The Amazing Stuff

Many of the iconic images from the Star Wars movies were originally different than what we have grown to love. Here are 10 of the weirdest earlier versions of the characters and story events that will leave you scratching your head.

10 Human Jabba The Hutt

The sluglike Jabba the Hutt appears in Return of the Jedi and is one of the most iconic aliens in the Star Wars franchise. Originally, though, Jabba the Hutt was quite different. George Lucas had included Jabba in the script for A New Hope, but due to technical limitations and budgetary constraints, he was played by actor Declan Mulholland.As shown in the video above, Lucas shot a brief scene with Jabba confronting Han Solo in a Tattooine hanger and dressed Mulholland in heavy clothes to make him look more alien. The footage never made it into the final edit of A New Hope.

But Jabba as a humanoid stuck in the Marvel Comics version of Star Wars. In the comic books, the artists went with Lucas’s original production notes on the character, depicting him as a spindly alien that was like a walrus. This was one of the many inaccuracies of the original Marvel comic line and is noncanonical, especially since other drafts of the Star Wars script describe Jabba as fat and sluglike.

Lucas had to wait until Return of the Jedi to put Jabba on film but did not give up on having him in A New Hope. When Lucas released the special editions of the original trilogy, he put Jabba back in A New Hope but covered up Mulholland with a CGI Jabba, much to the dismay of fans. Interestingly enough, back in 1977, Lucas almost cast William Hootkins as Jabba the Hutt. Hootkins did not get the role but still appeared in A New Hope, playing the overweight X-wing pilot Jek Porkins who died during the Death Star run.

9 Han Dies In The Empire Strikes Back

After the shocking success of the first Star Wars film, Lucas began work on the sequel, The Empire Strikes Back. Realizing that the script would take a darker and more emotional turn, Lucas hired famed director Ivan Kershner to film the movie. All was going according to plan, except for the fact that Harrison Ford seemed disinterested in doing another Star Wars film.

In the original script of The Empire Strikes Back, Han and Chewbacca escape from Cloud City while being chased by Darth Vader. However, Harrison Ford was not signed on to film a third movie, and both Kershner and Lucas thought that he would not return. With that uncertainty, Kershner changed the script to include the iconic carbon-freezing scene. This gave the franchise some leeway. With Han frozen, they could kill him off if Ford did not return or devise a way for the characters to save him if Ford signed on for a third movie.

Of course, Ford returned for a third movie, and the carbon-freezing scene became one of the best-known parts of the franchise. Ford was still dissatisfied with playing Han Solo, stating that the character had become boring to him because of his growing affection for Princess Leia. In 2010, Ford still expressed discontent with the character, even stating in an interview that he wished Lucas had killed him off. But with another Star Wars movie coming out in December 2015, it seems like Ford has changed his tune.

8 C-3PO The Used Car Salesman

Early drafts of Star Wars did not include either C-3PO or R2-D2, but they later became an integral part of the story. R2-D2’s personality was easy to pin down, but Lucas had a harder time deciding on the personality for C-3PO. The robot’s face was purposely designed to be bland, allowing the viewers to read whatever emotions they wanted into the robot. As a result, Lucas originally auditioned a mime to play the role.

When the mime did not work out, Lucas became interested in getting Shakespearean actor Anthony Daniels to play the role. The original voice and mannerisms of C-3PO were entirely different. Lucas imagined C-3PO with the characteristics of a slimy car salesman with a thick Bronx accent. Daniels convinced Lucas to go with more vulnerable, prissy mannerisms for the character. Oddly, C-3PO was later used in Mitsubishi car commercials in Japan, so he actually did end up selling cars after all.

7 Return Of The Jedi Originally Had A Darker Ending

The Empire Strikes Back performed wonderfully at the box office, and soon Lucas was putting together drafts for the next installment in the series. Unfortunately, Return of the Jedi saw the beginning of Lucas having issues with his cast and crew.

As mentioned before, Harrison Ford was unsure if he wanted to return. But the production team was also having issues. Ivan Kershner drafted a story treatment for the new movie. Producer Gary Kurtz supported Kershner’s draft and advocated for a more emotional and mature ending for the franchise. Ultimately, Lucas went with what we have today, which caused both Kershner and Kurtz to leave Star Wars.

