Hacker News Reader

Comment by PotatoPancakes | Hacker News Reader

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!

View on HN

Honestly, 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.

Much 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.

Leigh Brackett also wrote the screenplays for The Big Sleep (1946), Rio Bravo (1959), and The Long Goodbye (1973)

The Big Sleep has the reputation for making no sense/convoluted plot. I enjoy it.

An excellent detective novel as well. Loved it in high school.

That 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.

Nice 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.

Also the very good post-nuclear holocaust novel, The Long Tomorrow (1955) which is a personal favorite.

Yeah, 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.”

You 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

Oh the slow mo of Vader entering the room had me burst out laughing.

As 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.

"strikes", "polish"... great word choice here.

I 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.

I 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.

How 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.

It 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.

What 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?

> 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.

This script is good evidence they made up the connection part way through Empire. Also, if Lucas already had it in mind for Star Wars, I doubt he'd have Obiwan straight up lie about it.

I don't even consider it a straight up lie. I know we have decades of this built into our culture, and its been basically ret-conned, but...

"A young Jedi named Darth Vader, who was a pupil of mine until he turned to evil, helped the Empire hunt down and destroy the Jedi Knights. He betrayed and murdered your father"

I could still see Ben making this metaphor for the internal struggle Anakin dealt with, not wanting to reveal the truth in that setting.

Pretty sure it was as much a part of planning the first episode as his later decision to have Anakin build C3PO. The early Star Wars scripts and materials are all over the map, there was no plan. This script just makes that all the more clear.

I always assumed it was written this way on purpose and thought it was a cool moment. Oh well.

And he's "named" Darth Vader; "Darth" being a title also didn't come until later. Obi-Wan calls him "Darth" like it's his given name.

But the "I am your father" wasn't in the shooting script anyway. The script said "Obi-Wan killed your father", and it was changed to "I am your father when James Earl Jones" said the line for the voice of Vader. Maybe it is that way in subsequent published scripts but not the original.

They didn't trust David Prowse, so the lines were altered in the shooting script. JEJ then recorded the actual lines.

Right... Lucas told Mark Hamill before that scene was filmed so he would ham up his reaction.

And also so that the secret wouldn't get out

Relevant:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ATcaQYh0wPU

Lucas 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.

Wow.

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?

More 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.

I'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.

Ben Kenobi does pause in a pregnant way right before delivering the fateful line. In a way that almost looks like he's thinking about how to hide something. It works perfectly with the later revelation.

For reference: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hFB16GCocfw

It's crazy that essentially the entire Star Wars canon is built on one piece of dialog by Alec Guinness. (Not just Anakin/Vader, but the Force and the events around Order 66)

The face he makes at 0:56 does look like the face of someone who's trying to come up with a lie.

And if you think that's a big deal to introduce a change like that, let's not forget that Lucas' first draft for A New Hope had Luke Skywalker as an elderly general, "Annikin Starkiller" as the protagonist, Chewbacca as a leader of a tribe of Wookies behaving very much like the Ewoks in Return of the Jedi (and a presumably-unrelated human pilot called Chewie!) and Han Solo as a giant green alien...

Taking place on a planet of Wookies would make the Empire losing the ground battle make significantly more sense. Legend has it that it was changed to Ewoks for the kid toy opportunities.

I don't doubt that for a moment, but I think I once heard an interview with Lucas where he explained that, by the time they got to the third movie, Chewbacca had 'become' more intelligent, and that he specifically wanted the empire to be defeated by a 'primitive' people.

Yes, and I’m struggling to imagine why you think it is even implied that they could be the same person, from the first film alone. Could you explain further?

> What was the relationship then? In a New Hope, it’s known that Anakin was Vader, right?

From a certain point of view.

I 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.

Not 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.

"Vader" actually means "father"

> "Vader" actually means "father"

In what language? Isn't it "Vater" in German?

Dutch is Vader.

In German, it's Vater.

Not with that pronunciation. The prequels (with "Darth Sidious") make the "invader" source clear.

Americans pronounce a lot of foreign words wrongly.

Making up something 20 years after the fact is not compelling :-/

"Vader" = "father" is equally made up, considering that the character was not originally anyone's father. It's a fun coincidence, nothing more.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com