A Look at What Could Have Been: Obi-Wan Was Originally Supposed to Live Through A New Hope

Peter Mayhew is an absolute treasure. Let me just say that right up front. He’s also not afraid of peeling back the curtain on some of our most favorite movies; namely, the original Star Wars trilogy. Every day, he’s been posting pictures of his original Star Wars script, which contains a bunch of incredible behind-the-scenes trivia and some “deleted scenes” (read: script pages that were apparently never shot). Today’s reveal was a pretty significant one: according to his original script, Obi-Wan Kenobi was supposed to live through his duel with Darth Vader.

In the script, Obi-Wan goes charging into a group of stormtroopers, running away from Vader at the end of their duel. He gets wounded after he deflects a blaster bolt from one of the troopers, and is carried back to the Falcon by Luke. Vader lets him go, and the movie continues on as normal from there. Mayhew only posted a few pages from the original script, so there’s no telling how Obi-Wan’s presence would have affected the rest of the movie, but I’m not so sure it would have been such a good thing.

If I could nerd out for a second: Obi-Wan’s sacrifice is a major point in the development of Luke’s story. Him witnessing the death of his mentor propels him further down the hero’s path. Sure, if Obi-Wan didn’t die here, it could very well have been somebody else, but the stakes for this scene and the ensuing escape would have been so much lower, and definitely would have bled out a lot of the tension that made this scene what it was. As well, Obi-Wan dying adds emotional impact when you consider that he was one of the last remaining known Jedi. At that point in the movie, the existence of other Jedi were considered to be rumors and legends, so the movie’s feint towards this idea that one of the last few Jedi had died was a pretty significant one.

All said, though, I would have definitely liked to see some more Alec Guinness in Star Wars, even though rumor has it he wasn’t too happy with what he was doing there anyway. Ah, well. At least we’ll always have Ewan McGregor, right?

(via io9, featured image via Lucasfilm)

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Jessica Lachenal

Jessica Lachenal is a writer who doesn’t talk about herself a lot, so she isn’t quite sure how biographical info panels should work. But here we go anyway. She's the Weekend Editor for The Mary Sue, a Contributing Writer for The Bold Italic (thebolditalic.com), and a Staff Writer for Spinning Platters (spinningplatters.com). She's also been featured in Model View Culture and Frontiers LA magazine, and on Autostraddle. She hopes this has been as awkward for you as it has been for her.

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