The original version of Return of the Jedi was much darker than the current movie. While the first draft was being written, Ford signed on for the new movie, but Kurtz still wanted Han Solo to die. In this draft, Han Solo died in the middle of the movie during a raid on an Imperial base.

Kurtz opposed the idea of having a second Death Star because he felt that it was too derivative, but his version still ended with a giant space battle. The Rebel Alliance won the final battle, but the ending was more bittersweet. The Rebel Fleet suffered tremendous casualties, and Leia accepted the role of queen. With Han Solo dead and Leia in government, Luke Skywalker would “walk off into the sunset” and disappear from the public sight.

As the draft changed, the bittersweet aspects got toned down, but another script had a different ending for Luke Skywalker. In this version, the ending played out almost exactly as in the movie we know. However, when Luke pulled off Vader’s mask after fighting with the Emperor, he put it on his own face and proclaimed himself as the heir to Darth Vader. Lucas decided that this was too dark, so we got the lighthearted celebration that ends Return of the Jedi.

6 Han Solo The Green-Skinned Alien

Han Solo is one of the most iconic characters of the franchise and the character who underwent the most revisions during the drafts of Star Wars. Originally, George Lucas wanted the main character to have an alien sidekick, so he wrote Han Solo as a giant, green-skinned alien with gills. Although Lucas liked the idea of Han being an alien or monster, he eventually decided to go with a human who could relate better to the other characters. Chewbacca filled the role of the alien sidekick.

Changing Han to a human was not the only revision of his character. In the second draft, Han was a bearded, burly character. Lucas also toyed with the idea of casting an African American as Han Solo before settling on the description of Han that ended up in the final film.

Harrison Ford was not originally considered for the role of Han Solo. Lucas was adamant about using unknown actors and had already worked with Ford in American Graffiti. Instead, Ford fed lines to other actors auditioning for the roles of Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia. Lucas had a list of actors that he thought would be good as Han Solo, including Kurt Russell. But in the end, Lucas went with Harrison Ford, and the rest is movie history.

5 Luke Was Originally An Old General

Luke Skywalker was quite different in the original version of Star Wars. In the first draft, Luke was an old general and Jedi Master, more akin to the role of Obi-Wan Kenobi. He also wasn’t the main character in the story. Instead, the main character was Annikin Starkiller, son of Kane Starkiller. The father and son spent most of the script on the run from the psychopathic Knights of Sith.

After Annikin’s brother was killed by the knights, Kane brought Annikin to be trained by General Skywalker, who protected the royal family of the planet Aquilae. Luke spent most of the movie training Annikin while Kane had wacky adventures with the green-skinned Han Solo.

The early script had strange plot points involving General Skywalker. In the middle of the film, Annikin had a romantic attraction to a woman on Aquilae, enraging Luke so much that he tried to kill Annikin. The original script also ended with an attack by spaceships on an Imperial base. However, they attack an evil castle, and the pilots are all Wookiees trained by General Skywalker.

Most of these elements did not make it into the final version of A New Hope, and Luke Skywalker eventually became the protagonist. However, some of these plot elements did appear in later Star Wars films.

4 The Ewoks Were Originally Wookiees

Depending on whom you ask, Ewoks are either the cutest or the most annoying aspect of the original Star Wars trilogy. But if Lucas had gone with his first draft, the Ewoks would have been much cooler and more frightening. Initially, the Ewoks were Wookiees (Chewbacca’s race), and Return of the Jedi had them attacking an Imperial outpost fully armed with tanks and laser cannons.

The Wookiees were trained by the main characters and even learned to fly spacecraft. However, when Chewbacca evolved into a more technologically adept character, Lucas reworked the plot with a new species called Ewoks to make a Vietnam allegory in which the technologically inferior culture defeated the mechanized might of the Empire.

In another version of the script, Ewoks teamed up with a species called Yuzzums. Lucas had considered adding the Yuzzums as a secondary Endor species to replace the Wookiees. The Yuzzums were furry but much taller than the Ewoks, requiring the actors to use stilts in costume. For most of preproduction, the team considered hiring Venezuelan stilt walkers to handle the puppets, but eventually, Lucas eliminated the Yuzzums and focused solely on the Ewoks.

