I got this from Star Wars.com today. It's really cool.
How, you ask, can we be celebrating Luke Skywalker's 35th birthday when we've just finished celebrating the saga's 30th?
Simple -- because George Lucas started penning the Star Wars saga over four years before we caught a glint of that galaxy far, far away -- on April 17, 1973, to be exact.
At least that's the date cited by Lucas in an interview he gave Rolling Stone Magazine back in 1983, just 10 years after he'd first put pencil to narrow-ruled paper. According to the interview, Lucas began scribing his 10-page written treatment for Star Wars on April 17, handing in the first draft a little over a month later on May 20 (according to The Making of Star Wars, it seems that a working draft may have been circulated among Lucas' lawyers and prospective studios a week or two prior to May 20).
In this first iteration of the Star Wars saga, it's interesting to see how many of Lucas' initial concepts survived to the final film. The treatment opens in \"deep space\", immediately setting the stage for the saga in a faraway galaxy. The treatment's first paragraphs are also not too far a cry from the Blockade Runner pursuit which opens the finished film:
The eerie blue-green planet of Aquilae slowly drifts into view. A small speck, orbiting the planet, glints in the light of a nearby star.
Suddenly a sleek fighter-type spacecraft settles ominously into the foreground moving swiftly toward the orbiting speck. Two more fighters silently maneuver into battle formation behind the first and then three more craft glide into view. The orbiting speck is actually a gargantuan space fortress which dwarfs the approaching fighters. Fuel pods are jettisoned. The six fighters break off into a power dive attack on the huge fortress. Lazer bolts streak from the fighters creating small explosions on the complex surface of the fort. Return fire catches one of the fighters and it bursts into a million pieces. Another of the craft plows into a gun emplacement jutting from the fortress causing a hideous series of chain reaction explosions. The chaos of battle echoes through the vastness of space.
While many of the treatment's plot points have an air of familiarity about them -- rebels on the run, a princess, cantina confrontation, prison rescue, space dogfight, etc. -- few names we know from the final films are here. There are the planets Yavin and Alderaan, described as the homeworld of the \"Wookees\" and capital of the Empire, respectively. More interestingly, though, the name Luke Skywalker is established early on in this first treatment, although he'd soon adopt the surname \"Starkiller\" in subsequent drafts until his original namesake was restored just prior to shooting in 1976.
So why commemorate the day Star Wars was pulled from the ether and laid down to paper for the very first time? Because it celebrates the spirit of creativity and the resolve of the artist to mold, twist, bend, and pound an idea into a vision that ultimately takes on a life of its own. And at just 35, what an extraordinary life it's been so far.
