Star Wars: 10 Secrets Of Cloud City You Need To Know
8. It Was Supposed To Appear In The First Movie
It's common knowledge amongst Star Wars fans that George Lucas redrafted the script for the original movie about ten bajillion times (give or take). At one point, the story was meant to focus on Samuel L. Jackson's character, Mace Windu. In another draft, Luke Skywalker was a 60-year-old general who trained a pupil called Starkiller. Lucas also considered having "giant bushbaby" aliens in the climax for... some reason.
But another alteration that the Star Wars screenplay went through was the removal of Cloud City. In the second draft, concept artist Ralph McQuarrie designed a floating territory, which served as an Imperial prison on Princess Leia's homeworld of Alderaan. Even though scenes of Alderaan were meant to be filmed, they were ultimately cut.
However, Lucas loved the idea of a habitat hovering in the sky and didn't want to abandon it. As a result, he repurposed McQuarrie's floating Imperial prison for the sequel, The Empire Strikes Back, and turned it into Cloud City. Even though the structure was no longer a prison, its final design only had minor differences compared to McQuarrie's original sketchwork.