Not that long ago, some concept art from George Lucas’s pitch for Star Wars Episode VII finally surfaced, revealing that some of the key concepts that The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi were built around were inspired by his treatment after all. Now, Pablo Hidalgo is taking to Twitter to explain the creative process on how things changed from conceptualization to actualization.
The first couple of points worth discussing here were actually brought up by Full Of Sith Podcast contributor Bryan Young on his Twitter page, where he noted that a number of story elements from both The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi were borrowed from Lucas’s story treatments based on The Art Of… books for both The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi. Young mentioned that many of the plot points for the character of Kylo Ren were already decided by Lucas: that he would betray his uncle, kill many of his fellow students, and ultimately murder his own father. Likewise, Rey would ultimately convince Luke to get out of his depression and do something about the war. The key difference is that both of these events would have happened in the same Episode VII – whereas in The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, they’re both late-movie plot points. Hidalgo added to Young’s observations by noting that Kylo Ren’s origin was actually intended to be explored in Episode VII instead of Episode VIII:
In a very general sense, the original idea of 7 started midway through what we now know as 8.
— The Tweets of San Francisco: A QM Production (@pablohidalgo) January 3, 2018
So the difference between The Force Awakens and Episode VII as it was originally conceived was that the story would have coincided with Ben Solo’s fall to the Dark Side. Instead, we’re introduced to him being Snoke’s apprentice for a few years:
The son falling to the dark side was always in the mix. The movies just ended up having it already an established fact.
— The Tweets of San Francisco: A QM Production (@pablohidalgo) January 3, 2018
Later, Young got into an argument with an Expanded Universe fan who was unhappy with the direction of the new films. The EU fan argued that Star Wars Legends was closer to Lucas’s vision (it wasn’t), an Young responded by reiterating what was mentioned above, with other users chipping in to suggest that Lucas’s ideas weren’t completely scrapped so much as they were reworked by the people working on the new movies. Hidalgo added to the conversation by adding some of the code names for the other characters:
Skyler and Kira (and Kira wasn’t the first proposed name either; she had at least two others) became, after a fashion, Finn and Rey. The Jedi Killer morphed from Talon corrupting the son to becoming the son. Uber became Snoke. The starting point shifted. Yadda yada yada.
— The Tweets of San Francisco: A QM Production (@pablohidalgo) January 3, 2018
“The Son” and “The Jedi Killer”, of course, referring to the character that would become Kylo Ren. “Talon”, interestingly enough, refers to the Sith Lady that was seen in the Star Wars: Legacy comics (an idea that Lucas did pull over from the Expanded Universe, though not in the way that the character was originally meant to appear). It’s also worth emphasizing that these are story treatments and not scripts – as far as we know, Lucas only completed an outline for Episode VII and only had a few other ideas for the other two movies:
I think the fact that a lot of people refer to the as ‘scripts’ show they don’t really understand what it is they’re talking about.
— The Tweets of San Francisco: A QM Production (@pablohidalgo) January 3, 2018
Lastly, Hidalgo noted that “Skyler” (Finn) was originally The Son (Ben Solo) in some drafts of Episode VII:
Skyler was the son in some versions. And as for how all that was gonna go down, that ain’t my story to tell.
— The Tweets of San Francisco: A QM Production (@pablohidalgo) January 3, 2018
What an interesting dynamic that would have been… Nonetheless, we saw Kylo Ren and Finn play off of one another in The Force Awakens as foils, but not so much in The Last Jedi (where they don’t even share a scene).
That’s all for now, but it’s fascinating looking into the thought process that led to the creation of what we now know as the first two chapters of the Sequel Trilogy – and how Lucas ended up being a little more involved with these new movies than we once thought.
Grant has been a fan of Star Wars for as long as he can remember, having seen every movie on the big screen. When he’s not hard at work with his college studies, he keeps himself busy by reporting on all kinds of Star Wars news for SWNN and general movie news on the sister site, Movie News Net. He served as a frequent commentator on SWNN’s The Resistance Broadcast.
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