas). However, Skywalker and Han Solo teach the Wookiees to fly ships, and they quickly become adequate to that task.
- Prince Valorum is a Sith who often wears an optional breath mask in the style of what would become Vader’s helmet, but he helps Annikin and Leia escape the space fortress because he believes the Empire is a threat to both the Sith and the Jedi.
- Darth Vader is an evil Imperial leader with one bionic eye who sometimes dons the head-covering portion of the famous helmet. But he has no family connection to our heroes and he’s not a Force user.
Thematically, the rebellion versus the Empire is in place from this earliest draft. The Empire is a collection of evil acts – such as the torturing of citizenry via electrocution – and the Rebellion is the charismatic Luke Skywalker and a hodgepodge of beings he knows he can trust.
The closing crawl of “The Star Wars” tells us the rebels’ successful destruction of the space fortress gives citizens “a new sense of liberty, not felt for 100 years.” In the finished films, liberty had been dormant for 20 years before the Rebel Alliance destroys the Death Star. The century without liberty as an openly discussed concept explains why Aquilae’s rulers initially intend to bow down to the Empire’s might without a fight. Skywalker can’t attack the battle station until he gets the “war codes” from Aquilae’s rulers. And after Skywalker and Aquilae’s military loses that battle, the planet’s rulers intend to succumb to the Empire’s “peace.” But Skywalker vows “This war is just beginning,” and he’ll lead it, “even if it’s treason!”
Indeed, “The Star Wars” is about efforts to form an organized rebellion, not just win the first major victory for the rebellion, although it ultimately accomplishes both. Skywalker does have some allies already in place, but he doesn’t get in touch with them until after the military defeat against the space fortress and the Empire’s takeover of Aquilae. The members of that loose rebel cell in the spaceport of Gordon, loosely led by Han Solo, say their efforts against the Empire “have been minimal.”
The Empire’s occupation of Aquilae specifically inspires them into more direct action, as they aim to restore the kingdom. While Lucas’ controversial portrayal of kingdoms as places where liberty can thrive still very much exists in the saga (note the titles of Princess Leia and Queen Amidala), it is more prominent in “The Star Wars,” something that Mayhew emphasizes with regal trappings similar to what we would later see on Naboo in the films.
In the rough draft, the light side vs. dark side concept is in place, but only superficially, as many scenes end with “May the Force of Others be with you!” We know Luke and Kane Starkiller are Jedi Bendu (and that Annikin, Deak and Windy have the potential to be), and that Prince Valorum is a Sith, and that they all favor using lightsabers (then again, so do the stormtroopers!). But we don’t see many specifics such as mind tricks or using the Force to accomplish an improbable task.
The idea of Jedi and Sith as rival sects of Force users is present in muted form. Annikin and Sith Prince Valorum have a brief lightsaber duel, although it’s staged in order for Valorum to spring Annikin from his stormtrooper guards. When Annikin says he wants to rescue Leia because he loves her, Valorum says, “Love!? Now I remember why our clans have fought for a thousand years!” This suggests that in “The Star Wars,” love is a Jedi value, but not a Sith value.
“The Star Wars” is thin on themes and character arcs (and humor, for that matter – there’s nary an intentional chuckle to be found), but overwritten in other ways.
It has too many characters. There’s no dominant villain, but rather a batch of them including Sith Prince Valorum, Imperial General Darth Vader and Governor Hoedaack (who would become Tarkin). It’s almost funny to see two landspeeders full of heroes traveling through the desert to Gordon. At the same time, these characters aren’t fodder for Imperial guns. Only Cleig Whitsun ends up biting the dust (manually launching the escape pod holding Leia and Annikin from their doomed ship above Yavin), which is interesting considering how many characters are killed off in the finished films.
In terms of plot, the rough draft is overblown, as it includes two space attacks on the fortress and two sequences of heroes fighting their way through an Imperial station (Gordon and the space fortress). Lucas famously acknowledged that he had three movies after his rough draft and had to pare it back to one for “A New Hope,” while setting aside the other two-thirds of the rough draft for sequels.
“The Star Wars” clears up any confusion that those other two films’ worth of material became “Empire” and “Jedi.” Granted, there is a second Death Star battle in “Jedi,” and those prototypical Wookiees – now Ewoks – are peripherally involved. But most of “Empire” and “Jedi” naturally grew from the final draft of “A New Hope,” not the rough draft. As we already knew from Bouzereau’s and Rinzler’s books, Lucas went through a similar struggle writing those movies, again having to discard many sequences and simplify some big ideas. Still, he never truly discarded anything. Just as the Wookiee-oriented second Death Star battle moved from “A New Hope” to “Return of the Jedi,” the lava planet moved from “Jedi” to “Revenge of the Sith.”
Lucas process of visualizing sequences and scenes before fully understanding the plot and character motivations can also be seen in the prequels. Compared to the original trilogy, this flaw is more present in the finished films because he largely wrote them himself. The shooting scripts for “Empire” and “Jedi” were collaborations with Lawrence Kasdan, Irvin Kershner and Richard Marquand. But on the prequels, Lucas only worked with one outside writer — Jonathan Hales helped Lucas with the third draft of “Attack of the Clones” – and directed the films himself.
In “Attack of the Clones,” Obi-Wan’s investigation of Kamino and the Republic’s clone-trooper purchase seems like it was borne out of Lucas dreaming up big ideas (rain-drenched Kamino as a setting for a noir mystery) more so than understanding how the plot would fit together. The same goes for the Anakin-Padme romance – which is only slightly less shallow than the Annikin-Leia romance in “The Star Wars” — and Anakin’s fall to dark side in “Revenge of the Sith.” I imagine Lucas envisioned the iconography of Anakin bowing down before Palpatine and gave less thought to the character motivations that brought him to that point.
So yeah, Lucas’ approach to writing has its technical flaws. But we’ve always known that his childlike imagination is his biggest contribution. When it’s paired with a great team who he’s willing to work with, like on “Empire” and “Jedi” and “The Clone Wars” TV series, we get “Star Wars” in its most perfect form. (Of course, “A New Hope” is pretty perfect too, and he wrote and directed that himself. I chalk it up to a bit of divine magic.)
“The Star Wars” presents Lucas’ imagination in its raw, unfettered state, and I applaud him for allowing us into that flawed and beautiful world via Rinzler and Mayhew.