46 users responded in this post

Subscribe to this post comment rss or trackback url
mygif
Matt Duarte said on June 18th, 2012 at 4:06 pm

How about “…Han Solo is your father”?

ReplyReply
mygif
The Unstoppable Gravy Express said on June 18th, 2012 at 4:15 pm

“…you are your OWN father.”

And then the third movie is essentially Back to the Future with lightsabers.

ReplyReply
mygif
Gareth Wilson said on June 18th, 2012 at 4:19 pm

My favourite alternate Star Wars is the very early version where Luke is a woman, and there’s no Leia.

ReplyReply
mygif

“R2D2 is your father…”

“Also, your mother was into some really freaky stuff in the bedroom…”

ReplyReply
mygif
Kristopher A. said on June 18th, 2012 at 5:07 pm

Is the first one really a fan-myth? I could swear that’s been confirmed in most documentaries by the actors themselves.

ReplyReply
mygif

I prefer the Roman Polanski version:
“Luke, I am your father.”
WHAP!
“Luke, I am your brother.”
WHAP!
“Your father…”
WHAP!
“Your brother…”
WHAP!

(yeah, yeah, i know; old joke…)

ReplyReply
mygif
Tales of the Boojum said on June 18th, 2012 at 6:36 pm

Back in the days between “Empire” and “Jedi,” there was a magazine (Starlog or Fantastic Films, I think)article that speculated something close to #3 wherein it turns out that Luke is a clone of Darth Vader created to defeat him. But it got weirder: Vader himself was either a clone or the son of the original Luke Skywalker. When Yoda told Ben “there is one other,” he wasn’t referring to Leia, he was referring to Skywalker Prime, long thought dead by Ben and the rest of the galaxy. And what was Skywalker Prime doing during all this time? Protecting and hiding the Jedi Knights — and now Han Solo — disguised as the notorious bounty hunter Boba Fett.

I so wanted to see that movie.

ReplyReply
mygif

The thing that disappointed me most about the prequels?

Remember back on Hoth, when ghost-Ben tells Luke to find Yoda? “There you will learn from Yoda, the Jedi Master who instructed
me.” He gets to Dagobah and summarily dismisses the little gnome he finds there, because “I’m looking for a great warrior.”

The presumption Luke brings to the Jedi is that great = warrior = great. It’s not just that Yoda can’t be the Jedi master he seeks because he’s not great, it’s that a Jedi has to be a warrior. Anger and hate feed the Dark Side. Why wouldn’t a Jedi master also be a pacifist? And if he did have to fight, if Yoda never touched a lightsaber at all, could he still be a Jedi master?

It was very telling to me, even then, that Luke immediately jumped to the “warrior” conclusion all by himself. But it’s more telling, and ultimately disappointing, that Lucas went right along with him.

ReplyReply
mygif

‘…pshquirrrrrr is your father.’

‘Sorry, what? What did you say?’

‘I said rasspquiss is you father.’

‘It’s the mask, and the wind, I can’t quite hear you.’

‘Quisssrrrrrr is your father!’

‘Quisrrr? The guy with the trumpet face?’

‘NO! RSSSPQUIPRRR.’

‘Sheesh, we have flying cars, can zip past millions of stars in seconds, convince women not to wear underwear, but you still have to wear a steam-powered respirator. And what’s with the cloak?’

‘It’s Steampunk, and it’s cool, so fuck off.’

‘It’s bloody cheap.’

‘Right, that’s it, fuck you, and fuck your father… which I did by the way!’

‘Aaaah!’

ReplyReply
mygif
bmaryott said on June 18th, 2012 at 8:12 pm

I recall reading magazines at the time that said David Prowse was given a LOT of fake dialog, because it turned out there were far too many leaks about the first movie that were mostly traced to him. These also said Lucas was claiming he’d make 12 total movies, then changed to 9.

Considering all of Vaders/James Earl Jones lines were done post production, what *I* want is to hear the full raw tracks that he did. ALL of them!

ReplyReply
mygif
Travesty said on June 18th, 2012 at 9:04 pm

“No, Luke, you have TWO fathers.”

ReplyReply
mygif

I recall reading a site, post Phantom Menace but pre Clones, that had a complicated theory that it would turn out that the Anakin of the prequels became the Obi-Wan of the original trilogy, and the Obi-Wan of the prequels became Vader.

