A couple years ago righ
t before a thanksgiving gathering, a brilliant theorist (who happened to be related) came up with a conspiracy theory while we were watching Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes back. She had recently watched “The Hunt for Red October” and suspected that Princess Leia’s somewhat confusing character was really because she wanted to defect to Darth Vader in a complex way of saving the rebellion from annihilation and a way to destroy to the emperor. Read about that idea in this previous blog. Then I suspected it may have been in Leigh Brackett’s original script, and wrote about that. Then I thought maybe it was just general tension between the actors,and Kirshner and Lucas’ ideas.
Finally over New Year’s break I read a book called “Empire Building” by Garry Jenkins about how Star Wars became famous, and the names of the team that helped Lucas with his dream. Basically, it summarized my conclusions about Empire Strikes Back that 1. Kirshner wasn’t pleased or finished with it due to Lucas’ interference and 2. Surprise! that Carrie Fisher was involved with her character to the point that she and Harrison Ford had arguments about the script, and even offered suggestions to Kirshner about them. This also explains why both Carrie and Harrison were willing to criticize Lucas in the wry remarks from Harrison’s “han should have died” and Carrie’s “I should have offered Lucas script doctoring” in post-film interviews (comments not in the book).
The book is worth a read for those who like backstage dramas from Gary Kurtz’s perpective and some of Lucas’ old team before they all broke up. It also made me appreciate how much teamwork goes into a film–completely opposite to say, writing one narrative like a novel.
However, let me explain why I am defending multiple-author-conspiracy type stuff in script or film but not in say, explaining Shakespeare or Jane Austen etc. Narratives only work in one voice, and if you don’t believe me, explain how the hook-ons to the Laura Ingalls series or Brian Jacques series change the voice. Also, there are computer programs people work on that proves that every person has their unique usage of prepositions or sentence structure “syntax”. That said, scripts can be slightly different since they are story and character focused–and even in scripts you can tell when characters are split or the story line argument is incoherent (I am thinking post-modern takes on Joan of Arc for instance) Nonetheless, in film-making team work is essential.
Which is why Empire Strikes Back feels incomplete and inconsistent with the rest of the Star Wars series–not at all like New Hope or Return of the Jedi. Empire Strikes Back is almost completely metaphorical, in between fairy tale and subconscious, but because it is very “Trinity” or body-mind-spirit oriented, which some may call “Freudian” but only because everyone doesn’t like talking about St. Augustine or Trinitarian theology which actually explains things a lot better. (I have a thing against Freud for messing up the trinity…kinda like when someone steals an idea and “patents” it, sigh.) I will speak about this more in detail later.
Jubilation 
this reminded me of why I love you so much.
and not just because I’m “brilliant”…. ;)