You think Return of the Jedi was bad? Holy Smokes read the rough draft! Zombie Ben Kenob!

Yikes!

Ben Kenobi comes back from the dead, Death Star built over "Had Abbadon" (Coruscant), very Un-Vader-like dialog, etc.

http://www.starwarz.com/starkiller/scripts/revenge_revised_rough_draft.htm

The finale film version looks like a masterpiece compared to this script.

I have a feeling that if RotJ had been made 20 years later than this would have been the finale version of the movie. Luckily someone back then must have still had some kind of influence over Lucas. Perhaps the prequels could have been good movies if Lucas had made them 20 years ago before he was surrounded by nothing but 'yes' men.

Re: You think Return of the Jedi was bad? Holy Smokes read the rough draft! Zombie Ben Ken

I kinda like this version better.

Re: You think Return of the Jedi was bad? Holy Smokes read the rough draft! Zombie Ben Ken

Honestly I would have liked a more original story for RotJ. What we got was basically a rinse and repeat of the first movie.

Re: You think Return of the Jedi was bad? Holy Smokes read the rough draft! Zombie Ben Ken

ROTJ was a good film.

Georgie's Prequel Trilogy what was mongreloided up. Jar Jar Binks & Mannequin Skywalker.

Re: You think Return of the Jedi was bad? Holy Smokes read the rough draft! Zombie Ben Ken

I think the prequel trilogy is evidence of what the orginals could have been if Darth Lucas had been given free reign all those years ago.

Re: You think Return of the Jedi was bad? Holy Smokes read the rough draft! Zombie Ben Ken

I must say that the Clone Wars has all but killed my interest in SW.

Re: You think Return of the Jedi was bad? Holy Smokes read the rough draft! Zombie Ben Ken

^What Hong said in the rep. After coming out of TPM I was like, "Well George, you fucked me. I waited 16 years and you gave me that. And now I've got to wait 3 & 6 years for the next two and go see them, even though I already know they'll suck.

So after the FrankenVader "NOOOOOOOO!" I vowed to not give Lucas another dime or minute of my time.

Re: You think Return of the Jedi was bad? Holy Smokes read the rough draft! Zombie Ben Ken

That one title on the main scripts page of that site . . . surely it wasn't meant seriously . . . was it?


BTW, this page evidently has two more (unauthenticated) versions of the RotJ script.

Re: You think Return of the Jedi was bad? Holy Smokes read the rough draft! Zombie Ben Ken

The original Sci-Fi shorts were pretty good, but the subsequent versions are ass.

Re: You think Return of the Jedi was bad? Holy Smokes read the rough draft! Zombie Ben Ken

Pretty decent. Would of course need to be polished....

Re: You think Return of the Jedi was bad? Holy Smokes read the rough draft! Zombie Ben Ken

I am convinced more than ever that very little of what's good about the original Star Wars trilogy was actually conceived by Lucas. Some other writer took his (very rough) ideas, injected life and interest into them, and reconstructed his story from the first scene forward.

The dialog Vader has in that first scene is just...unimaginable. It's worse than the dialog in the PT, I didn't think that was possible.

The splitting up of the leads--Leia putting an ion cannon on Endor (or whatever it's called here) and Luke rescuing Han--is just awful. The main characters aren't all together at any point throughout the screenplay.

"I'm going to that sanctuary moon, and I'm going to get Leia out of there, then we're going to find Luke." Yeech. So the movie's now going to be Saving Commander Skywalker?

Lucas' ability to raise important questions and then to dispense with them with a few lines of dialog is in rare form during the "captive Luke" phase of the screenplay. Yoda shows up--in ghost form, somehow (is he dead?)--tells Luke how he's got to face Vader (wasn't he telling him the opposite before the climax of the previous film?) and then mentions that, should he be unable, he's got a sister and they'll go with her. Oh, and Obi-Wan's ghost no longer appears because Luke's anger is sapping his strength. What...the...fuck?

How uplifting Han and Leia's reunion is! Her: "Han, you escaped, you're alive!" Him: "Yeah, whatever. Let's get on with the plot."

He can't even write Yoda's dialog correctly: "Evil one, this will be the last day of your existence." It should be something like "Evil one, the last day of your existence this will be." I guess he has "people" who work out those kind of details.

