#bts tidbits

... and George Lucas changed that, even though the whole set had already been built!

Why? Because he specifically didn't want the Jedi - and more specifically, Mace - to come across as squares, mired in bureaucracy and protocol.

Like, forget that Anakin gets to pull a Reverse Uno card on Obi-Wan's sass from Episode II...

... look at how it's written!

"Only in your mind *PERIOD* My Master."

Anakin fucking pauses for better effect before unleashing THE most sarcastic "My Master" in galactic history!

He's taking the time to savor his revenge and because this little shit knows Obi's not his Master anymore and he knows Obi will be triggered and will instantly remind him of that and he does it anyway.

I mean if it were shown on screen it'd be like:

Okay, folks (or single person who messaged me three times) I'm finally talking about this XD !

I got no official answer.

That said, here's a few points that I do think merit consideration, and I haven't really seen them mentioned anywhere.

1. Anakin is more regretful in the script.

If you look at how the scene is portrayed in the Attack of the Clones July 2001 draft of the screenplay, in Scene 118, pages 83-84...

... he's sorry and ashamed. He is in absolute shock of what he did. We get a bit of this, in the film...

... but in the script it's much more explicit. It starts out with him lashing out at Obi-Wan, at his own lack of power, but it ends with him breaking down and just apologizing over and over.

He didn't just kill them, he went Wolverine-style berseker and murdered EVERYTHING in his path, and he's thinking back on it with a clear-ish head now and realizing the gravity of his monstrous act.

When it's on paper, it reads very differently, to me. He's more remorseful, so Padmé's reaction makes more sense.

But there's a big difference between what you write in a script and what comes out in the film. Once you're shooting, myriad other factors come into play. So Anakin's dialog changes as the delivery and the rhythm are narrowed down, the beats in the scene shift around... but Padmé's reaction stays the same.

And that's where you get the disconnect.

Because what sticks with the audience more is this moment, now.

The anger. Not the shock and remorse.

So why the change? Well, George Lucas had this to say:

"He's very unhappy about that. Very sad and depressed. There was some dialogue here before that I took out, because it seemed to get in the way of the emotional moment of this scene where she says, "To be angry is to be human," and he says, "But to control your anger is to be a Jedi." And so that issue was actually laid out in dialogue at one point, and I decided to pull back from it... because it seemed to me that it was pretty obvious that was what was there. And I didn't think I needed to state it quite as boldly as I did. And that issue will come up at a later time, and I just felt it took away from the moment of his sadness. And I thought the sadness pretty much said the same thing without words." - AotC, Commentary Track #2, 2002

The reasoning was: too much dialog takes away from emotion.

An audience member will have a stronger emotional reaction from Anakin crying than Anakin crying while screaming "woe is me!"

I get (and generally agree) with the reasoning. But, personally, I have mixed feelings about this particular artistic choice.

On the one hand... if the intent is to show that Anakin made a big mistake and is sorry and sad because of his actions, then I think it's safe to say that it's not what most people took away.

Which then leads to things like John Ostrander writing Anakin as thinking he'd kill them all over again.

Also, it makes the viewer question the wisdom of Padmé's judgment.

But on the other hand... whether Anakin was feeling apologetic or not, he still did it. He still effectively massacred a whole tribe, he made that choice.

And whether the intent in that specific scene is conveyed efficiently or not, Anakin's character flaws (which the Prequels are really about) aren't really impacted and still tie together perfectly.

The only real change to that scene is that Padmé goes from having a more understandable reaction to "missing a lot of red flags".

2. Padmé thinks she can fix Anakin.

Here's what Natalie Portman had to say on the scene, which I think is an interesting take.

"She's this very powerful woman, and I think Padmé is sort of intrigued by this darker side she sees to him, especially because she's such a person who tries to fix everything. She sees problems in the world and she still has that idealistic passion… to think she can change everything, and she can change people who have darkness to them. And she sees goodness in him. She sees this passion. And she sees that there's a lot of anger in that passion, that it's not just the goodness and purity of her passion. So I think that is definitely attractive for her- that there's something that she can try and help heal or mend. That might be a big surprise for her when she can't." - Natalie Portman, AotC, Commentary Track #2, 2002

A part of Padmé is intrigued by Anakin's darker side, the "handsome bad boy" part... but that's coming from a place of "I can change him".

