Hey everybody, today I’m going to talk about one of the many, MANY retcons in STAR WARS and how the box office changed the course of this box office draw in 1977 and beyond. Now, it’s no secret that George Lucas changed ALOT of things during the evolution of the overall story in Star Wars– Han Solo was originally some reptilian looking chud, Jabba the Hutt was a fur wearing Feudal Gangster, Starkiller was replaced by Skywalker etc.
Heck….. even the fabled CLONE WARS mentioned in ‘A New Hope’ was completely chnaged (and also not fleshed out when that line by obi-wan dropped in 1977).
To be fair though, as you world build and fine tune some things sat and some things go. What was once a ‘god idea’ becomes silly as the puzzle becomes clearer and clearer. This is the story of how Star Wars was expected to continue on if the first one bomb (Spoiler alert: Iit didn’t….shocking I know jkjk). So strap in- we’re going on a pop culture history lesson….
The Sequel Nobody Expected to Need (where we begin our journey)
If you think Star Wars was always destined to become a massive franchise, Splinter of the Mind’s Eye tells another story. It’s more than just a sequel, it was an insurance policy.Before anyone knew whether Star Wars would become a hit, George Lucas was already planning for failure. When
he commissioned author Alan Dean Foster to write a potential low-budget sequel the idea was simple: have another story ready if the first movie performed only modestly. BUT, Instead, Star Wars became a cultural explosion and changed the plan entirely (We know this how?
well….simple…it’s several decades later, there’s a section of disneyland devoted to it, more than 10+ films, 5+ Disney+ series, a slew of cartoons and a marketing machine with merchandise for just about ANYTHING.
This backup story eventually became the 1978 novel ‘Splinter of the Mind’s Eye‘.
Foster was given considerable freedom, but Lucas imposed one major requirement.
The story needed to be cheap enough to turn into another movie (my man was already planning for that shoe-string budget…).
This meant limited locations, reusable production elements, condensed cast of characters and minimal expensive spectacle (We ain’t being no Michael Bay with this one).
In other words, Lucas was thinking like a producer before he could afford to think like an empire (zing), he was planing for practical not spectacle.
Welcome to Mimban
His production philosophy explains why Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa end up on the murky planet Mimban, and from here the bare bones-in’ begins.
The most basic and genius thing Dean did was tweak the setting in a way that drastically slashes budget…..Foster deliberately created a fog-shrouded environment that could hide expensive backgrounds and elaborate sets. He concentrated much of the action underground, further reducing what a hypothetical movie would need to construct.
Lucas even asked Foster to remove an opening space battle because it would have been expensive, remember it was all models and screen capture, CGI was a thought for the most part at this point in time. The upside here was that these creative constraints positively impacted the stories development, The resulting plot felt strangely intimate compared to a galaxy-spanning adventure and several sequels (and prequels) that eventually followed.
Then there is Han Solo, or more accurately, the complete absence of Han Solo (booooooooooo right? Like wtf m8).
Harrison Ford had not yet signed an agreement guaranteeing his participation in future Star Wars projects, so they had to plan ahead just in case.
Foster was therefore specifically instructed not to use Han (again booooooo).
Chewbacca also disappeared alongside him because there was little reason to include the Wookiee without his partner, why worry about costume cost when his partner in crime wasn’t around yanno?
That single contractual uncertainty helped shape one of the strangest alternate versions of the Star Wars saga……It gets a little bit LANNISTER IFKYIM
The Weird Little Pieces of Star Wars History (or more accurately gaping plot holes)
The novel also preserves ideas from a time when the mythology was still being invented,
Luke and Leia have romantic tension because their eventual sibling relationship had not yet been established (cringe).
That makes some scenes extremely weird when viewed through everything audiences eventually learned.
The story also introduces the Kaiburr crystal, an extraordinarily powerful Force-related artifact.
It is not literally the modern kyber crystal, but it is fascinatingly similar as an early crystal-based Force concept.
Mimban itself became one of those wonderfully strange pieces of early Star Wars lore.
The book features Darth Vader, Luke, Leia, Imperial forces, strange creatures, and a dangerous search for the Kaiburr crystal.
Again, the adventure feels much smaller than the movies that followed it, at this point though we know understand why.
Not gonna lie sometimes the simplest plots end up being the best stories, I mean THE WARRIORS was just a Point A to Point B movie with plot that happens along the way, ya don’t always need an infinity War and it makes perfect sense when remembering what Foster was actually asked to create.
The Backup Plan That Became History
The funniest part of all of this is that Lucas never needed the cheap sequel he commissioned. We know how it unfolded and we knoe
Star Wars became enormously successful, giving Lucas the freedom to pursue something much more ambitious. So what to do with this alternate take so-to-say…. Well Again simple: Strip it down and change it. Use some elements and jettison the rest with t he escape pods. When
The eventual sequel became The Empire Strikes Back, leaving Splinter of the Mind’s Eye behind as a fascinating alternate path was the onlky way to go and THANK GOD they took that direction.
The novel nevertheless became an important early piece of what eventually became the Star Wars Expanded Universe.
It remains a snapshot of the franchise before its mythology had completely hardened into place. It’s also a nice bit of history and a good reason to have this conversation
For this guy, that may be what makes Splinter of the Mind’s Eye more interesting than a forgotten sequel ever should be.
It shows George Lucas preparing for the possibility that his crazy space movie might not conquer the world. I would literally take this approach myself because I too have low faith in my creativity and also plan for contingency. So in that Spirit George too built a contingency plan around limited resources, uncertain contracts, and a story that could be filmed cheaply. Independent film making was a whole different beast back then…..
BUUT Star Wars succeeded so spectacularly that no backup plan became unnecessary, and it was all null and void (esp that creepy romantic tension that we don’t talk about in hindsight)
So that’s it…… That’s my story….. of the story, thats…..no longer a story. Or something like that. I got nothing. STAY CLASSY!