I love Lucas' manufacturing of concepts--e.g., the Netherworld--which seem like they would've come up in conversation long, long before, merely for the convenience of the plot.

Awful, just awful.

Ben and Anakin (not so named in the script) are alive--in the flesh!--at the end? What the fuck was Lucas smoking.

Lucas didn't rape our childhoods with the PT, because it seems ever more obvious that he didn't create the OT we idolized in the first place...

Re: You think Return of the Jedi was bad? Holy Smokes read the rough draft! Zombie Ben Ken

There are scripts for the other movies at the same site...

Looking over some of the drafts for the original Star Wars, I find it EXTREMELY improbable that the person who wrote the first draft is the person who wrote the script they shot, the byline on the first page notwithstanding.

Re: You think Return of the Jedi was bad? Holy Smokes read the rough draft! Zombie Ben Ken

Its come out who wrote the actual script for the first movie, but danged if I can remember who it was. Alan Dean Foster actually wrote the first movie novelization, even though Lucas got the credit for that as well. Spielberg supposedly wrote the novelization of CEot3K, but I have a hard time believing that as well.

Lucas, of course, is rather famous for changing what he did and what he said he did frequently.

Re: You think Return of the Jedi was bad? Holy Smokes read the rough draft! Zombie Ben Ken

amen!

Re: You think Return of the Jedi was bad? Holy Smokes read the rough draft! Zombie Ben Ken

Looking over some of those drafts I seriously doubt their authenticity. The Mar 15, 1976 draft in particular is a dead giveaway; the Jan 15, 1976 draft, which is actually verified authentic having been officially published, is essentially the final script, and the Mar 15 draft is not a revised version of it but rather is a revised version of the draft labeled Jan 1 1976. Unless you are a conspiracy theorist who believes that in 1979, when the Jan. 15 script was published, the date on the script was doctored to discredit earlier revisions of the script if they should ever leak, that pretty much seals the deal on the Mar 15 and Jan 1 scripts being inauthentic.

Re: You think Return of the Jedi was bad? Holy Smokes read the rough draft! Zombie Ben Ken

I think it's likely that Lucas got lucky once, with the original Star Wars. He didn't direct ESB.

It's plain that as his involvement increased after that, so did the suckage. And that despite his claims, he had no plan for the prequel trilogy and was content to make shit up as he went along.

Re: You think Return of the Jedi was bad? Holy Smokes read the rough draft! Zombie Ben Ken

I wouldn't even give him too much credit for the original. Ford, Fisher, and Hamill had fantastic chemistry and often ad-libbed much of the dialogue.

Back then, people like Harrison Ford could probably get away with telling George, "hey your script sucks... this is how we're gonna do it..."

Hell, he effed up the 'Han shoots first' scene for the special editions and that was one of the most badass scenes from the first movie.

If it were a bunch of other actors on screen together, Star Wars might have been a complete flop. That on screen chemistry mostly carried the whole trilogy.

None of the PT characters had any screen chemistry at all. Liam Neeson was sleepwalking through Episode I and he was arguably the main character!

Re: You think Return of the Jedi was bad? Holy Smokes read the rough draft! Zombie Ben Ken

That was one of the things that struck me most about that version. The main relationships are all low-intensity. Leia isn't in on Han's rescue, Jerjerrod gets between Darth Vader and the Emperor most of the time, Lando doesn't wheedle the Falcon out of Han, and Luke debates/argues more with Lando, of all people, than with Darth Vader.

Now, I don't say that any of those differences are unrealistic--Leia has better things to do, objectively, than dig a smuggler-pilot out of a crime lord's lair--but the first two movies didn't fret much over that sort of realism, so one may as well continue the trend.

Re: You think Return of the Jedi was bad? Holy Smokes read the rough draft! Zombie Ben Ken

Certainly the chemistry helped. But no amount of chemistry would've helped a lame story.

I've heard--and the documentary 'Empire of Dreams' seems to confirm--that the original Star Wars was saved in the editing room by a pair of very skillful editors.

It's like Lucas doesn't understand character or drama AT ALL.

Well, even if you look for realism, would it make any more sense to send Princess Leia--one of the important leaders of the rebellion--on a mission into Imperial territory to set up an ion cannon? Don't the rebels have, y'know, soldiers, spies, etc. who could handle this kind of job better?

The story Lucas tells in the script is lamer than the stories my friends and I used to make up when we played with our action figures...