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Look on page 117 of the PDF (the paper says 113): > Vader: You're very good, Luke. But I'm twenty years older and stronger than you in the use of the Force. Yo
by PotatoPancakes 3y ago
Look on page 117 of the PDF (the paper says 113):
> Vader: You're very good, Luke. But I'm twenty years older and stronger than you in the use of the Force. You haven't a chance with me... any more than your father had.
This draft was written before they came up with the idea that Vader could actually be Luke's father!
- beebmam 3y agoI love that the Star Wars Holiday Special was probably written before this, making it even more canon than what The Empire Strikes Back eventually became.
- saghm 3y agoHonestly, what strikes me about this line isn't even that Vader isn't Luke's father, but how wordy he is. I imagine they didn't spend too much time on phrasing and instead just tried to capture the gist with the expectation of polishing later, but even with the James Earl Jones's trademark slow, menacing Vader drawl, this just feels like it would sound weirdly verbose coming from Vader, especially in the middle of a fight.
- caslon 3y agoMuch of what you actually see in Empire is written by entirely different people. > George Lucas initially hired Leigh Brackett, the sci-fi novelist who also wrote screenplays for Howard Hawks—including The Big Sleep (1946)—to write the sequel to Star Wars (1977). Brackett died in March 1978 while the film was still in pre-production, though, and Lucas wasn't satisfied with her script. Lucas wrote the next draft himself, which established structure and twists close to the final film, but suffered from dialogue. When Kasdan delivered his script for Raiders, Lucas asked him to rewrite The Empire Strikes Back. Kasdan suggested he read Raiders first, but Lucas reportedly said: "If I hate Raiders, I'll call you up tomorrow and cancel this offer, but basically I get a feeling about people."[9] Brackett was a sci-fi author, Kasdan was a screenwriter by trade. Despite seeming like similar tasks, screenwriting and book-writing actually have pretty distinct skillsets in some ways.
- nyrath 3y agoLeigh Brackett also wrote the screenplays for The Big Sleep (1946), Rio Bravo (1959), and The Long Goodbye (1973)
- detourdog 3y agoThe Big Sleep has the reputation for making no sense/convoluted plot. I enjoy it.
- topato 3y agoAn excellent detective novel as well. Loved it in high school.
- neaden 3y agoThat wasn't Brackett's fault, Chandler famously said he didn't know who killed the chauffeur. Like many of his novels The Big Sleep was made by combining two or more of his short stories, and sometimes things didn't make sense.
- detourdog 3y agoNice detail. I really enjoy the movie scene for scene and it had to be pointed out to me that it makes no sense. I suppose that is the magic of movies. The suspension of disbelief.
- pinewurst 3y agoAlso the very good post-nuclear holocaust novel, The Long Tomorrow (1955) which is a personal favorite.
- SilasX 3y agoYeah, it immediately stood out to me how the final film leans so much more toward “show, don’t tell”. Vader doesn’t have to tell you how powerful he is! He just quips “Impressive” and goes on give Luke a smackdown. “All too easy.”
- Modified3019 3y agoYou can experience a verbose Vader for real, thanks to Auralnauts bringing Zack Snyder’s vision to the Star Wars franchise: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=J9X_FmCbrIA https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=J9X_FmCbrIA
- fbdab103 3y agoOh the slow mo of Vader entering the room had me burst out laughing.
- kevingadd 3y agoAs a writer it's not uncommon to have a separate person (sometimes an editor) trim down/punch up dialogue. Dialogue writing is basically a separate skill from prose or screenplay writing, though the best writers are good at it too.
- drewlesueur 3y ago"strikes", "polish"... great word choice here.
- bluejekyll 3y agoWhat was the relationship then? In a New Hope, it’s known that Anakin was Vader, right? And they knew Luke was Anakin’s his son. Obi wan mentions Anakin being corrupted by Vader. And the fight at the end, Vader now the master, etc. Was it really still a question of Vader and Anakin were different people until the second movie came out?
- Snild 3y ago> In a New Hope, it’s known that Anakin was Vader, right? I don't think it is. At least not that I can remember.
- canjobear 3y agoLucas only came up with the idea that Anakin = Vader after the original Star Wars was out, when he was revising the script for Empire. Before that we were supposed to take Ben Kenobi at face value when he said that Darth Vader betrayed and murdered Luke's father.
- ethbr1 3y agoWow. So basically, if one line of dialog in A New Hope had been less ambiguous as it happened to be written... Vader wouldn't have been Anakin?
- lupusreal 3y agoMore likely it would just be left to the fans to come up with their own justifications for the retcon, like most other inconsistencies in Star Wars.
- hgs3 3y agoI'd say the original already isn't ambiguous: Kenobi directly tells Luke that Vader murdered his Father. The "from a certain point of view" scene had to be added in ROTJ to explain away the retcon.
- canjobear 3y ago
- cryptoz 3y agoI haven't read the script but, couldn't that be interpreted the same way it would be in the movies today? That is, the idea that Vader 'killed' Anakin by converting him to the dark side; Anakin is gone and now Vader exists - so different that the identity is different.
- fbdab103 3y agoHow much of an original script survives to filming? I assume that huge swaths of dialog gets reworked as more people can workshop the scene and get a sense of characters/timing/whatever.
- cocacola1 3y agoIt depends on the film. George Lucas was reworking dialogue and scenes daily while filming the original Star Wars but the overall movie should mostly be set in stone by that time. But big changes can happen. For example, Ben Kenobi was initially supposed to survive the battle with Vader. It wasn’t until filming was already underway that Lucas, at Marcia Lucas’s suggestion, decided to kill him off.
- WalterBright 3y ago"Vader" actually means "father"
- throw_m239339 3y ago> "Vader" actually means "father" In what language? Isn't it "Vater" in German?
- WalterBright 3y agoDutch is Vader. In German, it's Vater.
- djur 3y agoNot with that pronunciation. The prequels (with "Darth Sidious") make the "invader" source clear.
- WalterBright 3y agoAmericans pronounce a lot of foreign words wrongly. Making up something 20 years after the fact is not compelling :-/
- djur 3y ago"Vader" = "father" is equally made up, considering that the character was not originally anyone's father. It's a fun coincidence, nothing more.
- philwelch 3y agoI believe the actual shooting script for ESB omitted Vader’s admission that he was Luke’s father; the replacement line was “No, Obi-Wan killed your father”. The actual line, “No, I am your father” was kept secret and only shared with the actors on set when they filmed that specific scene.
- philistine 3y agoNot all the actors. David Prowse, who played Darth Vader had no idea. Only Hamill knew. There were only four people who knew at that point. Lucas, Kasdan, Hamill and Kerschner.