But the only thing that can change Anakin... is Anakin himself. Unfortunately, he keeps:

indulging his darker selfish impulses because he lacks discipline, acting on emotion despite knowing better,

regretting it for a moment and acknowledging that it was wrong,

starting again, never learning from his mistakes.

"Once, under the wise rule of the Senate and the protection of the Jedi Knights, the Republic throve and grew."

"But as often happens when wealth and power pass beyond the admirable and attain the awesome, then appear those evil ones who have greed to match."

"So it was with the Republic at its height. Like the greatest of trees, able to withstand any external attack, the Republic was rotted from within though the danger was not visible from outside. Aided and abetted by restless, power-hungry individuals within the government, and the massive organs of commerce, the ambitious Senator Palpatine caused himself to be elected President of the Republic..."

"He had slowly manipulated things; in fact, it was he who let the bureaucracy run amok and therefore had blackmailed the Senate into doing things because he was the only one who really had any power over the bureaucracy."

"It was so large there was no way to get things done, but he knew the right people; the key people in the bureaucracy were working for him and were paid by the companies."

"He promised to unite the disaffected among the people and to restore the remembered glory of the Republic."

"Anakin Skywalker starting hanging out with the Emperor, who at this point nobody knew was that bad, because he was an elected official."

"Luke’s father gets subverted by the Emperor. He gets a little weird at home, and his wife begins to figure out that things are going wrong...

... and she confides in Ben, who is his mentor."

"The president is turning into an Emperor and Luke’s mother suspects that something has happened to her husband."

"There was a rebellion in terms of the Senate against the Emperor...

... they tried to oust him legally and have him impeached."

"The Jedi Knights were alerted immediately and they rallied to the Senate’s side."

"But there was a plot afoot and when the Jedi finally rallied and tried to restore order, they were betrayed and eventually killed by Darth Vader."

"They trusted him and they didn't realize he was the murderer who was decimating their ranks."

"The Emperor had some strong forces rally behind him, as well, in terms of the army and the Imperial forces that he'd been building up secretly.

"The Jedi were so outnumbered...

...that they fled, and were tracked down."

"Once secure in office he declared himself Emperor, shutting himself away from the populace."

"[Ben] goes back to Vader’s wife and explains that Anakin is the bad guy, the one killing all the Jedi."

"Anakin gets worse and worse, and finally Ben has to fight him."

"Vader is all beat up [...] his other arm goes and his leg and there is hardly anything left of him by the time the Emperor’s troops fish him out."

"Mrs. Skywalker has had the kids, the twins, so she has these two little babies who are six months old or so. So everybody has to go into hiding."

"Ben says, 'I think we should protect the kids, because they may be able to help us right the wrong that your husband has created in the universe'."

"And so Ben takes one and gives him to a couple out there on Tatooine and he gets his little hideout in the hills and he watches him grow."

I changed the order of some of it and had to use some deleted scenes but, all in all, I'd say what we got was pretty similar to what was originally thought out.

Obviously, most of it is shown in Episode III.

And it tracks, seeing as at Celebration III, George detailed that:

only 20% of his 7-page backstory was used for TPM (to lay the political groundwork, show how Palpatine rose to power and establish how Anakin joined the Jedi),

then 20% for AOTC (to show how Palpatine became a glorified dictator and how Anakin lost his mother and married Padmé),

and the remaining 60% is what was shown in ROTS (showing how the Republic becomes the Empire, how Palpatine becomes the Emperor and how Anakin became Vader).

Also I will point out that the bulk of the backstory material we’ve been shown is mainly oriented towards the political intrigue... Anakin's subplot is a close second. The Jedi aren't mentioned THAT much beyond trying to save the Senate and getting wiped out.

Sources:

Preface of Star Wars novelization, 1976

Story conferences with Carol Titleman, 1977 (transcribed in The Making of Star Wars, 2007)

1. Yoda probing the Dark Side.

In an earlier draft of the Attack of the Clones screenplay, Scene 51 (which I've already talked about here) ends with this comment by Mace, where he explains what Yoda is doing up in his quarters, followed up by Scene 52, showing Yoda meditating:

And it turns out, this is actually a mini plot point in this draft!

