Yeah, George Lucas actually did write the first couple drafts of Empire and I recently read one of them and it turns out almost all the elements that show up in the finished film were there from his drafts.
Except the dialogue, I promise you. Having not read those drafts, I can still say with utter confidence that ESB's dialogue was not a Lucas undertaking. Because it was good.
This is the primary reason why the prequels with their colorful cast of characters played by highly experienced actors at the top of their game, sucks--even a great actor cannot save that much awful dialogue. It drags down the character. I wanted to laugh at most of Anakin's dialogue in Ep. II, and I think Hayden Christiansen is a fantastic actor. Lucas hamstrung the lot of them by refusing to acknowledge his own shortcomings.
t wanders into thread
t looks up at thread title
Huh. So Tim wrote
Phantom Menace
too, huh?
That must have been hard for him, what with all the Buffy writing he was doing back then.
Explains what happened to Liam Neeson, though.
t runs away
"Except the dialogue, I promise you. Having not read those drafts, I can still say with utter confidence that ESB's dialogue was not a Lucas undertaking. Because it was good."
Actually quite a bit of dialogue was carried over from his darfts, you'd be suprised. Dialogue may not be George's strong point but he's hardly as bad as people make him out to be. He wrote almost all the dialogue for American Graffiti save for the Ron Howard scenes with his girlfriend and I thought the dialogue was perfect for the movie. The truth is the dialogue in the prequels and even the original trilogy is purposefully corny because the saga is meant as a tribute to the serials Lucas used to watch as a kid. Luke whining, "I wanted to go to Toshi's Station to get some power converters!" That's not Joss Whedon calibre is it?
ESB was co-written by Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan. I think it's far and away the best of them, and I attribute much of that to Leigh Brackett, who was a brilliant writer, both of novels and screenplays, including "The Long Goodbye" and "Rio Bravo," plus she held Faulkner's hand when he worked on "The Big Sleep."
Leigh Brackett also took a pass at the first Star Wars as well. However it was Harrison Ford who came up with the best line in Empire. Just before Han was frozen in carbonite Leia says "I love you." and Han was supposed to say "I love you too." but Ford improvised "I know."
Padme : We used to come here for school retreat. We would swim to that island every day. I love the water. We used to lie out on the sand and let the sun dry us and try to guess the names of the birds singing.
Anakin : I don't like sand. It's coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere. Not like here. Here everything is soft and smooth.
So Tim wrote Phantom Menace too, huh?
Okay that's just blasphemy.
Someone get me a rail. I need to run Kristin out of thread on it.
Vader: Luke, I don't like sand.
Luke: NOOOOOOOOO!!!!
Vowel fight! Vowel fight! It's the Battle of the Kr[i,e]stens!
ESB was co-written by Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan. I think it's far and away the best of them, and I attribute much of that to Leigh Brackett, who was a brilliant writer, both of novels and screenplays, including "The Long Goodbye" and "Rio Bravo," plus she held Faulkner's hand when he worked on "The Big Sleep."
More germane, she was a veteran of space opera from the pulps like
Planet Stories.
Which was a more swashbuckling/not so scientific pulp. Now if only CL Moore could've worked on a few episodes of
Farscape...