It was hinky, but there was some cool stuff in there.

ReplyReply
mygif
NotTheBuddha said on June 18th, 2012 at 11:18 pm

There is no “Luke” in that line.

ReplyReply
mygif

@Matt Duarte: Actually, considering that in a lot of early drafts and right up until Harrison Ford nailed the auditions, the character of (or characters that were eventually composited into) Han Solo was an older, grizzled, cynical veteran type, it would be a good twist if he turned out to be the father of Luke Skywalker and Luke reawakened the idealist in him. Nice one.

@NotTheBuddha: Pfft. Pedant. 🙂

ReplyReply
mygif
Brian T. said on June 18th, 2012 at 11:28 pm

I would have settled for a version where Yoda and Obi-Wan didn’t know everybody except Han and Lando already. Stupid prequels…

Anyway, is the Jedi Bendu script site still a thing? Some of the stuff from the rejected earlier drafts is pretty darn interesting. Such as General Luke Skywalker, a grumpy old guy with a beard who I imagined as what you might get if Sean Connery had played Ben Kenobi instead of Alec Guinness, or Tarkin being more like Ming the Merciless.

Some of the stuff wasn’t so good, such as Star Destroyers being two-man fighters but still… You could take the cool bits from the first two versions of the script and make what would amount to a much more awesome version of “The Phantom Menace” (replacing annoying little kid Anakin with Anikin Starkiller, twentysomething Jedi bad ass with Qui-Gon Jinn’s hairstyle).

That’s the “What if?” I would like to see. Instead of making a dumbed-down kids’ movie that goes out of its way to recycle story beats from “A New Hope” while simultaneously peeing all over things we loved about the original trilogy, what if Lucas had gone back to the first draft and adapted it faithfully? Then he would have made a crazy, pulpy action story about a bunch of Jedi trying to break into an Evil Overlord’s lair with some help from alien allies people could take seriously.

Obviously, Lucas would have had to change some of the names and stuff but it would have been awesome for people like me who read too much Seventies-era science fiction and fantasy as kids.

Instead of Jar-Jar, we’d get to see a lot more people fighting with lightsabers and people riding giant birds and other cool junk like that.

In this version, Anakin would be a fully trained adult (beard optional) trying to rescue a different princess (go ahead and call her Padme) after the bad guys killed his father and his brothers, and the Jedi would be quirky guys and gals who would be at home hanging out with the Seven Samurai instead of a bunch of boring, stoic monks. Doesn’t that sound at least a little better?

ReplyReply
mygif
bryan Rasmussen said on June 19th, 2012 at 1:00 am

‘Chewbacca is your father’

damn, now I have to acquit.

ReplyReply
mygif
Tim O'Neil said on June 19th, 2012 at 1:16 am

“no apparent purpose” – Anakin was not fatherless, he was created by Darth Plagueis. This was explained in EP III – why does no one ever remember that.

ReplyReply
mygif

Lucas gave an interview to Dynamite magazine (I swear to god this was an actual magazine) in late 1977, where he talked about how he had nine movies planned out, with Star Wars being the 4th in the sequence. He mentioned that the climax of the 3rd movie was going to be Obi-Wan confronting Vader in a big lightsaber fight that left Vader unable to survive outside his suit.

For all the faults of the prequel trilogy – and there were so damn many – I have to say that, silly dialogue aside, the Kenobi/Vader fight at the end of Episode 3 lived up to three decades of expectations.

ReplyReply
mygif
DensityDuck said on June 19th, 2012 at 3:42 am

“you have no father!”

(and then Darth Vader takes off his helmet and it’s Mark Hamill in old-guy makeup.)

Woulda been pretty sweet, and entirely in keeping with the general theme of sci-fi movies from the late Seventies time period.

ReplyReply
mygif
highlyverbal said on June 19th, 2012 at 3:42 am

@Prodigal: “…the Kenobi/Vader fight at the end of Episode 3 lived up to three decades of expectations.”

Nonsense…

Obi-Wan: It’s over, Anakin! I have the high ground.

Anakin: You under-estimate my power!

Obi-Wan: Don’t try it!

