A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Cover of the Dark Horse Comics adaptation. Genesis of a Star Wars tale A long time ago in an office in Northern California, George Lucas made a contingency plan for a low-budget sequel to “Star Wars” in case his space-fantasy film didn’t do well at the box office. The young writer-director wanted to make a trilogy centered around Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia Organa, and Darth Vader, but 20 th Century Fox’s skepticism about the first installment and his own low expectations for the success of “Star Wars” led Lucas to conceive a cheap follow-up with Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Dave Prowse, Anthony Daniels, and Kenny Baker. (Harrison Ford had not yet signed on for a sequel, so Han Solo was not included in the proposed low-budget project.) Lucas wrote a quick-and-dirty story treatment for a film which would take place mostly on a fog-shrouded bog planet and didn’t feature dazzling special effects. He also resurrected some discarded story concepts from the second draft of