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

[seawasp]

Empire was dark enough as it was; doing that would have lost a large chunk of the audience (me included). Nothing to do with Leia being a woman; you simply don't make a hero who's the clear focal point of a series, and then kill him OR her in the middle of their journey once you've gotten past a certain point. Kill off Luke in Star Wars, okay, you could probably do that, but you really should do it at most maybe 3/4 of the way through so that we can re-focus and find the REAL hero of the plot, but not after you've finished the first movie, and then gone through 95% of the second.

[zornhau.livejournal.com]

Alas. Seawasp is right. It would be good, however, to have had Bracket write the Return of the Jedi script.

[wakboth.livejournal.com]

Yup. That would have been a very stupid twist, and would have resulted in a much worse ESB and Star Wars in general.

[martinl-00.livejournal.com]

We all know how thoroughly killing off the protagonist late in the book deep-sixed _Tnzr bs Guebarf_, which probably would have become a fan favourite otherwise given the book's overall qualities.

[seawasp]

I *knew* someone would bring that (or a similar case) up; I'm actually somewhat surprised it took three replies.

But (A) Martin did this, what, a quarter-century later, so his stuff could be viewed as deconstruction, and (B) there's a damn good reason I, and quite a few other people of my acquaintance, have not and won't be reading that.

[martinl-00.livejournal.com]

Breaking rules can be wildly successful - if you do it well.

[agharta75.livejournal.com]

But Ned wasn't the protagonist.

(Now, if Tyrion is killed off before the end of book 7 ...)