May the force be with you!
Continuing with the annual holiday of May the 4th (Star Wars Day), some pretty interesting and exciting news was unveiled today concerning everyone’s favorite bounty hunter, Boba Fett. Apparently, the original plan for the Fett-man was going to have him be the main bad guy for Return of the Jedi, and have Vader and the Empire be the antagonists for the following trilogy.
Back in 1976, Craig Miller, who was Lucasfilm’s first fan relations officer, was charged with creating excitement among the fan base about this new and riveting space-opera with light swords and laser guns. Miller then teamed up with Charlie Lippincott, who was the marketing mastermind behind the epic sci-fi series. These two men were responsible in part for the surprise hit Star Wars: A New Hope. Afterwards, their jobs were not so easy, as they had to maintain an interest for the fan base in the new story that was just released. In an age before the internet, how were they going to maintain the buzz for three years while waiting for Empire Strikes Back?
Comic book stores and conventions. These were basically the Twitter and Reddit of their time, filled with just as many rumors and speculations as there are now. Miller said this in an interview:
“Oh, they cared [about rumors],” he said, laughing. “We wrote a fake treatment for The Empire Strikes Back, and had just enough things people knew would be there – like that there would be an ice planet – and let it leak so there would be more rumors. And Starlog Magazine helped us. We gave them the earliest photos of The Empire Strikes Back, and they wrote an article saying ‘We don’t know what’s happening on Empire Strikes Back, but here’s a list of rumors we heard.’ And it was a list that I compiled and gave them.”
Miller even gave a list to George Lucas himself, and he was quite tickled by it saying “you should write more!” So he did. But with it, he also threw in some truths, such as revealing the ice planet Hoth. More of these rumors are preserved over at Archive.org , and it’s quite the read.
One excerpt from the archive talks about Boba Fett, and Lucas’ original intentions for him in the saga.
“Originally Boba Fett was set up in Empire as a character, and the third movie’s plot was going to be more about Boba Fett rescuing Han Solo and all of that,” Miller revealed. “Boba was gonna be the main villain… That was set up, why he was taking Han Solo away, why there was a thing with him in the Christmas special.”
“When George decided not to make a third trilogy, he completely jettisoned that story line, which is why in the first ten minutes, Boba Fett gets bumped into and falls into the mouth of a giant monster,” Miller added. “So he took what was planned for the third trilogy, which was the confrontation between Luke and Darth Vader, and the battle with the Emperor, and that got squished down from three movies to one movie. And that became the plot of Jedi.”
Miller continues:
“At first there was one film, and then George originally announced that it was one of 12, and there were going to be 12, and then that changed to, oh there was never 12, there was only 9, and he was going to make 9,” Miller said. “And then during all of it, George kind of lost interest in continuing it… While we were working on The Empire Strikes Back, George decided he was going to complete the first film trilogy and that would be it.”
“And I remember sitting in a mixing room with George, working on Empire, and he told me he was just going to make the third movie, which didn’t have a title at that point, and then stop,” Miller continued. “He was going to retire from making big movies and make experimental movies. And that’s why the whole plot of the third movie, what became Return of the Jedi, completely changed.”
So that’s that. It’s pretty crazy to think that decades of cinema history, what could have been, was altered because Lucas wore himself out. At the time, he was working on Star Wars, his own business, his personal life, and wanting to work on other projects. Just imagine what could have been.
What do you think about Boba Fett’s alternate story? Let us know in the comments below!
