“The process was the same for Jedi as Empire—we were already on a speeding train,” Kasdan would say. “There were designs and pictures of things before I even started writing. But when I came up to Marin, George was relieved because somebody was going to do the part that he hated, so he could concentrate on the parts that he loved, which was to design and to produce.”
“I had just adopted a baby, Amanda, and I really wanted to spend time with my daughter and not have to go to the set for long hours,” Lucas would say. “She was born while I was working on the script, just before Larry Kasdan was coming on. During Empire, I was trying to get my company set up and trying to become independent financially. On Jedi, I was trying to find time to spend with my daughter.”
Whereas Lucas had held the Empire story conference 6 months after Star Wars came out, Jedi’s story conference took place 14 months after the previous film’s release and Lucas had already written two drafts. Nevertheless, the conference was challenging.
“All kinds of things came up,” Marquand says. “It was a very stimulating time. We made a huge number of changes. It seemed to us that there were too many lead personalities, just in terms of sheer directing, gads of people around the whole time. So Larry and I said bluntly to George, ‘You’ve got to kill somebody.’ Larry said, with a smile, ‘Well, let’s kill Yoda.’ I said, ‘I don’t think that would be a very good idea. That would upset a lot of people.’ And he said, ‘Yeah, that’s why I said it, to upset somebody.’ So this started to get flippant and then we slowly began to realize that with the fans out there that it was very hard to actually kill anybody.”
“It’s really George telling the story,” says Kazanjian. “George is the one who argues and fights with himself. We may have an idea or suggestion or challenge or say, ‘No, it shouldn’t really work that way’ and, yeah, you argue. You don’t fight. With me, I tend to ask a question.”
“I’d force George to react to things much more volubly than on Empire,” Kasdan would say. “George is a very eccentric guy and when somebody does force him to act outside of his safety mode, he’s hilarious. George can be goofy. He’s a kid, he’s fun.”
“George would say, ‘What we have to do is find things for all of these people to do, separately, have them together at the front and then bring them again together at the end,’ ” Marquand adds. “He is so good at overall structure.”
“During our sessions, I think that Richard’s head was spinning from the sheer size of the project,” Kasdan adds.
In fact the 268-page typed transcript of the story conference reveals that the structure of Jedi posed many problems for the group (see sidebar). In particular, they struggled for a good part of the conference to reconcile the role of the city-planet Had Abbadon with the Luke–Vader–Emperor conflict and the space battle. For long stretches, the quartet was unable to decide on a clear course of action that satisfied everyone. Kasdan gamely offered opinions and tantalizing options, but Lucas rejected most of them as not working.
At certain points, they were at a loss. While Kasdan would point out that parts of the script weren’t making sense, their minds were often not in sync and his objections were glossed over; or when Lucas embarked on a creative tangent, the others didn’t follow. Indeed, at one point when Lucas had abandoned the idea of using a Death Star, the others talked him back into it. They were also at odds about a possible “switch on the Death Star” that would link, in a meaningful way, Luke’s finale with the overall space battle between opposing fleets. Later, it was Kasdan who argued that Had Abbadon was a more interesting idea than a second Death Star, only to have Lucas, this time around, choose the Death Star as a better storytelling option, simpler and more streamlined (economics and the limits of visual effects played their roles, too).
Nearly every idea was up for debate: Was the Emperor necessary or not? How about throwing out the Ewoks? “The script is not something where you say this is what it has to be,” Lucas would say. “The script is something where you work with artists and say, ‘I have some ideas. Now you give me some ideas and I’ll give you some more ideas, and we’ll go back and forth, and we’ll put them all together and see what happens.’ I like that. You get to explore the territory. If you don’t explore the territory, if you just say, ‘This is what I’m going to do,’ it doesn’t come out to be very interesting. It’s only when you can take these weird tangents and flights of fantasy that you can then say, ‘Well, that’s interesting.’ ”
Ultimately, Had Abbadon was rejected as too complex to pull off, too remote and large to be effectively integrated into the story—a change that telescoped much of the second and third acts into a replay of Star Wars, instead of what could have been a more epic series of battles on two planets and in the intervening airspace.