3 R2-D2 Spoke English

What makes the stubby robot R2-D2 so iconic is his electronic gibberish voice. During production, the sound team came up with a lot of the noises using their own voices. However, in the original draft of Star Wars, R2-D2 actually spoke English, which turned his banter with C-3PO into more of a verbal comedy than the slapstick antics of the final film.

If you’ve ever wondered what R2-D2 was saying during the movie, the original draft gives you a hint. Every bit as fussy as C-3PO, R2-D2 was actually a bitter little robot. He spent most of the movie mocking C-3PO and uttering sarcastic quips. R2-D2 would be much less lovable if the original version had become the final film.

Interestingly, the design for R2-D2 also changed over time. Initially, he had two small arms sticking out of the side of his head that could be used to grasp and manipulate things. In one of production designer Ralph McQuarrie’s early sketches, R2-D2 rolled around on a single ball bearing. It seems as though J.J. Abrams and his crew borrowed this concept to design BB-8, the small ball-shaped droid that will appear in Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

2 Yoda Was Originally Played By A Monkey

In The Empire Strikes Back, Frank Oz operated and voiced the Yoda puppet. However, the final design of Yoda took a lot of time and went through a variety of phases. Early concept art shows Yoda as a gnomelike character with much different facial expressions. By the time the Yoda design was finalized, Lucas still had not decided how to portray the character in The Empire Strikes Back. Puppets seemed like an obvious choice, but Lucas also considered having a trained monkey in a mask play Yoda.

For years, rumors of the monkey playing Yoda floated around the Star Wars fandom universe. In 2010, J.W. Rinzler wrote a book about The Empire Strikes Back and confirmed that the rumors were true. But it was not until 2013 that pictures surfaced showing what this Yoda would have looked like.

Lucas has never revealed the name of the monkey playing Yoda, but pictures show that he wore silver shorts and a shirt and had a mask that looks like the Yoda puppet. The monkey handlers trained the simian to hold a cane and walk around with it.

Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed. A member of the Lucasfilm team had worked on 2001: A Space Odyssey and knew the difficulty of working with monkeys. He eventually convinced Lucas to go with the more standard, practical approach of using puppets, and the monkey idea never got past preproduction.

1 Splinter Of The Mind’s Eye

When producing A New Hope, George Lucas had no way of knowing that the movie would become such a cultural phenomenon. He had ideas for the sequel, The Empire Strikes Back, but it needed an even bigger budget from the studio for production.

Lucas implemented a backup plan by hiring a writer to develop another sequel to A New Hope that could be filmed quickly on a low budget, if necessary. Alan Dean Foster, who ghostwrote the novelization to A New Hope, was tapped to write this backup script, an oddity known as Splinter of the Mind’s Eye.

Splinter was a fairly simple story with a few strange features. The story followed Leia and Luke as they crash-landed on the planet Mimban during a diplomatic mission. There, they met an old woman named Halla who promised to take them to the “kaiburr crystal,” a sort of Force-amplifying device. Led by Darth Vader, the Imperials also wanted the crystal, so the plot became a standard adventure story. In the end, Luke fought Darth Vader and recovered the crystal.

What makes Splinter so weird is that many of the elements of the Star Wars universe had not been worked out before Foster wrote the script. As such, Luke and Leia had awkward sexual tension because Lucas had not yet established that they were siblings. In the book, they flirted with each other and even had a mud-wrestling match.

The story was also missing Han Solo and Chewbacca because Harrison Ford had not yet signed on for a sequel to the original Star Wars. In Splinter, Luke was also far better at fighting with a lightsaber than he was in The Empire Strikes Back, winning the duel with Vader by chopping off his arms.

Ultimately, A New Hope was a box office success, and Lucas did not need the Splinter script. He published the script as a novel, which became the first book of the official Star Wars Expanded Universe. For years, fans have had to wrap their minds around the canon-defying weirdness of the story.

To many people, movies are more than flashing images with sound. They can transport people to other worlds, place us in other people’s skins and connect humans in a way that no other medium can. They are an indelible part of many cultures around the world and to some people, an integral part of their lives. That’s why some people’s last wish on Earth is to sit down and lose themselves in the magical world of film.

