We all know how the original Star Wars saga films open- the sea of stars, the classic logo and the main crawl setting up the film and adventure to come, followed by the appearance of a Star Destroyer. The idea of the stars setting for the crawl wasn't originally set in stone, however. Back in 1977/78, the film's story (as of the 3rd Draft) had no Star Destroyer launching probe droids- that came much later. Instead, the logo/ crawl would have been put over the icy landscape of Hoth. Though the idea was never used, two enterprising fans ('Sluggo' and 'Dax' via the OriginalTrilogy.com forum), ten years or so ago, did a brilliant job of making the 'What if?' a reality.
The title crawl information, presumably from the Third Draft (linked to it being 'Chapter II' not EPISODE V- the idea of doing a prequel saga not fully formed back then), never made it to the finished version of the film either, replaced with more dramatic and pertinent story info by the film's post production phase in 1980, though it did make it into the pages of the Marvel Comics adaptation (comics and book releases), which were presumably not able to make the changes seen with the film during their production schedules.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdXzAcwyVrY
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| The classic shot of Luke on Tauntaun that was moved to a later position during the film's opening. |
Once the titles disappeared into the 'bleak horizon', the camera was to have titled down from an aerial shot towards Luke and his Tauntaun on patrol. The shot, which fused helicopter filming plates taken on location in Norway (handled by top movie pilot Marc Wolfe, whose surname spelling seems to change with each film he's worked on!) with stop motion animation, ultimately made it into the finished EPISODE V after the revised opening, though it proved to be one of the most complex effects shots to get believably right.
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| The Marvel comics 1980 visual translation of the originally planned sequence. |
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