The Making of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (Enhanced Edition)
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ILM was already being pushed to its limits, officially on four pictures at the same time (“No more ILM tours!” one memo said): Jedi, Poltergeist, E.T., and Star Trek II. Muren and his team were in the “second half” of finishing E.T., a hectic time. He and Johnston found moments, however, to watch motorcycle and car chase films in preparation for reboarding the rocket bike sequence, after Lucas had given them carte blanche to fill in the sequence. “But that didn’t help,” says Muren.
When they showed their first boards to Lucas, “he thought we were overdoing it,” Muren explains. “We had too many closeups. After we’d done about 20 boards, George said, ‘No, no, no, no, no.’ Then he just re-did the whole thing correctly, as an action sequence. George came up with a lot of stuff. Someone came up with the idea of dividing it into three sections: after they separate, you have Leia over here and Luke over there. Then George came up with the ending, which Joe and I couldn’t—Luke taking out his lazer sword, which is a great coda to the whole thing.”
A production illustration by Johnston of Jabba’s throne room with Luke hologram, circa May 1981.
Set maquettes, built by the UK art department under Reynolds, of Jabba’s throne room, circa fall 1981.
An early version of the Emperor’s throne room, circa fall 1981.
SHOWDOWN
Roy F. Coppedge, vice president of the First National Bank of Boston, arrived for lengthy talks on the film’s financing. In preparation, vice president of finance Chris Kalabokes had prepared a snapshot of Lucasfilm’s monetary picture. Since October 31, 1980, its current assets had withered from $47.5 million to $24 million in June 1981—to $20 million in July, partially due to the nearly $2 million already spent on Jedi.
From film rentals, ILM income, and other ancillary activities, Lucasfilm had made $83,872,000 up to July 1981. The cost of operations—distribution fees, profit participation (more than $11 million), special effects direct costs, and so on—totaled nearly $60 million. After taxes, Lucasfilm’s net income was $12,191,000. Not enough to finance a projected $30 million picture, hence Coppedge’s visit. But the Bank of Boston had done well when it had taken over financing from the Bank of America on Empire, and its executives would agree to underwrite Jedi.
Things were not going as smoothly on the distribution side. On the one hand, progress had been made with a Marketing and Merchandising Agreement Between Twentieth Century–Fox Film Corporation and Lucasfilm Ltd., dated September 1, which finalized the division of licensing profits: Fox would receive, of net merchandising gross receipts, 50 percent of moneys accrued prior to April 18, 1980; 20 percent up to completion of principal photography on the “Third Film”; and 10 percent of gross receipts received by Lucasfilm after that date. That same day the Star Wars Copyright Transfer Agreement was signed, wherein Fox handed over the licensing rights of Star Wars to Lucasfilm, but retained the film copyright.
On the other hand, a contentious meeting took place on Wednesday, September 23, with Greber, Faxon, and Kalabokes facing off against Alan Hirschfield, Norman Levy, Leon Brachtman—and Marvin Davis, who had recently purchased the studio. “Marvin Davis bought Fox, so now he was the guy I had to deal with,” Greber would say. “He’s this gargantuan guy, 6′4″, very stout, and he had a reputation. He said, ‘Oh, we can solve this problem’ and put his arm around me. That type of thing.”
“So much of the negotiations centered around Marvin Davis after he bought the studio,” Roffman would add. “Davis was a billionaire who had made his money speculating for oil. He lived in Denver, a bigger than life character, literally bigger than life. Davis also had a lot of ties to the entertainment community. He always did this big fundraising ball and hobnobbed with stars.” (Erroneous rumors would say that Jabba the Hutt was modeled on Davis, but the crime lord had been designed long before Davis came into the picture.)
“We delivered our letter placing them on notice that we were invoking the right of first negotiation/first refusal, as provided in the Star Wars agreement,” Faxon wrote in his notes. In layman’s terms, that meant war: Lucasfilm was threatening to find another studio to distribute Jedi if an agreement couldn’t be reached within 30 days.
Given the ultimatum, and after listening to Lucasfilm’s counteroffers, Marvin Davis asked for a recess of several hours to discuss the new proposals with his senior executives. “Upon returning after about a three-hour break, Marvin stated that the deal was unacceptable to them,” Faxon continues. “Norman Levy clearly was not pleased and proceeded to outline all our past transgressions starting with Charlie Weber’s statement to him that we would sweeten the Empire agreement.”
What was really bothering Fox were the holdbacks on TV and video rights for Star Wars, which Lucasfilm wanted to enforce until May 1986. The studio wanted to exploit it on pay-TV, cassettes, disks, and tapes, foreign syndication, and network TV before the release of Jedi. They were afraid that after the trilogy was wrapped up, the public would lose interest in the first film. Fox would agree to everything else if Lucasfilm would modify its position on the holdbacks.
“The business affairs guys at Fox were irate,” Greber would say. “Their president Dennis Stanfill just went completely nuts. When Dennis told the board what happened, I was the bad guy. I sort of loved that, you know; it was good.”