======

The abrupt, sudden tactical advantage of the “high ground” was as well-developed and motivated as metachlorians.

ReplyReply
mygif
Wolfthomasq said on June 19th, 2012 at 4:16 am

My personal favourite crazy Star Wars theory was the idea that Obi Wan = 0B1, that the old jedi master in a New Hope was a clone of the Ben Kenobi who would be introduced in the prequels.

ReplyReply
mygif

@ highlyverbal
My biggest problem with the Episode 3 battle between Obi and Anakin? Those droids they jump on on the lava lake.

“Whoa. Some guy just jumped on me! Oh well, better just keep hovering and keep … mining this lava, or whatever the hell I’m supposed be doing.”

ReplyReply
mygif

Anakin was not fatherless, he was created by Darth Plagueis. This was explained in EP III – why does no one ever remember that.

Because it requires an extra character who is never seen and is named/introduced late in the game. (I like the idea that Anakin has a Sith for a father who wiped Shmi’s mind, but the only way to make that work from a dramatic point of view is to make Palapatine the father.)

ReplyReply
mygif

I think the biggest problem with the prequels is that there was more than one of them. Specifically, Lucas stretched the story into three movies, because the original Star Wars was a trilogy or just for the money or who knows why, when there was a decent story there for one epic movie that turned to shit when he put too much extra stuff in it.

The events of The Phantom Menace could have been covered in 15 minutes, tops. A routine mission goes awry for Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan, they sense great potential in the slave (this isn’t on Tattooine, that’s stupid), and take him with them when they go. Scene. Padmé could be introduced here, maybe, but doesn’t need too much development. The idea of an elected, teenaged queen can’t stand much scrutiny.

Attack of the Clones could have been reduced to half an hour. Obi-Wan investigates separatists. It’s a more important assignment than usual, and we get to see that Anakin is reckless, that he has a budding relationship which is contrary to Jedi policy, and that the war is brewing, but the plot so far is still just a Jedi going on a mission, as they do. This might be the only place I’d change things: I’d have Palpatine helping Obi-Wan somehow, rather than just giving Anakin relationship advice.

And I’d leave Revenge of the Sith mostly unchanged, although I’m sure they could edit out 20 minutes somehow. We don’t need the the whole Kashhhhhhyk battle or the ham-handedness. But the basic plot stands: the Jedi and clones combined win the war for the Republic, but Anakin does very bad things for love and loses his soul in the process, and we learn that Palpatine has been directing both sides, so that he’s an absolute ruler no matter who wins.

Now, at 165 minutes, that would have been a long movie, but not all that long. A little longer than The Avengers or The Dark Knight, but shorter than Braveheart or any of the Lord of the Rings movies, it’s well within what audiences would put up with for a good story. A director who was interested in quality foremost and willing to experiment and slaughter some sacred cows could have made a great epic movie out of that. Too bad that hasn’t described Lucas in my lifetime, if it ever did.

tl;dr version: The prequels would actually be a really great movie if you gloss over or edit out the Gungans, the podrace, General Grievous, the pathetically melodramatic parts of the love story, the ridiculously simplistic politics, the gratuitous continuity nods, and the Gungans.

ReplyReply
mygif
The Unstoppable Gravy Express said on June 19th, 2012 at 9:55 am

…and flying R2D2, and Watto, and Obi-Wan’s Snuffalupagus thing, and “NNOOOOOOOOO!!!”, and Darth Maul’s fatal brain cramp, and the plot, and the dialogue, and most of the acting, and the cramming all the CGI into every shot, and the Gungans.

Maybe the prequels would have been better to go back even farther… the really really early Jedi days, with a whole new slate of characters that we wouldn’t already know the fates of… and then only in E3 do we start to see the roots of E4-6, like Li’l Obi-Wan or Teen Yoda, and the Big Events referred back to in E4-6 are left nicely offstage where they always belonged.

ReplyReply
mygif
Brian T. said on June 19th, 2012 at 12:59 pm

For some reason, things I have seen online have gotten me thinking a lot about the prequels lately and I think the basic problem for me boils down to this: it was disappointing to find out that every important thing alluded to in the original trilogy happened during Obi-Wan’s lifetime.

