The Dark Crystal Meets Star Wars

I'm a Dark Crystal-geek. I found this great unofficial homepage with this amazing little tidbit. Who knew??

I'm part of a small group that collects rough drafts of Star Wars screenplays. One of the most interesting was the Third Draft of the original movie (the shooting script was the Revised Fourth Draft). In this draft, the familiar concept of the Force is embodied in a large, dark crystal on the Sith planet of Alderaan. The Sith have all the fragments except one, which is in the hands of the ancient Jedi Obi-Wan Kenobi. Luke Starkiller uses this fragment of the Kiber Crystal to guide his torpedos down the shaft of the Death Star in the final space battle sequence.

Sound familiar? Lucas cut out the Sith subplot (Darth Vader was a Dark Lord of the Sith) and decided to make the Force more ephemeral, eliminating the need for a crystal manifestation.

Okay, you're saying. Dark Crystal (or at least parts of the plot) seem to be based on an early draft of Star Wars. Where's the connection? Gary Kurtz produced both. As I recall, Dark Crystal was a pet project of his that he pursued shortly after parting ways with Lucas after Empire Strikes Back. Kurtz was one of the very small circle of people (including conceptual artist Ralph McQuarrie) to be involved in Star Wars in the rough-draft stages of the story.

When Obi-Wan hands Luke the Kiber Crystal shard, the scene immediately cuts to the Crystal Chapel on Alderaan, where Darth Vader and two other Sith Lords suddenly feel a great disturbance in the Force. "Darth, did you feel that?" one asks. There is something just like this scene in the Dark Crystal ("So, my hand...").

In fact, it might be even more helpful for those interested to go to http://locals.onslowonline.net/~osgood/. This is the official Jedi Bendu site. It currently focuses on the Second Draft, but there is a link to the Third Draft somewhere on it.