10. Christopher Saffy

Christopher Saffy of Spotsylvania, Virginia, was born with kidney problems and had his first surgery when he was just 18 days old. When he was two, he had surgery to get a kidney transplant and was given a stoma, which is a hole in the abdomen that leads to the bladder. By the time that he was 11, the transplanted kidney was failing and he needed a new one by the end of May of 2001, or his life would be in danger.

It was during this time of uncertainty that the Make-a-Wish foundation got involved. On July 24, 2001, they flew Christopher to Hollywood where he met Jackie Chan and attended the premiere of Chan’s Rush Hour 2. Also, while at the premiere, Saffy met other movie stars including Chan’s costar Chris Tucker, as well as Jamie Foxx, the Olsen twins, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Steven Seagal, and Pauly Shore. But even during his visit, Saffy was aware of his illness. He was in Los Angeles for four days and had to go to the hospital twice for dialysis.

Upon returning home, Saffy did get a kidney transplant, but it failed. As a result, he had to keep going for dialysis a few times every week from the age of 11 onwards. Despite his illness and being forced to miss a few days of school every week, Saffy graduated from high school in 2009, just a semester later than scheduled.

9. Daniel Fleetwood

Like many kids (and even adults), Daniel Fleetwood fell in love with Star Wars when he was first introduced to it. As he grew up, the love for the franchise never faded and he would dress up in a costume to go to the premieres of the sequels.

As an adult, Daniel married a woman named Ashley, and he worked as a mental health counselor in Spring, Texas. Then in 2013, when he was 30, he received some troubling news. He was diagnosed with spindle cell sarcoma, which is a rare connective tissue cancer. Over the next two years the disease spread and Daniel got sicker. On September 2, 2015, his doctor told the 32-year-old husband and Star Wars fan that he had one, maybe two months to live.

In early November, Daniel had survived longer than expected, but his lungs were covered in tumors. His family didn’t think he would survive to see Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which is set to open in the United States in about a week and a half. This upset his wife Ashley and she wrote about it on a Facebook post, wishing that he could see the movie before he passed on. A short time after writing it, Ashley’s single posting went viral with the hashtag #ForceForDaniel. Ashley’s request even had support from Mark Hamill, John Boyega, and Carrie Fisher.

On November 4, director of The Force Awakens, J.J. Abrams, personally called the couple and arranged a screening for Daniel the next day, making him the first Star Wars fan to see the new film. Sadly, Daniel passed away in his sleep five days after seeing the movie. Amazingly, as you’ll see, this wasn’t the only time that J.J. Abrams, Disney, and Lucasfilm went to incredible effort to ensure that their dying fans got to see a movie before they passed on.

8. Scott Stouffer

Scott Stouffer of Maple Park, Illinois, had always been a fan of J.R.R. Tolkien’s books, so when the Peter Jackson adaptations came out, he would take his wife, son, and two daughters to see them. They started with the first Lord of the Rings film, The Fellowship of the Ring, in 2001, and from there it grew to be a holiday tradition. The family saw all of The Lord of the Rings movies and then the first two Hobbit movies together. They managed to do this even as the children started going away to school and moving out.

Before the family had a chance to see the third and final installment of The Hobbit, Scott was diagnosed with neuroendocrine and in mid-2014 he had stopped treatment because it wasn’t working. By the fall, his health was much worse and it didn’t look like he was going to survive until December 17, when The Battle of the Five Armies was set to be released. So Scott’s youngest daughter started a social media campaign, asking Warner Bros. to allow her family to see the sixth and final Jackson-Tolkien adaptation, just like they did every holiday when one of the films was released.

Warner Bros. responded by saying that they work with Make-a-Wish foundation and they try to grant as many wishes as they can, but they could not do individual wishes like the one the Stouffer’s family was looking for. Scott passed away on December 14, 2014, just three days before the movie opened.

