the excitement of zooming through a deadly asteroid field, a love triangle, a majestic city in the clouds, unexpected betrayals, and the climactic duel between Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader. The rough draft begins, not with a shot of deep space, but a fade-in on an ice planet, which isn’t named in this draft. Luke and Han are riding their “snow lizards” around the planet’s surface, looking for lifeforms that might endanger their Rebel base, which Brackett describes as an “ice castle.” The writer’s love of space fantasy comes through in her descriptions, which set the tone of the script as a more classic piece of science fiction. Even something as simple as the “ice formations” that catch Luke’s attention while scouting with Han benefit from dazzling detail. “Dimly there appears through the veils [of snow] a formation of rocks,” Brackett writes, “or perhaps ice of exceptional beauty, catching points of fire from the sun.” It’s clear she understands the Star Wars universe, even in its relatively early days, as she instills that sense of wonder for the universe and its exotic locations. But in other places her script more closely resembles the burnished chrome of Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers serials. Barely in sight is the rusty, lived-in universe that Lucas had established in 1977. And there are hints of high fantasy, too. The ice monster, which is not yet called a “Wampa,” that Luke encounters on the planet’s surface can “vanish in a burst of vapor,” more magical wraith than hulking beast. This isn’t the one-off adversary from the film, either, but just one of a horde of ice monsters that later attack the Rebel ice castle. The ice planet segment actually makes up a large chunk of the movie, and you can tell that Brackett loves writing the chaos inside the Rebel base, which is first invaded by monsters and then attacked by the Empire—who bring “tank-type crawlers” to the party, undoubtedly the predecessors of the AT-ATs. And she has fun portraying the Rebellion as a group of bumbling idiots, too. Even though “1,026 systems” have joined their cause since their victory at Yavin, the Rebels in this draft are ill-prepared for war, many frozen to death by burst water pipes inside the base. Their attempt to repel an exceptionally organized attack by the ice monsters is perhaps best accompanied by “The Benny Hill Theme.” Brackett also establishes one of the draft’s major pitfalls during the ice castle scenes: the love triangle between Luke, Han, and Leia, which is about as subtle
as a Vader Force choke. Brackett embraces traditional romance tropes in her approach, as a much more damsel-like Leia falls into the hero’s arms on multiple occasions for a make-out session. Leia becomes the object of male affection and not much else, while Han and Luke are the rough-around-the-edges and babyfaced beefcakes vying for her love. It was the later revisions that introduced a lot of the nuance to Han and Leia’s budding relationship. C A S T L E VA D E R Meanwhile, Darth Vader needs Leia in order to lure Luke to Orbital City, this draft’s version of Cloud City. For a movie eventually called The Empire Strikes Back, the Empire is scarcely in the first two acts of this draft. The villains don’t appear on screen until 20 pages in, and not in a fleet of Star Destroyers in pursuit of the Rebel base as we see in the finished film. Instead, we first meet the titular bad guys in “the administrative center” of the Empire, the planet Ton Muund. There, Vader waits in his castle. Brackett writes, “Ton Muund should have an odd sort of day; perhaps a blue star.” The planet doesn’t appear often in the script, but Ton Muund is as richly realized as the rest of the settings Brackett describes. Ton Muund was also likely a precursor to the Imperial homeworld of Coruscant. Rinzler also points out in his book that Lucas considered putting a “city planet” in the movie and a “water planet” with an underwater city, locations we’d later see in the prequels.
In Brackett’s script, Leia was at the center of a much more overt love triangle between Luke and Han. It was actually a little awkward...
Luke, Han, and Leia accidentally discover a mysterious crystal that resembles “a memory cell” in a lightsaber hilt. It holds coordinates to “perhaps the place where my father was trained.” It’s unclear how Luke comes to this conclusion. This will eventually lead him to the “bog planet” that became Dagobah in the final script. DEN DEN OF OFGEEK GEEK 57 57