As a kid back in the Seventies and Eighties, I imagined this sprawling epic that took place over hundreds or even thousands of years, with the emperor’s rise to power being this mind shatteringly awesome tragedy that took a long time.

Okay, part of that was that I somehow got the idea (from Star Wars trivia on a Happy Meal box or a trading card or something that turned out to be wrong, probably) that Obi-Wan was several hundred years old and not just old enough to collect the Empire’s version of Social Security. But still… Alec Guinness talking about things that happened “a long time ago” sounded more interesting before I found out he really meant “forty or fifty years ago, when I still looked like Ewan MacGregor.”

The prequels, among many other things to complain about, retroactively make some of the dialogue from “A New Hope” retroactively dumb. Those Imperial officers who didn’t believe in the Force? Just a bunch of jerks who deserved to get slapped around by Darth Vader, since they were alive when Episode III was happening. Han Solo talking about “myths and legends” is lame now for similar reasons.

It would be kind of like somebody talking about Ronald Reagan and having some punk kid with his hat on backwards acting like Reagan was a fairy tale character who never actually existed.

I still have a hard wrapping my brain around the idea that the Empire run by the evil Palpatine got its official start right before Luke and Leia were born. That isn’t a whole lot of time to establish all that infrastructure, somehow convince most people that the Force isn’t real, start talking about the Force like it’s a religious thing, and get people motivated enough to form the Rebel Alliance.

Hitler needed less time than that to go from being a popular politician to herding people into death camps, so I guess twenty years is feasible. But it’s a lot less fun than imagining Clone Wars that happened long enough ago for the details to be completely forgotten and start being treated like myths.

Especially since the clones were just the Stormtroopers. Which seriously takes the fun out of the whole idea of “Clone Wars.” Any ideas we came up with when we were younger about cloned slaves rebelling, or influential leaders being replaced by doppelgangers or whatever can now never happen.

Basically, this is my long-winded way of agreeing with Cyrus. Everything we really needed to know about Anakin could have been covered in one better-written movie. Which would leave the next two films to concentrate on making the Clone Wars both more awesome and more consistent with the tone of the original trilogy.

Or, Lucas could have done something along the lines of what Unstoppable Gravy Express suggested. The first two movies could have been about new characters (or at least, mostly new characters) with the stuff tying into “A New Hope” happening in the third one.

tl;dr version: “Phantom Menace” was a complete waste of everybody’s time. It made sense to do one movie about Anakin when he was still a good guy and one showing how he became Darth Vader, but the first movie should have been about Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan trying to stop Palpatine from taking over the universe, not “pod racing Ani helps fight some bad guys.”

ReplyReply
mygif

@Cyrus: That’s pretty much what Topher Grace did with his edit of the prequels.

ReplyReply
mygif
Mark Temporis said on June 19th, 2012 at 5:41 pm

…Jar-Jar is your father.
What could be a better reason to turn to the dark side than Anakin finding his true love Padme in flagrante with his childhood friend?

Being sentient beings who share the same planet, I’m sure the Naboo humans and Gungans have gotten together PLENTY of times.

ReplyReply
mygif

4) “…Tarkin was your father.”

And Luke and the audience both squint, and go, “Who?”

“The guy on the Death Star. In the last movie. He died.”

“Wait, weren’t you talking to him, earlier? On your spaceship?”

“What? No, that’s a totally different guy.”

“The English guy with the hat.”

“They all have the hat!”

ReplyReply
mygif
cole1114 said on June 19th, 2012 at 9:22 pm

Luke rescues his father, brings him on board the rebellion capital ship… and he promptly stabs Leia in the gut with his lightsaber. He’s evil, turned to the dark side after years of torture. He duels Luke on the bridge of the Rebellion capital ship as Han rushes Leia to the medbay. And then stuff happens.

ReplyReply
mygif

@highlyverbal: I had already conceded that the dialogue was bad in the part that you chose to leave out when quoting me, so the only thing that was nonsense was you telling me that the fight didn’t live up to my expectations.

ReplyReply
mygif
Soulless Merchant of Fear said on June 19th, 2012 at 9:52 pm

“Obi-Wan never told you what happened to your father…and neither will I.”

Darth Vader: King of the Dick Move.