Since Qui-Gon's death, the Jedi are actually on the lookout for the remaining Sith Lord, waiting to sense even a trace of him... but then this happens.

And, like, nobody saw it coming! What the hell!

So that leads to this other cut scene (originally set right after Obi-Wan tells Anakin that Padmé "was happy to see us"), Scene 12, which features an evening conversation between Mace Windu and Yoda.

When Yoda says "the dark side of the Force clouds everything", that's not just an expression to say 'he doesn't know'.

The Dark Side has tainted everything around the Jedi, and THAT'S why the Sith have an advantage. Because they're used to it. They were 'born in the dark, molded by it'.

As a result... in this situation, they're the only ones who can foresee the possibilities of the future, while the Jedi are pretty much walking blind, in a fog.

It's not just that the Sith Lord is a master politician and the Jedi are politically inept. It's that, right now, he's the only one who can truly see the future and roll with it, while the only thing the Jedi can do is go forward, have their guard up and hope for the best.

Which a concept explored in the non-canon comic Sithisis from Star Wars: Visionaries (which, if I recall, was created by Derek Thompson after his regular interactions with George Lucas and a 45-minute interview with Ian McDiarmid)!

2. "Sifo-Dyas", aka Sidious

Okay, so some of y'all probably already knew this tidbit. I did, but didn't know it was in this draft of the script so it was a fun surprise:

Sifo-Dyas was originally a pseudonym used by Darth Sidious.

Throughout the script, his name is spelled "Sido-Dyas" (which sounds a lot more like "Sidious").

And when it comes to the mysterious Sido-Dyas, the Jedi talk about him like they've never heard of him before and full-on say he's an imposter.

At some point, there ended up being a typo in the scene where Obi-Wan talks to Lama Su, and the word was mispelled "Sifo-Dyas" and eventually Lucas decided to make him a different character.

Also the Tyranus who hired Jango Fett is referred to as "Darth Tyranus", in this draft, which I guess was changed because it was gonna be to obvious.

But it does indicate that after TPM, they concluded that Darth Maul was the Master, not the Apprentice.

3. Are Yoda and Padmé friends...?

Okay so there's this moment here:

Yoda taps Padmé with his cane!

Thus CONFIRMING that poking/tapping/hitting people with his cane is Yoda's love language!

Seconds later, there's also this line where Yoda tells Padmé to reign the selflessness and politics back and accept their help:

First off, I'm just picturing Padmé just casually kneeling so she can be at Yoda-height and I'm dying!

But also, like... he calls her "Padmé". They're on a first-name basis!

To me, that's gotta be an implication that in the 10 years between TPM and AOTC... I dunno, Padmé visited the Temple while Anakin was off-planet or just met Yoda at a meeting, and now they've formed a bond and they're pals.

If that's the case, then their Ilum mission in Clone Wars (2003) takes a whole new aspect.

And if we're rolling with this idea... how much of Padmé did Yoda see in Luke?? None? Some?

I think it's a case of when Luke is screwing up royally "he's just like Anakin ffs" and then the few times he's actually listening "nice to see you inherited some of your mother's sense!"

Bear in mind, these bits of dialog never made it on the screen but they did make it to the "final" version of the screenplay published in The Art of Attack of the Clones. So if I had to guess the reason for deletion, it was probably for pacing purposes.

Bonus:

Yoda introducing the younglings in his care is such an adorable thing.

Just in general, this scene is great. George Lucas had this to say in the AOTC commentary track:

"This is a chance for me to play with that more mischievous side of his character and get away from the 'official, serious Yoda' that ends up [...] on the Jedi Council, where he really isn't allowed to be as fun and tease people. In this environment with the kids, he's able to lighten up a little bit, which I really wanted to do for his character. It's much more what his character is in the other movies, especially in Empire Strikes Back."

But also... like Yoda is hyping up the younglings! Is that a thing?

