10 Terrible Star Wars Ideas That Nearly Happened

10. Adventures Of The Starkiller

Before it eventually became the Star Wars we know and love, George Lucas' plans for a galaxy far, far away were initially very different.

In his early drafts of The Star Wars, Lucas envisaged Luke Skywalker as an old general, and it was Annikin Starkiller who served the role of a young padawan, albeit one with much more cockiness than the Luke we'd end up with.

Han Solo, meanwhile, was an Ureallian, a green-skinned alien with gills; Darth Vader didn't wear a helmet; Chewbacca's early design is what would eventually be used for Lasats in Star Wars Rebels; and Leia was a 14-year-old princess with two brothers.

Lightsabers weren't a Jedi weapon, but used by Stormtroopers, while the Force wasn't the mystical power it would later become, with the Jedi instead being more simply great warriors.

It was all very different, and through these early drafts it was less of a space opera and slightly harder sci-fi, with the real meat of what would become Star Wars first being introduced in the second draft, the long-winded Adventures of the Starkiller taken from the Journal of the Whills, Episode I: The Star Wars, along with Ralph McQuarrie's concept art, and advanced from there.

There are some recognisable beats among those rough and first drafts, but Lucas had struggles getting Star Wars made anyway, much less in that form, and without the idealistic young hero, cocky (but human) rogue right-hand man, appropriately-aged tough princess, and Vader looking like, well, Vader, it wouldn't have worked.