“Basically the MacGuffin of the movie is that they’re building a second Death Star,” Lucas would say. “Now they’re building a second one that’s even better than the first one. That’s part of it. And then I realized that I could put the Emperor on board; then you could kill the Emperor and destroy the Death Star—and the Empire might not build any more. And that was worth doing.
“I also knew I couldn’t do Had Abbadon, logistically. I knew it was impossible. I was just pretending—when you write, you think, Well, I’m just going to let myself do whatever I want—because I wanted to do the bigger movie. But then you get people in the room who say, ‘Well, what do we want for a set?’ Then you realize, I can’t really do this. We would’ve had to build a big city set, which would have taken up a whole soundstage, which would have bankrupted us right there. It’s also about trying to find that area of simplicity that a 12-year-old can understand.”
Perhaps because the group spent so long working on the climax, they did not come up with compelling story arcs for either Han Solo or Leia, who suffered a kind of collateral damage; while their love affair had been central to Empire, the couple was given only a functional task in Jedi. At times during the conference, Lucas or Kasdan would go so far as to remind the other how nearly irrelevant was even that limited role.
Other ideas were discussed seriously and in depth, such as the fate of Fett. Marquand sparked long conversations with an idea for a new Death Star tracking or killer beam, which went nowhere. The group’s debate also revealed that Vader’s developing motivation in Jedi was inconsistent if compared with that of Empire.
Another concept given consideration was Luke tricking the Emperor into thinking he’d gone over to the dark side—or actually going over to the dark side for real. “Mark’s character is the one that develops through the whole series,” says Marquand. “That’s the area of jeopardy. Will Luke move more toward the dark side of the Force? He will. You constantly see the darkening as he is led in this direction. That was set by the plot and it was interesting to talk that through.”
When the five-day story conference adjourned, Kasdan departed to write his first draft (but what would be labeled as the film’s official second draft).
Sculptress Judy Elkins attaches hair to Yak Face, one of the creatures assigned to the Monster Shop.
Tippett demonstrates how a marionette dancer/singer would be operated. Lucas would name her Sy Snootles and give her Mick Jagger lips.
Three ILMers test out Snootle’s puppetry (Tippett, out of frame; unknown; and creature technician Kirk R. Thatcher).
Lucas, Johnston, and Tippett evaluate a creature (which would eventually become the “prey” for another monster) in the Monster Shop. Once Lucas had approved a creature, Monster Shop artists would determine its size and its method of locomotion. They would then create blueprints for the armatures and decide whether it was going to be suspended from wires, operated from underneath the set or from behind a wall or by external cables, or be an actor in a suit. They would then start maquettes and sculpting, as others worked on the articulation, under the purview of Stuart Ziff, who had helped develop the go-motion system (a new screen credit would be created for Ziff, “chief articulation
engineer”). He would make sure the mouths moved and the eyes blinked. Then they would make molds and cast rubber around the articulated joints. Finally, everything would be glued together and painted.
* * *
REVENGE OF THE JEDI STORY CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT, JULY 13 TO JULY 17, 1981—SUMMARY
Participants: George Lucas, Richard Marquand, Lawrence Kasdan, and Howard Kazanjian
Location: Park Way House
Note: Many of the ideas here are conceptual only and should not be considered as canon in the Star Wars saga.
George Lucas: We have a few ideas and things. It’s very rough. What we are going to have to do is discuss it in general terms and then Richard and Joe [Johnston] and everybody are going to have to go out and storyboard it, and then we’ll come back and fill in the blanks. [speaking to Kasdan] You don’t have to write the action parts. We’ll just describe them in a very general way.
