8 Early Drafts That Almost Ruined Great Movies

No film's plot has ever been under more scrutiny than that of Star Wars Episode VII. After George Lucas' scripts were dropped, more character ideas and story concepts were thrown around than there are fans upset by the prequels. Even figuring out which of the old heroes to focus on, something that should seem obvious, took a long time to define.

Michael Arndt originally wrote the script with Luke Skywalker in the mentor role rather than Han Solo. On paper this makes perfect sense - it's rhymes with Obi-Wan Kenobi in the original film and fits with where we expected the Jedi Knight to go - but when he started trying to actually make the story work it fell apart; despite being the blandest of the main trio, it turned out Luke was the character you instinctively most wanted to see. It likely also caused a focus conflict with how to balance audience investment in Han Solo ahead of his death (because, regardless of role size, Harrison Ford was definitely not signing on otherwise).

As a result, the film shifted to be about the search for Luke, using that desire to see him as essential plot motivation.

The film struggled more with Luke's presence as it went on, however; the crawl was originally going to pan down to Luke's severed hand from Empire, spinning through space with the Skywalker lightsaber, but was cut when the filmmaker's realised it made no sense (duh).