ReplyReply
mygif

I’m sure that the David Prowse being told the wrong lines and being a source of leaks was in the official commentary documentary that came with the digital re-releases. Carrie Fisher remembers referring to Prowse as Darth Farmer on set because of his accent.

Of course, David Prowse apparently doesn’t even get his any residuals from ROTJ because apparently that film never made a profit (http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110912/13500315912/hollywood-accounting-darth-vader-not-getting-paid-because-return-jedi-still-isnt-profitable.shtml). Prowse has been treated quite badly by LucasArts in a number of ways.

ReplyReply
mygif
Gustopher said on June 20th, 2012 at 12:34 pm

The Robot Chicken version of the line will stick with me forever. “I am your father. Also, I built C-3PO…”

And the only version of the prequels that I have watched in the past few years is the Silent Movie Fanedit. Each movie, 40 minutes long, the great music, and all the terrible, terrible dialog replaced by cards with better dialog.

ReplyReply
mygif

Did Lucas say he overdubbed that crucial line, so nobody knew it on set? I could swear I remember Kershner telling us that he requested the actual line because he wanted to get Hamill’s reaction.

(Not that he requested the line itself, just that he requested its delivery. Maybe it hadn’t been written down, like Nolan didn’t write down the ending to TDKR? I really should have asked.)

Kersh’s favorite lines were
She: “I love you.”
He: “I know.”

ReplyReply
mygif

To return to the original premise in a more serious way (What? I can do serious).

‘Luke, your father was just a farmer who signed up to fight. I didn’t know his name, I didn’t see his face. I led the Empires defence against a foolish attack by the rebels – they were under-armed and ill-prepared. Your father fought alongside Obi Wan that day, but had he been born within the Empire he could so easily have been fighting beside me. He died in a pointless battle for a minor world, just one soldier amongst countless others. Obi Wan talked much of your father in his interrogation, slipped him like a knife between my ribs. I learnt they were friends, that he had a farm, a wife, a son. Your father was a brave man, but he was just a man. *You’re* special though, Luke. You have power beyond even the Emperors reckoning. Come with me now and I can make amends.’

ReplyReply
mygif
Snap Wilson said on June 20th, 2012 at 9:32 pm

Allow me to give you the single-parent child re-write of this:

VADER: If you only knew the power of the dark side. Obi-Wan never told you what happened to your father.

LUKE: He told me enough! He told me you killed him.

VADER: No. I am your father.

LUKE: Oh, bullshit!

VADER: Search your feelings. You know it to be true.

LUKE: Let’s say it’s true. So what? I had a father, his name was Owen, and he did all the hard work of raising me and making me into the man I am today, and now I feel like kind of an asshole for always wanting to be somewhere else. You? You just stuck your prick in my mother and took off to become the galaxy’s greatest asshole. Sure, I’m a little pissed that Ben lied to me, but the alternative was, ‘your father is the greatest threat in the galaxy and blows up inhabited planets for the hell of it,’ so I’m willing to cut him some slack. I don’t hear from your for 22 years(*) and now you show up and want to call yourself my father? Bullshit. I wish I still had both hands so I could flip you the double-bird on the way down, but one will have to do.

(*)I looked it up.

ReplyReply
mygif
Brian T. said on June 21st, 2012 at 1:36 am

Well done, HrolfK and Snap Wilson.

I would have been much happier if Lucas had stuck to the original idea that Anakin and Vader were literally two different guys.

In “A New Hope”, Vader was just a “fixer” the Emperor used to deal with problems and that was fine by me. I never felt like I was missing out on anything because I didn’t know his full backstory. He hated Obi-Wan and killed Luke’s father. That was enough for me. I didn’t need all the Darth Vader as failed messiah/real star of the series stuff to make me think the guy with the cool costume and the red lightsaber was awesome.

ReplyReply
mygif
Mark Temporis said on June 21st, 2012 at 6:36 am

Snap Wilson: Yours is awesome. Adopted kids real parents are the ones who raise them; anything else is nice to know but largely irrelevant in the scheme of things IMO.

ReplyReply
mygif
philippos42 said on June 21st, 2012 at 6:39 am

Anyone else seen Aaron Diaz’s Star Wars: 1999 reboot idea? He largely mocks the myth of Lucas as sole creator of Star Wars, points out that other people did the production of Empire Strikes Back.

http://dresdencodak.tumblr.com/post/23052633233/previous-sw-1999-posts-here-and-here-thisll-be

ReplyReply
mygif

I like Snap Wilsons angle.