Greber and company went into an adjoining office to call Lucas. All of Fox’s changes for the holdbacks were acceptable to him except the studio’s ability to negotiate a network sale prior to September 1983. Lucas expressed grave concern that Fox’s negotiations would create confusion among the moviegoing public and that domestic film rentals could therefore drop by over $20 million. Faxon also indicated to Lucas that Davis wanted assurance of his continuing desire to do business with them on all future Star Wars films. “I told him I thought the best way of dealing with that question was for George to give him a personal assurance and not have anything in the contract change.”
The Lucasfilm execs then reentered the room and told them that all the moved-up holdback dates were fine except that of the network sale. Fox found that exception unacceptable and asked the head of their TV division to come into the room and explain why they were so resistant to the proposal. Finally a tentative agreement was reached, with Lucasfilm granting a $2.4 million Empire betterment for Fox, and the studio assenting to keep their network negotiations as secret as possible and to delay broadcast until January 1984. All exact dates would be worked out soon. “We then all shook hands on the deal,” Faxon writes.
THE EMPEROR EMERGES
Kasdan turned in his draft on September 14; a week later it was typed up, weighing in at 106 pages (see sidebar). His “polish” had turned out to be a much more complete screenplay than Empire‘s had been. He’d had to throw out most of the previous drafts’ content in order to make the new script come into line with the revised concepts of the story conference.
In what was designated as the “second draft,” Yoda confirms that Luke is indeed Vader’s son. “I had to assume going into it that half the people didn’t believe Vader was Luke’s father,” Lucas would say. “So I had to make it a true thing that had happened. In the original long version of the script, this was where Obi-Wan Kenobi died and left Luke alone, but now it’s Yoda. There’s a moment where the hero has to be left alone without anyone else to help him. All the props are taken away and he has to face the evil monster alone.” (In Lucas’s 1974 rough draft, Kane Starkiller sacrifices himself about halfway through, leaving his son, Annikin, under the tutelage of General Skywalker.)
“The fact that Vader is Luke’s father and Leia is Luke’s sister is fundamentally fun to me,” Kasdan would say. “George has a great sense of humor about everything he had created and about how much fun we could have with it all. In my lexicon, ‘fun’ is the deliciously unexpected.”
“You get all the pieces in the script and it’s like a puzzle: You just keep moving them around until they all fit in the right place,” Lucas would say. “And that’s what I liked abou
t Larry; it’s much easier to work with somebody whose judgment you trust, because then they ask the hard questions. It’s very hard to write by yourself, because it’s very hard to be self-critical.”
In addition to reveling in the film’s operatic qualities, Kasdan, as he had done for Yoda in the first sequel, created the textual framework for the second sequel’s major new character. Under Kasdan’s study, the Emperor became a grandiose architect of evil, whose dialogue betrays a refined arrogance, with lines such as, “Everything that has transpired has done so according to my design.”
With the elimination of Had Abbadon, however, the contrast of hellish city planet with the Edenic forest planet was lost. His hands tied by the action, Kasdan was also not able to reconcile Empire’s Vader—who smashed everything in his path while hell-bent on converting Luke—with the developing Jedi Vader, who appears to have lost his mojo and who, oddly, prevents Luke from killing the Emperor. Instead Vader becomes more of a plot-puppet: passive one moment, vindictive the next, and repentant in the end.
Nevertheless, the final confrontation between father and son took form in the second draft. “The scene where Luke confronts and surrenders to Vader makes it clear that the rest of the movie is not a chase anymore,” Lucas would say. “It’s a whole different twist compared to where you might think the movie was going. Whereas in Empire it was a much more physical confrontation, this is much more emotional.”
“It’s very hard to give weight to a story where everything is going to come out okay,” Kasdan would say. “The end celebration seemed almost impossible to pull off. George believes in the triumph of good, but it’s really hard to pull off a scene like that and have it be anything but spectacle.”
Jabba’s guard comes to life in the ILM Monster Shop.
Dave Carson considers the work-in-progress pig guard costume, which had progressed from the concept of a scaly guard in early scripts and artwork.
A guard sketch (left) by Rodis-Jamero, early 1981, via a maquette (center), April 1981. A Yussem sculpt (right), by Rodis-Jamero and Judy Elkins, July 1981.
* * *
STAR WARS: EPISODE SIX REVENGE OF THE JEDI, STORY BY GEORGE LUCAS, SCREENPLAY BY LAWRENCE KASDAN, SEPTEMBER 21, 1981—SECOND DRAFT SUMMARY
The second draft begins with the following roll-up:
The rebellion is doomed. The Emperor has ordered construction of an armored space station more powerful than any weapon the galaxy has ever known.
The weakened rebel fleet hides helplessly in a remote sector of the galaxy. The supporters of the Old Republic know that any full-scale confrontation with the Imperial forces would be suicidal.