Richard Marquand: The only thing that we have changed is the ion cannon. Now there is this enormous dish.
YODA, LUKE IS A JEDI, AND THE OTHER
Richard Marquand: Is Yoda still going to come back and shimmer at the end?
Lawrence Kasdan: If we have him alive, he really doesn’t have to.
Lucas: We could have him die.
Kasdan: You mean with Luke?
Lucas: Yes. Old age kind of thing. “You’re on your own, kid. You are the last of the Jedi now. This is your diploma; I have to leave; Ben is gone; it’s you and your sister.”
Marquand: That’s good. I like that.
Kasdan: What about the “other,” how would she ever be trained? By Luke?
Lucas: Now she can’t be trained.
Kasdan: Except by Luke.
Marquand: Luke is the equivalent of Ben, isn’t he, in the history of the pattern?
Kasdan: When he goes back to Yoda, do they continue training or is it just for information’s sake?
Lucas: In reality he gets back and they have a little dialogue scene and then he leaves. I don’t think that we can spend time doing any training. We can imply.
Marquand: No, but the conversation can happen during the physical thing rather than just sitting around the fire talking. Luke can be doing something, standing on his finger, while the old guy is talking to him, just to move it along a little bit. But it’s nice that he’s dying.
Lucas: Well, he could go back to complete his training and find Yoda dying. Yoda says, “You are a Jedi now. You have finished your lessons and there is nothing more I can teach you and I am kicking the bucket here.”
Kasdan: What about the other?
Emperor’s throne room concepts by production designer Norman Reynolds, circa May 1981.
Two Johnston illustrations of the Emperor’s lair, spring 1981.
Lucas: “Take care of your sister.”
Marquand: “Watch out for your father. Keep your underpants clean.” It wouldn’t pre-empt the Vader/Luke scene at the end would it, like two deathbed scenes?
Lucas: No. I think that the subtle way to do it, which is interesting, is that if he is dying, we never see him die. He’s dying, dying, dying … and then Luke leaves and at the end Yoda is a shimmering thing, which implies that he died. Yoda and Ben can come back.
Marquand: Hand in hand.
Kasdan: Okay. So I have to cover all that with a line about how the training was all there and now you have grown into it.
Lucas: Right. “I learned my lesson by losing a hand.”
Kasdan: Okay, that’s good. [Later …]
Kasdan: I am wondering about the Yoda death scene, thinking it would be really interesting if he was sort of cheerful. No bad news.
Marquand: Looking forward to it.
Kasdan: Yoda is a life affirming force as he dies.
Lucas: One of the lessons to be learned is that death is not a terrible, horrible thing; at best it is a painful, awful thing, but you have to go beyond that. Otherwise, as soon as someone died, everyone around them would commit suicide.
THE EMPEROR’S LAIR AND DEATH
Marquand: I really love the lava. I love the Emperor being this chilly man … What do you think of that? You didn’t like it much.
Lucas: I don’t know. It’s hard to rationalize it on Had Abbadon unless we did it in a different way: Instead of being a cavern down in the planet, it could be like a fountain or pool.
Marquand: That has contributed to the pollution.
Kasdan: More like a volcano.
Lucas: At the end of the scene, the way it is now there is a volcanic …
Kasdan: I don’t like that.
Lucas: I can’t rationalize it; I like it, but I can’t rationalize it. When you say everything takes place in a throne room with the Emperor in a gothic castle, it all makes a lot more sense. That doesn’t mean we know how we are going to kill the Emperor. I came up with the lava because it was easy to just dump him in the river. Maybe we could have a more horrible kind of death.
Kasdan: I feel like the boiling lava is not new enough.
Marquand: Well, snakes are pretty old.
Kasdan: True, but Raiders embraces everything that is old. A lot of the Star Wars stuff is new.
Lucas: No matter what you do, you are going to be doing something that’s old. Let’s face it, there is no new image.