7. Roy Rhodes

Roy Rhodes served in Vietnam from 1969 to 1970 and received two medals for his service. After returning from Vietnam, Roy was a volunteer firefighter for 17 years. He got married and started a family. But then a series of tragedies would hit him and his family in 1985. First, Roy was diagnosed with lung cancer and one of his lungs needed to be removed. Then in 1986, his four-year-old son passed away from leukemia and in October of the same year, Rhodes found out that he had a tumor on the other lung.

By spring 1986, Roy was 38-years-old and dying, but he had one last wish. Ever since he read about Oliver Stone’s Platoon, he wanted to see it because he said that his military service in Vietnam was the highlight of his life. The problem was that Roy was too sick to go to the theater when the movie was released in February of 1987.

Somehow, Roy’s friends managed to get in contact with Oliver Stone, who arranged to have a specially produced VHS tape express mailed to Rhodes while the film was still in theaters. After sending the video, Stone spoke to Rhodes’ mother and told her to pass along to Rhodes that the movie was coming and to hold on. Stone also told her that he would keep their family in his prayers.

On March 6, 1987, Roy’s friends and family got together to watch the movie in his home in Terra Alta, West Virginia, fulfilling his dying wish.

6. Daniel Craft

Daniel Craft was a film buff who lived in New York City. He worked for MTV’s data department and was also one of the founders of The New York Asian Film Festival. Craft spoke Mandarin and even acted in a few Chinese television shows, usually being the evil white person. But then at 38, he was diagnosed with leukemia. He had to undergo three rounds of chemo, and then got a bone marrow transplant, which meant more chemo. He survived three infections, was hospitalized 10 times and had hundreds of doctors’ appointments in the span of three and a half years. Then in late 2013, he was diagnosed with a completely different rare form of cancer that left him with just weeks to live.

Daniel’s wife, Paige, was willing to do anything to help her dying husband. In December of 2013, she managed to get Daniel out of the hospital to see The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey because before the movie, there was supposed to be a special 10 minute preview of Star Trek Into Darkness and Daniel was a huge Star Trek fan. But for some reason, the preview wasn’t screened at the showing they went to.

That’s when a friend of the couple posted Paige’s plea on reddit, asking if anyone knew if there was some way that Daniel could see Into Darkness, which was set to be released in May 2013. A day or two later, the thread had gone viral and Star Trek director J.J. Abrams and screenwriter Damon Lindelof left voicemails for Paige saying they would set something up quickly. The next day, a producer showed up at Daniel’s home with a rough cut of the film on DVD. Daniel signed a bunch of non-disclosure forms, then Paige made some popcorn and Daniel watched the movie. Abrams told him not to judge the movie too harshly because it was an incredibly rough cut, but Daniel apparently loved the film.

Shortly after watching the movie, Daniel went to bed and never woke up. He died two days later on January 6, at the age of 41 in a hospice.

5. Stratford Caldecott

From a young age, Stratford Caldecott loved comic books. As an adult, he married, had a child, and was one of the leading Catholic writers in the world. Then in October of 2011, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. While going through treatment, he watched a lot of Marvel movies and television shows. His daughter Sophie said that it was a form of escapism for him and that he loved them for their themes of hope, good fighting evil, and that in the end, the greater good is triumphant.

In March of 2014, Captain America: The Winter Solider was released in England, where Stratford lived, but at this point, he was too sick to go to the theater. The DVD was going to be released in August of 2014, but the doctors didn’t think that the 60-year-old grandfather had that long to live. So in May of 2014, on her blog, Sophie wrote a plea with the hopes of getting Marvel and Disney to send them a DVD early. In order to do this, she asked people to take pictures of themselves with a sign saying “#CapForStrat.” The hashtag caught on with none other than the Avengers themselves. The first to respond was Mark Ruffalo, who lost his own father to prostate cancer. Next was Samuel L. Jackson and then almost all the main cast members of the Avengers from the first film and many of the main cast members of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. started posting pictures of themselves holding a sign that said #CapForStrat.

In just under a week, one of the writers of the Captain America sequel, Christopher Markus, called the family and arranged a private viewing that Stratford could watch from his bed. About two months later on July 17, Stratford succumbed to his cancer.

