Unused Concepts

While these are not technically deleted scenes from the film, these unused concepts from Episode III are just too cool to ignore.

YOUNG BOBA FETT

At first, I was a surprised to find out that George Lucas entertained the idea of incorporating the young Boba Fett into this film, but then it started to make sense to me. Boba should have his revenge. Mace Windu killed his father, thus setting up the idea that Fett doesn’t like Jedi at all. Boba might have been happy to learn that Windu died horribly, but there was probably a small part of him that was upset he wasn’t involved in Windu’s demise. In an issue of Star Wars Insider magazine, one of the captions for a piece of concept art containing Fett reads: “On January 10, Lucas states definitively that Boba Fett would only be 16 and therefore too young.” The question is – too young for what? Revenge? To be a bounty hunter? To wear the suit? To appear in the film? It might have added another plot thread to an already complicated film.

 

YOUNG HAN SOLO

As with Boba Fett, Lucas also toyed with the idea of inserting another of his most beloved characters into Episode III: Han Solo. Of course, he would be much younger, only about ten years old. This idea made it into the rough draft of the screenplay. Concept art was approved, dialogue was written, and the character was inserted into the Kashyyyk battle scenes as a helpful kid who actually plays a role in finding the elusive General Grievous’ location to the delight of Jedi Master Yoda. Iain McCaig is quoted in The Art of Revenge of the Sith as saying this about the cancelled cameo:

“It’s not in the script anymore, but we were told that Han Solo was on Kashyyyk and that he was being raised by Chewbacca. He’s such a persnickety guy later on – he always has to have the best of everything – so I thought it’d be great if when he was a kid, he was an absolute slob.”

Here’s the excerpt from the rough draft with ten-year-old Han Solo’s line:

HAN SOLO
I found part of a transmitter droid
near the east bay… I think it’s still
sending and receiving signals.

YODA
Good. Good. Track this we can back
to the source. Find General Grievous,
we might…

From there, Solo and Yoda were supposed to track the signal to Utapau, therefore locating Grievous. Yoda would then report to the council with Grievous’ location, which prompts Mace Windu to send Obi-Wan over there with a bunch of clones to capture Grievous and end the war. Unfortunately, by the time the first draft of the script was completed, Solo was dropped. The images below are from The Art of Revenge of the Sith and The Making of Revenge of the Sith.

 

THE LEMUR PEOPLE

Originally, the planet of Utapau (called Utapo during production, though the name Utapau goes back to the early drafts of Star Wars) wasn’t supposed to be inhabited by the creepy aliens of Tion Medon’s race. Those tall beings were supposed to live on Mustafar. Utapau was supposed to be inhabited by a race of lemur-like beings. The concept of the lemur people was dropped early on, and the original Mustafarians were moved to Utapau. New beings were created for Mustafar and that was that. According to The Making of Revenge of the Sith, the concept of the unnamed lemur people was officially dropped some time around January of 2003. Artist Ryan Church said it best: “Ultimately, we have enough furry fighting things.” Depending on their final height, they would have undoubtedly been endlessly compared to Ewoks.

Carl Jones e-mailed me with a fun bit of trivia. Terryl Whitlatch, creature artist extraordinaire for Episode I, wrote a book called The Katurran Odyssey which features – you guessed it – a race of Lemur people. George Lucas even helped promote it with some textual raving inside. It makes you wonder if Terryl had something to do with the original inspiration for the Lemur people. Perhaps it was a discarded concept from Episode I. Interestingly enough, the book contains a blurb from Dinotopia author, James Gurney. I remember when Episode I was out, and Lucas’ team was accused of doing some heavy lifting from the designs in Dinotopia. I think the Naboo sets were the ones mentioned, with their little green domed buildings and plazas. I recall reading an article saying that Lucas called Gurney to discuss the similarities and the possibility of making a Dinotopia film, though development stalled on that project.

The lemurs never made it into Episode III, but there was plenty of concept art created, which gives us an idea of what might have been. They ended up being used in the animated series The Clone Wars, but were renamed Lurmen.

 

 

…and here’s a little something just for fun.