“I additionally felt somebody needed to go,” Empire and Jedi screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan stated in Empire of Desires. “It ought to occur very early within the final act so you start to fret about all people.”
Certainly, the potential loss of life of a serious character was one of many huge matters of debate throughout story conferences between Kasdan and George Lucas for the initially titled Revenge of the Jedi. Whereas the entire heroes in the end made it out of the Unique Trilogy in a single piece, issues might have gone very in a different way, in line with the e-book Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays by documentarian and movie historian Laurent Bouzereau.
Intriguingly, The Annotated Screenplays reveals that Han wasn’t the one Star Wars character on the chopping block. At one level, Lucas and Kasdan flirted with the thought of killing off Luke Skywalker within the trilogy’s last act, presumably sacrificing himself to destroy Darth Vader and the Emperor.
“I noticed that I might kill off Luke if I wished to, and I attempted to play that up as a lot as I might,” Lucas informed Bouzereau. “It was conceivable that Luke might die or turn to the dark side, and if he did, then it could be as much as Leia to redeem all people.”
Deciding it could be too darkish for the youngsters within the viewers, Lucas backtracked from the thought. So as to give the trilogy a happy ending, the Maker determined that his beloved trio needed to survive the ultimate battle.
“It could actually have put an unlucky twist on every little thing if we had killed off one of many fundamental characters,” Lucas defined in The Annotated Screenplays. “Luke wanted to reside, and we would have liked to have Leia and Han collectively on the finish. The truth that the boy will get the lady — or the lady will get the boy — in the long run was a key issue and was as essential as Luke overcoming his demons.”
