I kinda like this alternate history

[james_davis_nicoll]

Something I posted elsewhere:

POD: 1970s: A healthy Leigh Brackett pitches an interesting twist to George Lucas.


1980: Audiences are somewhat taken aback when, during the confrontation scene between Vader and Luke, Vader takes Luke's head off like an offending dandelion flower. Now the fate of the Rebel Alliance, rescuing Han and all that jazz rests on the shoulders of the last Jedi, Leia.

Comments

[sean o'hara (from livejournal.com)]

Ripley's gender may've been unspecified in the script for Alien, but that doesn't apply to Aliens.

And Liea being Luke's sister was an ass-pull after Lucas decided he didn't want to do nine movies and needed a way to quickly explain the, "No, there is another" line. From what is known of the third trilogy as planned in the late '70s, the plot would've focused on finding the alternate after Luke failed against Vader.

[graydon saunders (from livejournal.com)]

Aliens is a very different movie, though, and goes to a great deal of trouble to set things up so Ripley is being badass for reasons of motherhood, a desperate defense of her child, rather than general pragmatic competence.

[botrytis.livejournal.com]

"From what is known of the third trilogy as planned in the late '70s, the plot would've focused on finding the alternate after Luke failed against Vader."

Where would one begin if I wanted to read more about what was planned?

[sean o'hara (from livejournal.com)]

There's Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays by Laurent Bouzereau, but being officially licensed by LucasFilm it has some heavy limitations on what it can say. Then there's The Secret History of Star Wars by Michael Kaminsky, which extensively documents both the development of the series and Lucas's BS about having it all planned from the get-go.