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A Re-evaluation of the Journal of the Whills

It really is amazing how much there is to learn about the history of Star Wars' writing--because well over thirty years later we are still uncovering entire stories which we didn't know existed!In his research for his upcoming book, The Making of Star Wars, J.W. Rinzler uncovered a document that pre-dates the May 1973 "The Star Wars" treatment, the one which is a remake of Hidden Fortress. It is called The Journal of the Whills and tells the story of "Mace Windy."

This is a very monumental discovery. Those who have read Appendix A: The Great Mystery of the Journal of the Whills no doubt will be wondering how this revises the hypotheses which i laid out in that chapter. My own conclusion was that the "Mace Windy" or "Mace Windu" document that Pollock spoke of was actually the treatment for the 1974 rough draft, and that it had been inserted into The Annotated Screenplays as a way of substantiating a misconception born out of Pollock's reference to this document. It turns out that this conclusion is not entirely true after all. However, Bouzereau obviously is ignorant to its existance, and it is very apparent that the reference to it in The Annotated Screenplay's introduction and list of sources are insertions by the editor. What probably happened is that this "Mace Windy" document was discovered at the last minute, after Bouzereau had already completed the manuscript, and so it was hastily pasted in, using Pollock's only quote on the document and unfortunately not discussed with any further elaboration (perhaps it was not available on hand for further detail) .

In an article in the latest Star Wars Insider exploring "the origins of the prequels", i believe Rinzler reports that this document is only two pages long, and not the forty-page document The Annotated Screenplays claims. Plot-wise we are told very little in the article, as the document is unfortunately granted only a few sentences of exploration--all we are told is that Mace Windy takes on a padawaan, Usby CJ Thape, which we already knew, and also mentions that he is expelled from the jedi-bendu order for his unorthodox methods; in trying to link it to the prequel trilogy, Rinzler compares it to Qui Gon and his tutelage. Interestingly, it is revealed that the synopsis ends with the two jedi-bendu being dispatched by "the chairman" on a secret mission, similar to the beginning of Phantom Menace, i suppose ending in a serialesque cliffhanger that would continue into another, unseen adventure.

This document will assumedly be dealt with in greater detail in Rinzler's upcoming book.

This revelation, however, alters the origins of Star Wars in some very interesting ways. After Lucas failed to secure the rights to Flash Gordon, he attempted to make his own "superhero in space" and started writing in January of 1973--the result was this brief synopses, at two pages long being more like a summary or plot notes. It used the samurai films as a basis, giving us the equivalent in "Jedi-bendu" Mace Windy who takes on an apprentice, but probably set it in the science-fiction world of Flash Gordon.This would then be consistent with what Baxter reported--that Lucas brought this poorly-written document to his lawyer, Tom Berg, for an opinion, and Berg said that it was incomprehensible. Frustrated, Lucas threw it away and instead decided to remake a hit fairy tale adventure film by his mentor, Akira Kurosawa--the result was the 13 page synopsis of May that year, which was a remake of Hidden Fortress. But again, Lucas became frustrated, probably because it was not outrageous enough and didn't have much of the comic book "space opera" elements he envisioned--for his first full-length script, he kept much of the Kurosawa base but surrounded it with elements from comic books and pulp fiction, re-instating the samuari-inspired jedi-bendu from the initial Journal of the Whills synopsis and creating the 1974 rough draft. From here things continued to snowball as per the traditional history.

In a few months time i will update Appendix A accordingly, and also add this to the beginning part of Chapter II. Hopefully, Rinzler's book, released next month, will delve into this Journal of the Whills document in more detail. This article will be updated accordingly when that happens--those who have read The Secret History of Star Wars can instead simply reference this article for any updates and corrections instead of having to re-read the second edition of the book.

03/20/07

UPDATE 05/31/07: A more detailed examination of this document is now up.