In January of 1973, Lucas began working on story material. He wanted to have a comic-book-like feel to the story that recalled the great pulp space opera works like E.E. Smith’s Skylark of Space, but had trouble devising an actual story. To jog his mind, he began by brainstorming exotic names that he could use for characters and planets, almost in a free-association manner, simply to develop the sort of bizarre atmosphere and far-out style that he was looking for. The first name is “Emperor Ford Xerxes XII” (Xerxes being a Persian king who invaded ancient Greece), which was followed by “Xenos, Thorpe, Roland, Monroe, Lars, Kane, Hayden, Crispin, Leila, Zena, Owen, Mace, Wan, Star, Bail, Biggs, Bligh, Cain, Clegg, Fleet, Valorum.”[i] He started combining first and last names and fleshing out their purpose and characterisation: Alexander Xerxes XII is the “Emperor of Decarte,” Owen Lars is an “Imperial General,” Han Solo is “leader of the Hubble people,” Mace Windy a “Jedi-Bendu”, C.2. Thorpe is a space pilot, while Anakin Starkiller is “King of Bebers” and Luke Skywalker “Prince of Bebers.” He came up with planets such as “Yoshiro” and “Aquilae” the desert planets, “Norton III” an ice planet, and “Yavin” is a jungle world with its native eight-foot-tall Wookies.

Having bombarded himself with such an exotically alien ambiance he finally attempted to construct a story. What he ended up with was a vague two pages of a hand-written plot summary with the curious title Journal of the Whills; it opened with the convoluted line, “This is the story of Mace Windy, a revered Jedi-Bendu of Opuchi, as related to us by C.J Thape, padawaan learner to the famed Jedi.” In the brief plot outline, Mace Windy is a “Jedi-Bendu” or “Jedi-Templer,” a vague sci-fi adaptation of a space superhero crossed with a samurai. Windy takes on an apprentice, CJ Thorpe, who narrates the story retrospectively in the first person. The tale is uncharacteristically literary in prose, and is divided into two parts, headed with “I” and “II” respectively, Part I being Thrope’s training and Part II being his first mission. J.W. Rinzler describes it:

“The initials C.J. or C.2. (it switches back and forth) stand for ‘Chuiee Two Thorpe of Kissel. My father is Han Dardell Thorpe, chief pilot of the renown galactic cruiser Tarnack.’ At the age of sixteen Chuiee enters the ‘exalted Intersystems Academy to train as a potential Jedi-Templer. It is here that I became padawaan learner to the great Mace Windy…at that time, Warlord to the Chairman of the Alliance of Independent Systems…Some felt that he was more powerful than the Imperial leader of the Galactic Empire…Ironically, it was his own comrades’ fear…that led to his replacement…and expulsion from the royal forces.’

After Windy’s dismissal, Chuiee begs to stay in his service ‘until I had finished my education.’ Part II takes up the story: ‘It was four years later that our greatest adventure began. We were guardians on a shipment of fusion portables to Yavin, when we were summoned to the desolate second planet of Yoshiro by a mysterious courier from the Chairman of the Alliance.’ At this point Lucas’s first space-fantasy narrative trails off…”[ii]

            This plot summary has little relation to the final product, but contains a few elements which would be later incorporated into the screenplays, such as the phonetics of “Chuiee” (“Chewie”), a pilot named Han, a galactic Empire, a space academy, and intergalactic superheroes named Jedi.

Lucas took this summary to his agent, Jeff Berg, for an opinion—unsurprisingly, Berg was left utterly confounded at the incomprehensible story and recommended Lucas try something simpler. “I knew more about the story based on what George had told me than what was in that brief treatment.”[iii] Frustrated, Lucas began anew.

There is also a second Journal of the Whills of sorts, which Lucas developed out of this plot summary--he called this summary Journal  of the Whills because he wanted to connote the feeling of a chapter taken from a larger chronicle. The screenplay drafts would be subtitled"from the Journal of the Whills," and some drafts even opened with a Bible-like quote of prophecy from this Journal. This conception of a Journal of the Whills never existed however, and was merely a storytelling device used to place Star Wars in a grander narrative context; the Journal of the Whills opening quote was eventually replaced with the "A long time ago" line which accomplishes a similar objective of placing the film in a larger storytelling framing. This aspect is covered extensively in Appendix A of The Secret History of Star Wars.

05/31/07