With Princess Leia and young Skywalker missing, the morale of the rebels continues to deteriorate. At the same time, the awesome power of the Imperial arsenal grows. With each passing moment, the Empire moves closer to complete invulnerability.
The seemingly incomplete Death Star is hung near the sanctuary moon, now called JUS-ENDOR. Vader takes a shuttle from his Star Destroyer to the Death Star, where a commander informs him that they are behind schedule—and that the Emperor is arriving soon “to eradicate the outlaws of the Old Republic forever!”
The script wipes to the droids on the road to Jabba’s palace. Inside, the droids find that Han is “hanging high” on the wall, still carbonized. Replacing the reptile guards are “pig-guards,” who later march the droids to the boiler room. Disguised as a bounty hunter, Leia arrives with Chewbacca as prisoner; Boba Fett, now in the audience, tries to get a closer look. Jabba inquires of the bounty hunter’s origins; on being told it’s none of his business, Jabba laughs and invites him to stay. That night, Leia frees Han:
LEIA
My love, you’re back.
Han seems dazed. But more alarming, his eyes do not focus. He is blind.
HAN
… Who? …
Leia kisses him deeply, again. Han smiles.
HAN
Leia!
But then Jabba appears: “My old friend Solo with my new friend, the Stranger. Solo, you’re looking much livelier after your nap … Our mysterious bounty hunter is to my liking.”
JABBA
(to Leia, in soothing Huttese)
As for you, my lovely thing, why do you waste your time on such trash?
THREEPIO
(translating)
He thinks Captain Solo is not a suitable companion.
JABBA
(to Leia, in Huttese)
I have seen you like to kiss. I like the way you kiss.
(he grins)
And I like to kiss, also!
Leia looks at Threepio, questioningly.
THREEPIO
You’re not going to like it, Your Highness.
LEIA
Death?
THREEPIO
Worse.
Jabba speaks to the Guards holding Leia and they bring her toward him. Inexorably, her tiny face crosses the distance to his immense blob of a head. Jabba puckers up. Leia looks sick.
In the Monster Shop, Tippett works on his sculpt for the articulated head of Admiral Ackbar, who started as an anonymous alien in a concept sketch by Nilo Rodis-Jamero (below, early 1981).
When Marquand chose the species to be a key character, Rodis-Jamero costumed him in another sketch and a maquette was sculpted in the shop, April 1981 (below).
Another Monster Shop sculpt: the blue Red Ball Jett, leader of Jabba’s band, May 1981.
A “Creature Schedule” breakdown, as of August 12, 1981, lists the monsters, whether they are foreground (FG) or background (BG), their due dates, and so on with coded symbols.
Rodis-Jamero “Imperial guard” costume concept, September 11, 1981.
“Green pilot #21” costume concept by Rodis-Jamero, circa September 1981.
Costume concepts by Rodis-Jamero for Lando’s disguise and Imperial biker, July 1981.
Lando’s disguise costume concepts by Rodis-Jamero, October 1981.
When Luke arrives, Leia is now “dressed in the skimpy costume of a dancing girl; a chain runs from a manacle/necklace on her neck to her new master, Jabba the Hutt.” While Luke talks, C-3PO recognizes Baron Calrissian and reacts—but Luke uses the Force to silence him. After Luke kills the rancor, Jabba blows his top:
JABBA
(in Huttese)
Solo, you’ve fallen in with a bad lot.
THREEPIO
He doesn’t like your friends.
JABBA
(in Huttese)
I was going to keep you alive for a while, but this pesky friend of yours has sealed your fate.
THREEPIO
Because Master Luke killed his prize rancor, Jabba has decided to terminate you immediately.
HAN
You killed a rancor, kid? You must’ve picked up a few tricks since I been away.
LUKE (to Han)
It was a small one.
(to Jabba, in Huttese, disdainfully)
You’ve wasted my time with that pitiful beast. If you have even the brains of a bantha, you’ll begin to bargain with me now.
Luke then goads Jabba into condemning them to the Sarlacc pit, given that escape from the castle would’ve been impossible. The fight at the pit is much like the final film: Luke somersaults from the plank, catching his lightsaber after R2 ejects it toward him; Boba Fett is killed when Han inadvertently ignites his jetpack, causing him to smack into the side of the huge sail barge and drop into the Sarlacc’s mouth; Han has to save Lando, while still blind; Luke kicks the trigger of the deck gun, grabs Leia, and swings to safety.
The sandstorm scene is shorter (and Luke is not kidnapped)—a quick reunion, with Han calling the Falcon an “old bird” and Luke announcing his departure.
HAN
Come on, let’s get off this rotten hunk of dirt. Lando, I hope you haven’t ruined my ship.
LANDO
Your ship! I guess that carbon freeze hasn’t improved your memory.
Back at the Death Star, the Emperor arrives.
VADER
Everything is proceeding as you have commanded, my Master.
EMPEROR
Good. What is troubling you, Lord Vader?