With mine I was trying to remove the inheritance and ‘chosen one’ nonsense, and have Luke the dumb rope in a pointless tug of war.
Ben gave Anakin life in Vaders mind to play on his conscience – this has worked and now Vader wants to make amends. Whether Anakin ever really existed, or if Luke is really Anakins son is a moot point – Ben saw his opportunity, and is just using Luke to get at Vader.
Vader in turn only wants to use Luke to salve his own conscience, to absolve him of all the casual destruction he’s wrought.
None of it has anything to do with what is best for Luke, which is why Yoda is reluctant to go along with Bens plan.
Hell, you could throw in the possibility Luke isn’t special at all – that he has no more power with the Force than anyone else who put in the practise. It’s all a lie to make Luke a weapon. As Han said – ‘No mystical energy field controls *my* destiny’. The lying, untrustworthy, out for his own ends, crook, Han, is the only one who has been honest with him.

Empire is about Luke being torn apart by various sides for their own ends – neither interested in the truth, or Luke, or even the galaxy.
Jedi is him growing up, rejecting both sides, finding his own way, actually becoming a weapon in ways Ben didn’t expect, opposed as much to his plans as the Empire – a true rebel.
He understands now his father was Owen, the person who raised him, and the film ends with him back at the farm, at peace – away, if only briefly, from the wider galaxy nonsense, visiting his real parents graveside, now a man.

ReplyReply
mygif

This exists, you know. It’s called Star Wars Infinities.

ReplyReply
mygif

@Sigma7: I have the same problem, in reverse. I was always hoping we’d find out that Luke never actually met Yoda, and the puppet was just some swamp charlatan.

ReplyReply
mygif
Jishosan said on July 21st, 2012 at 11:29 pm

I always imagine the possibility that they aren’t related at all.

LUKE: I’ll never join you!
VADER: Look..Luke, it was Luke, right? I’m not really sure why we’re even fighting. I am really busy crushing a Rebellion, and this is tying up my afternoon.
LUKE: Obi-Wan told me..he told me you killed my father!
VADER: Did I? What was his name?
LUKE: Anakin.
VADER: No, not ringing any bells.
LUKE: Anakin SKYWALKER?
VADER: Skywalker? Hrm. Really, no, nothing. Not coming to me.
LUKE: He was a great Jedi warrior!
VADER: Look, I’ve killed a LOT of “great” Jedi warriors. And honestly, if he was a cruddy Jedi warrior, I certainly doubt Obi-Wan would have said so anyway. Normally I’d be all for this dark vengeance thing, turning you to the Dark Side and such, but really, there are Rebel scum EVERYWHERE these days, and I’m really too busy for an apprentice.
LUKE: I won’t rest until ONE OF US IS DEAD!
VADER: Right, suit yourself.
*Cuts off Luke’s other hand and pushes him over the edge*

ReplyReply
mygif
NewtypeS3 said on August 27th, 2012 at 6:57 pm

Honestly, I always figured that the “Clone Wars” were about Jedi being cloned, trained to be Sith Warriors, and then sicked on the actual Jedi they were cloned from (and the Republic, by proxy). Armies of evil Jedi, killing everything in their path with waves of Force Lightning and thrown lightsabers.

That said, you could certainly have the Clone Army of the actual Clone Wars being the footsoldiers of these Jedi Clones. At the very least, then we could still have the Stormtroopers running around and establishing the roots of the Empire.

Also, I figured Ben was much much older, as many above me have said. Maybe Anakin Skywalker was the last of the ‘really strong’ Jedi left, with Vader being his clone duplicate. Thus, we have a different twist on ‘NO… I AM YOUR FATHER’ while also being true to that line in the first place.

Or not. Whichever.

ReplyReply
mygif
Rosie Powell said on July 12th, 2015 at 11:50 am

Are you saying that “STAR WARS” became a big mess because Lucas had decided that Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader were one and the same?

I don’t even understand this reasoning.

ReplyReply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Please Note: Comment moderation may be active so there is no need to resubmit your comments