Kasdan: I know, but this is the Emperor.
Lucas: The thing is it’s not clever and it is not believable. You know that the only reason that you have created that lava pit is to throw somebody into it. It telegraphs the movie.
Marquand: Yes, I agree with that.
Lucas: We’re not going to have Vader kill the Emperor without semi-killing himself, so maybe we could have them have hand-to-hand combat. Vader chokes him and the Emperor chokes him back.
Marquand: It has to be something huge, something amazing.
Lucas: One of the reasons that it works is the element of surprise. Nobody expects it to happen, least of all the Emperor. But it’s tricky to set up and not give it away before it happens …
TO KILL OR NOT TO KILL
Kasdan: The trick is to get Luke to trick the Emperor into foiling his own scheme at the same moment that Darth is killing him.
Lucas: I’m just saying that if Vader picked up the Emperor and threw him into the machine, it would blow up the machine and at the same time kill the Emperor, so that they both kill each other. Up to that point it could work.
Kasdan: Right.
A fragment from several handwritten pages of story conference notes: “Death Star exploding; Vader dies on platform …”
As McQuarrie pulled back, Johnston and others stepped up production of more detailed paintings with: the barge fight, May 1981.
A Johnston painting of the barge exploding, circa May 4, 1981 (no. 120).
Droids being picked up from the desert floor, June 1981.
An Ewok stealing a rocket bike, May 1981.
Luke meeting Jabba by Michael Pangrazio, June 29, 1981.
Concept drawing of “Int. cockpit, two-legged walker,” by Norman Reynolds, June 1981.
Lucas: If the Emperor does pull out a secret weapon and the weapon is working, and they wipe out half the fleet, it becomes even more intense. Then Vader knocks the Emperor into the gun and he is killed by his own gun, and in the process the gun blows up in a big explosion. Luke is all right, Vader is coming apart. I think it’d be great for Luke to try to help Vader while the thing is blowing up. And then Vader gets his cape caught in the door and says, “Leave without me” and Luke takes his mask off. The mask is the very last thing—and then Luke puts it on and says, “Now I am Vader.” Surprise! The ultimate twist. “Now I will go and kill the fleet and I will rule the universe.”
Kasdan: That’s what I think should happen.
Lucas: No, no, no. Come on, this is for kids.
Kasdan: I think you should kill Luke and have Leia take over.
Lucas: You don’t want to kill Luke.
Kasdan: Okay, then kill Yoda.
Lucas: I
don’t want to kill Yoda. You don’t have to kill people. You’re a product of the 1980s. You don’t go around killing people. It’s not nice.
Kasdan: No, I’m not. I’m trying to give the story some kind of an edge to it.
Lucas: I know you’re trying to make it more realistic, which is what I tried to do when I killed Ben—but I managed to take the edge off of it—and it’s what I tried to do when I froze Han. But this is the end of the trilogy and we’ve already established that there are real dangers. I don’t think we have to kill anyone to prove it.
Kasdan: No one has been hurt.
Lucas: Ben and Han, they’ve both—Luke got his hand cut off.
Kasdan: Ben and Han are fine. Luke got a new hand two cuts later.
Lucas: By killing somebody, I think you alienate the audience.
Kasdan: I’m saying that the movie has more emotional weight if someone you love is lost along the way; the journey has more impact.
Lucas: I don’t like that and I don’t believe that.
Kasdan: Well, that’s all right.
Lucas: I have always hated that in movies, when you go along and one of the main characters gets killed. This is a fairytale. You want everybody to live happily ever after and nothing bad happens to anybody.
Kasdan: I hate it when characters get killed, too.
Lucas: Oh, you do.
Kasdan: I do.
Lucas: I resent it and I resented it when I was a little kid. I would watch and there would be these five guys and one of them would be the funny clown and halfway through, one of them gets killed. Why did they kill the lead? He was the best character.
The Making of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (Enhanced Edition) Page 14