Les Jones

Star Wars > George Lucas Rolling Stone Interviews

This 1977 Rolling Stone George Lucas interview is fascinating. Some fanboys are convinced that Lucas conceived the entire Star Wars trilogy all at once, with everything mapped out ahead of time. It turns out he was making huge changes in the original move even as he was making it:

In the original script Ben Kenobi doesn't get killed in the fight with Vader. About halfway through production, I took Alec aside and said I was going to kill him off halfway through the picture. It is quite a shock to an actor when you say, "I know you have a big part and you are going to the end and be a hero and everything and all of a sudden I have decided to kill you," but he took it very well and he began to build on it and helped and developed the character accordingly.

Was the studio upset when you told them Kenobi would die?

Everybody was upset. I was struggling with the problem that I had this sort of climactic scene that had no climax about two-thirds of the way through the film. I had another problem in the fact that there was no real threat in the Death Star. The villains were like tenpins; you get into a gunfight with them and they just get knocked over. As I originally wrote it, Ben Kenobi and Vader had a sword fight and Ben hits a door and the door slams closed and they all run away and Vader is left standing there with egg oil his face. This was dumb; they run into the Death Star and they sort of take over everything and they run back. It totally diminished any impact the Death Star had.

The more recent "Cult of Darth Vader" is pretty good, too. One thing I learned from that is that "Darth Vader" is basically "dark father." Makes sense.