Hello everyone!
While going through my storage unit recently, I discovered a box of Lucasfilm-related artifacts from my childhood. Most of the contents revolved around the Star Wars fan club: stickers, patches, newsletters, but among all those goodies was this little gem. The handwritten script to THE LAST JEDI.
Or, rather… “Star Wars Episode VII: The Last (of) the Jedi.â€
From what I remember, this dates back to either the summer or fall of 1983, when I decided to embark on a journey writing a sequel to Star Wars: Return of the Jedi. The story was to pick up shortly after the climactic battle of Endor, with the Empire in disarray and Luke, Han, Leia, Lando and Chewie mopping up the Imperial forces.
BUT… little did they know the evil DARTH LUGAR was waiting to pick up where the Emperor left off!
Last night I had a chance to re-read the story for the first time since I had written it, and… well, it’s a mess. I’m not even sure where I was going with it. For as meticulous and ground-breaking as I hoped the story was, there are all sorts of characters I brought back from the dead, and weird plot points that don’t even make any sense. Still, I got 26 pages into it, and it’s interesting to see some of the parallels with the current film series (a Death Star hidden inside a moon? The “Last of the Jedi†title, etc).
The script ends rather abruptly, so I’m not sure if I went outside to play, ran out of ideas, or just got otherwise distracted.
I can’t say there’s really all the much in original material here, but hey… I was 10 years old with dreams of grandeur. It’s kind of fun seeing how I was trying to channel some of the different characters’ personalities, and where I would pull in random elements from the comics and other sources, and with the new movie about to open, my Star Wars nostalgia is at an all-time high.
All that said, keep an open mind with all of this, and hopefully it’ll appeal to the 10-year old dreamer in us all.
And if you’d prefer to read this in a PDF format, the entire story is available here:
https://www.ironcowprod.com/Last-of-the-Jedi.pdf
Sit back and enjoy. And thank you for letting me share this with you!
Matt
aka Iron-Cow
December 11, 2017
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