Did Dooku & Yoda have competitions and introduce their respective clans like hype men? I'm picturing a scene where Yoda's like:

Yoda: "To a competition, the mighty Bear Clan challenges the Thranta Clan!" Bear Clan younglings: "GROOAAAAH!"

And Dooku is like:

Dooku: "The gallant Thranta Clan is ready to clean the floors with the Bear Clan whenever you want!" Thranta Clan younglings: *POSE MAJESTICALLY*

"Oh man"?! Would Obi-Wan ever say "oh man" George?? Why not "ah geez" or "gosh darn it" while we're at it?!

Jokes aside, yeah, this is obviously stand-in dialog, waiting to be polished and made proper, but still this got a laugh out of me 😁

I'm picturing Ewan getting the lines on the day and saying: "Y-you don't want me to actually say 'oh man', do you George?" and George is casually like: "Oh no, uuuh just say whatever, but y'know that's the basic idea."

"Writing isn't my favorite thing to do. It's just hard." - Entertainment Weekly #654, 2002

Yeah George, we can tell 😂 !

Here’s what George Lucas had to say about the outlines he handed Disney, as he told to Paul Duncan, in 2019, who then reported it in The Star Wars Archives: 1999-2005. I re-ordered some quotes for coherency.

“Episode VII, VIII, and IX would take ideas from what happened after the Iraq War. “Okay, you fought the war, you killed everybody, now what are you going to do?” Rebuilding afterwards is harder than starting a rebellion or fighting the war.”

“The movies are about how Leia — I mean, who else is going to be the leader? — is trying to build the Republic. They still have the apparatus of the Republic but they have to get it under control from the gangsters. That was the main story. It starts out a few years after Return of the Jedi and we establish pretty quickly that there’s this underworld, there are these offshoot stormtroopers who started their own planets, and that Luke is trying to restart the Jedi.”

“He puts the word out, so out of 100,000 Jedi, maybe 50 or 100 are left. The Jedi have to grow again from scratch, so Luke has to find two- and three-year-olds, and train them. It’ll be 20 years before you have a new generation of Jedi. By the end of the trilogy Luke would have rebuilt much of the Jedi, and we would have the renewal of the New Republic, with Leia, Senator Organa, becoming the Supreme Chancellor in charge of everything. So she ended up being the Chosen One.”

“When you win the war and you disband the opposing army, what do they do? The stormtroopers would be like Saddam Hussein’s Ba'athist fighters that joined ISIS and kept on fighting. The stormtroopers refuse to give up when the Republic win. They want to be stormtroopers forever, so they go to a far corner of the galaxy, start their own country and their own rebellion.”

“There’s a power vacuum so gangsters, like the Hutts, are taking advantage of the situation, and there is chaos. The key person is Darth Maul, who had been resurrected in The Clone Wars cartoons — he brings all the gangs together. […] Darth Maul trained a girl, Darth Talon, who was in the comic books, as his apprentice. She was the new Darth Vader, and most of the action was with her. So these were the two main villains of the trilogy. Maul eventually becomes the godfather of crime in the universe because, as the Empire falls, he takes over.”

We also know the films would’ve been about the microcosm of the Force. It would’ve touched on the Whills and *gasp* the midi-chlorians. The dreaded M-word...!

During an interview published in James Cameron’s Story of Science Fiction, he said:

“[The next three ‘Star Wars’ films] were going to get into a microbiotic world. But there’s this world of creatures that operate differently than we do, Lucas said. I call them the Whills. And the Whills are the ones who actually control the universe. They feed off the Force.”

So that’s all Lucas said publicly about his sequels.

That said: this version was not the final outline of George’s sequels.

Like, sure, it’s very likely the draft that was given to Disney, but the point is that: it didn’t stop there.

For a short time, George helped develop the Sequels with Disney.

The treatments he had given Disney were then reworked by screenwriter Michael Arndt (who had already started discussing this with Lucas before and after he sold LucasFilm). Unclear when they were all brought in (with Arndt, after Arndt?) but eventually Simon Kinberg, Lawrence Kasdan and J.J. Abrams too also came in on the writing side of things, and restarted from scratch.

