"if you strike me down...

[ATimson]

Lucas won't touch the third trilogy because he decided to incorporate things he would have done in the third trilogy into ROTJ. For him, number six has been the final chapter in the story for twenty-five years.

Funny, 'cause that's not what he wrote in his mid-90s introduction to Splinter of the Mind's Eye; he was still spouting the "trilogy of trilogies" line then...

 

[Skywalker]

Originally, Obi Wan was supposed to escape the Death Star with the others. But there was a problem: What does he do the rest of the movie? Just watch from the sidelines? Lucas decided to kill him off, which would also make the escape from the DS more dramatic. He did a rewrite and told Guinness during filming in Tunisia. Guinness didn't like it, and when they got to England he told Lucas he would walk off the picture if the character was killed. They had a long lunch meeting, and Lucas finally persuaded Sir Alec that it was better for the movie and better for the character. Guinness later admitted that Lucas was right.

Ben Kenobi was a fairly late addition to the script. Originally there was an older general/warrior/bodyguard, sort of like in The Hidden Fortress, who was dropped. In a later draft there was a shabby but wise and mystical old Force-wizard that Luke stumbled across on Tatooine. I think it was in the next-to-final draft that Kenobi was created, combining the two. At first he was part machine, too, presumably because of battle wounds.

This is covered in The Making of Star Wars by Rinzler and Skywalking by Pollock.

--Justin

Thanks. I'd always believed it was Guinness' idea based on things I read here and there, but none of those sources were as credible as that one.

Lucas won't touch the third trilogy because he decided to incorporate things he would have done in the third trilogy into ROTJ. For him, number six has been the final chapter in the story for twenty-five years.

Funny, 'cause that's not what he wrote in his mid-90s introduction to Splinter of the Mind's Eye; he was still spouting the "trilogy of trilogies" line then...

Really? Hmm...I guess he's changed his tune since then. Or like before, I could have just gotten bad information.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

Lucas won't touch the third trilogy because he decided to incorporate things he would have done in the third trilogy into ROTJ. For him, number six has been the final chapter in the story for twenty-five years.

Funny, 'cause that's not what he wrote in his mid-90s introduction to Splinter of the Mind's Eye; he was still spouting the "trilogy of trilogies" line then...

Are you sure? I only ask because that book is old going back to 1978, not to say Lucas couldn't write an introduction in the mid-90's but well, I'd double-check to be sure.

 

[ATimson]

Are you sure? I only ask because that book is old going back to 1978, not to say Lucas couldn't write an introduction in the mid-90's but well, I'd double-check to be sure.

It name-checks ESB, he references that he's about to write Star Wars again "after all these years", and he says that "so many gifted writers are contributing new stories to the Saga."

That sure fits prepping for the prequels much better than prepping for ROTJ.