4. Irene Sullivan

On July 14, 1985, Irene Sullivan of San Jose, California, turned 47, but sadly it would be her last birthday because she was dying of leukemia. When Irene’s husband and sister asked her if there was anything they could do for her, she told them that she wanted to do something for her 11-year-old son, Christopher. Both she and her son were big movie buffs and Christopher was really looking forward to seeing the movie Cocoon with her. But the movie had only been in theaters a month and Irene was too weak to go out.

Seeing the importance of her last birthday wish, her family contacted someone at the San Francisco Chronicle, who got in touch with 20th Century Fox and two days later, a VHS copy was delivered to the family. Irene slept the whole day before, just so she could stay up and watch the movie, which is about a group of senior citizens who find a fountain of youth and then are given the choice between being taken away from Earth to a planet where they can stay young forever or stay on Earth, where they will grow old and die.

During the movie, Christopher lay on the bed beside his mother and held her hand. They cried during the sad parts, but they smiled when the characters talked about living forever somewhere other thanEarth.

3. Sean Dunlap

14-year-old Sean Dunlap of New Orleans, Louisiana, never really had an easy life. For 11 years he suffered from muscle cancer and in the spring of 1991, Sean was starting to lose the battle. One thing he had been looking forward to was seeing the film, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, which was set to be released June 14, 1991. But because of his worsening health, Sean probably would not live that long.

The star of Robin Hood, Kevin Costner, was in New Orleans at the time because he was shooting the film JFK and heard about Sean’s dilemma. So on June 1, Costner arranged a private screening at a movie theater in a suburb of New Orleans and invited Sean and some of his friends and family to attend. During the screening, Costner sat beside Sean, who hopefully didn’t cringe too much at Kevin Costner’s accent fluctuations during the film. A week after the screening, Sean lost the battle with his muscle cancer.

2. Stanley Reid

When Stanley Reid turned six in 1983, his parents knew it would be the last birthday that they would share with their son. Stanley had a rare tumor on his chest called Burkitts Lymphoma. When they asked him what he wanted for his birthday, he had a request that would have been easy for most children: he wanted to see the third movie of the original Star Wars trilogy, Return of the Jedi, which had just been released in theaters around the time of his birthday.

Hearing about the request, friends of the family called around and eventually someone was able to get in contact with Lucasfilm. Within 15 minutes ofthe call, Lucasfilm arranged to have six reels of the film that had only been in theaters for two weeks, and a movie screen to be sent over to the hospital, which was about 50 miles outside of Los Angeles.

Less than 24 hours after the call, on June 3, Stanley watched the movie next to his parents in the basement of the hospital. They were worried he may not be strong enough to stay awake during the screening. He closed his eyes during the parts with too much talking and romance, but his eyes were alive when he watched the action scenes.

After the movie, Stanley seemed tobeinvigorated, but sadly two days later, on June 5, at 12:35 a.m., passed away with his parents by his side.

1. Colby Curtin

Two days before Christmas in 2005, seven-year-old Colby Curtin of Huntington Beach, California, was diagnosed with cancer. Over the next three years, she battled with the illness while trying to live a normal life. One of those normal things she did was watch movies, and like many other children and adults, she fell in love with the beautiful movies made by Pixar.

In April of 2009, she went to see the movie Monsters vs. Aliens, and during the previews they showed a trailer for Pixar’s Up. Upon seeing the trailer, she was mesmerized and definitely wanted to see that movie. Sadly, the week the movie opened in May of 2009, Colby’s health took a turn for the worse. Colby’s mother tried to get a wheelchair to take her daughter to the movie, but the hospice didn’t deliver it and after the weekend, the 10-year-old was too sick to go to the theater. That’s when a family friend started cold calling Pixar and Disney and amazingly got through to someone at Pixar.

The day after the call, on June 10, 2009, Pixar sent an employee with a bag full of stuffed animals, an Up poster and of course, a DVD copy of the film. Colby and her family gathered around the TV and watched one of the saddest movies ever in the most somber situation possible. Colby couldn’t see the TV, so her mother gave her a play-by-play and when she was asked if she enjoyed the movie, she nodded her head. Sadly, Colby passed away seven hours after watching the film with her parents at her bedside.

Robert Grimminck is a Canadian freelance writer. You can friend him on Facebook, follow him on Twitter, follow him on Pinterest or visit his website