We know, from Arndt, LucasFilm Senior Content & Asset Specialist Phil Szostak, Concept Artist Christian Alzmann and LucasFilm executive Pablo Hidalgo, that by late-2012/early-2013, Lucas was still somewhat involved in the development process of the Sequels.

The book The Art of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, gives us indications and early concept art of what would’ve happened, in Arndt and Lucas’ version:

1- The character who would become Rey

The protagonist was still a female aspiring Jedi. Her name changed a lot, including Winkie, Taryn, Thea and eventually Kira.

She finds Luke, and he decides to come back from exile and train her.

2- Luke Skywalker

Speaking of which: Luke is in exile, described by Lucas as a “a Col. Kurtz type hiding from the world in a cave”, in self-imposed exile & spiritually in “a dark place”. The “why” of his exile wasn’t ever explained. 

Christian Alzmann, among other concept artists, illustrated this, and one of his images (left) received a “fabouloso” stamp by Lucas.

Other concept artists tried to illustrate the First Jedi Temple, some of them got approved by Lucas, such as one from James Clyne (below).

Also, Luke still died in Episode 8. In fact, that whole arc from TLJ, of Luke being exiled but being convinced by the female lead to return and get back in the fight, was already there.

The BIG difference was that the ‘exile and return’ part of that arc both happened in Episode 7, not 8. And then he would’ve died heroically in Episode 8. So instead of having Luke for one movie, we would’ve had him for two whole movies.

3- Other characters

Darth Talon was in it, aka the Jedi Killer. She seduces the son of Han and Leia to the Dark Side. 

Talon worked for a big villain called “Uber” (who may have been Maul in previous drafts, or maybe even still was Maul, only under a code-name). Eventually this character became Snoke.

However, the son of Han and Leia would’ve turned to the Dark Side in the movies, rather than already being on the Dark Side when the first movie started.

In some versions of the story, the son was named Skylar (or Skyler), who was a tag team with Kira.

After Lucas was no longer involved, Skylar eventually developed into Finn (a scoundrel/pirate archetype that tag teams with Kira) and Ben (the son of Han & Leia), now the Jedi Killer instead of Talon.

Also, Harrison Ford told GQ Magazine that Lucas asked him to come back to play Han for Episode 7, even though Solo would die in that same episode. Whether or not Han dying was still in Lucas’ mind when he worked on the treatments is unclear.

So yeah, there were some similarities with what we actually got (Han and Leia’s child falling to the Dark Side, Luke being in exile, training an aspiring Jedi, dying in Ep. 8, Han dying in Ep. 7).

Other relevant quotes:

I just started laughing my ass off at the thought of Palpatine saying something so monumentally stupid and Obi-Wan AND ANAKIN "I'M THE CHANCELLOR'S GREATEST FAN" SKYWALKER BOTH go just

look at each other,

let Palpatine's idiotic suggestion hang in the air for a few seconds,

and move on like "[sigh] yeah, no, imma just ignore that"!

Like, Obi-Wan's just looking at him like "THIS is who you choose to be friend to?" and Anakin is struggling to disagree :D

Secondly, we see that Anakin is pretty chill with the notion that Obi-Wan's a Master and he's not, he's cracking jokes about it.

Which further cements the point that him not receiving the promotion to the rank of "Master" certainly ramps up the tension Anakin is already feeling after his nightmare of Padmé's death (as Palpatine planned it would)...

"There is a tension between the Jedi and Palpatine, the Supreme Chancellor, and that tension between the two of them results in Anakin getting caught in the middle. Palpatine knew this when he put him in the position of being on the Jedi Council, because he knew that the Council would resent it. And Anakin even knew the Council would resent it. But when he's actually put in that position, it begins to create a huge amount of tension ultimately between the council and Anakin. And even though Anakin is still loyal to the Council, he's in a tough spot."

... but that's pretty much it. It didn't contribute to Anakin's fall to the dark side. As George Lucas would put it:

"It's very easy to have the audience believe that Anakin is miffed because he doesn't get to go on the mission [to Utapau], that, you know, he's angry because he's not a Master, and [the Anakin/Padmé staring] scene is really designed to remind you that his real problem is that he just doesn't wanna lose her."

Also, little bonus:

ADDENDUM: