A Strange Glimpse at Star Wars that Could Have Been

Back in the early 2010s, the Los Angeles Times had an excellent web presence that included a number of web exclusive features. One of the best of those was their pop culture site The Hero Complex, edited by Geoff Boucher. Boucher is a long time genre editor who has worked for Entertainment Weekly, the Los Angeles Times, and Deadline. For the most part I think he’s a pretty good curator as an editor, but he missed the mark when he didn’t offer

LYT

a return to his gig covering Comic-Con for Deadline. I know that Luke hadn’t worked for the publication in a journalistic epoch, but¹ Luke’s coverage for Deadline in the before times in the not now was the first real journalistic coverage that the convention received and they could have branded it as a homecoming of a sort. I know that there are always multiple factors at play, and sometimes inside baseball stuff I am unaware of, but I thought it was (and is) a missed opportunity.

Needless to say, Boucher’s The Hero Complex frequently featured stories that let genre fans see the things they loved from a different angle. One of the most entertaining examples of this was when they shared Star Wars auditions that people had uploaded to YouTube that featured a number of 70s household names auditioning to star in the film. After watching some of these auditions, I won’t hesitate in saying that George Lucas and his team selected the right cast. Mark Hamill, in particular, hits the right notes from the start. As I learned watching my wife as she held auditions for a number of small projects, casting is a difficult process. Sometimes that difficulty comes when you have more than one person who is perfect for a role, and you have to choose just one. It’s never easy to see someone told, “No, sorry. We are going with someone else.” Other times, you go through audition after audition where no one fits the part at all and you wonder if you’ll ever find the right person.

Before I get to my comments on the auditions themselves, I want to highlight that the script the actors are working from is very different from what eventually ended up on the screen. Yes, Marcia Lucas’s superb editing tightened Star Wars in general, but what she was working with was significantly tighter written than this version of the screenplay. It’s not just the bloated dialog that stands out to me though, it’s changes in the world building. There is a moment in one of the auditions featuring William Katt (Luke Skywalker) and Kurt Russell (Han Solo) where Luke mentions Princess Leia being a part of the royal family and thus “knowing the power of Mind Control.” That’s a significant departure from Jedi lore, but one that has interesting possibilities. There are a couple more moments in there, but I’ll leave those for you to find.

I’m particularly intrigued by the audition where Kurt Russell reads for the part of Han Solo opposite William Katt of Greatest American Hero fame. William Katt wasn’t a big name at the time, but he was the son of Barbara Hale who was the best Della Street on any screen. Believe it or not, it is a real possibility that Kurt could have landed the Han role, but we can only wonder what that film would look like.

Personally, I’m glad he didn't get the role. His performance feels a little too close to his nicer characters like Dexter Riley (The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes) and Dean Proffitt (Overboard) in this reading, and too little Snake Plissken (Escape from New York). I would argue that Russell had so much of the residual fairy dust from his Disney live action films, that were he a touch younger he may have made a great Luke. He has the charm, he just lacks the ruggedness for a Han Solo.

As much as I’ve liked William Katt’s performances over the years, his interpretation of Luke is as disconnected from how I picture the character as Eric Stoltz’s performance was from how I see Marty McFly. Yes, my impression of both of those characters is seen through a lens of the performers who eventually portrayed them in film, but in both cases it seems that the what we got was much better than the alternative. William Katt’s a capable actor, but he seems uncomfortable with the science fiction/fantasy dialog at this point. Some of the places where he doesn’t seem to fit were eventually removed from the script, but as you’ll see if you watch the second video, Mark Hammill handles those with believability and charm. For all his discomfort here though, Katt does much better, and acts more naturally, when he plays The Greatest American Hero.

I'm a big fan of Russell's, but if I had seen this footage before watching Escape from New York or Tombstone even I would have had a hard time believing that Russell could ever emote "grimness."

I realized another thing after watching these two videos, and the one below with the eventual Star Wars cast. I realized that had I been directing the films, the actors may have become frustrated with hearing a single piece of direction uttered by me. That phrase would have been, "FASTER...MORE INTENSE!" If you don’t know why that’s funny, here’s a YouTube short.

As you watch the excellent Harrison Ford auditions below, you’ll see that it’s an appropriate piece of direction. The actors just seem so calm when they are delivering these lines and they need a bit more urgency. To be fair, the script was still too loose for the eventual snappy and tight dialog we got in the first film, but even when they are hitting it perfectly (which Ford does often) they can speed it up a scosche.

In addition to William Katt and Kurt Russell, you’ll see a number of other 70s icons in these auditions including Robbie Benson and Cindy Williams.

What do you think?

1. Edited based on Luke’s added information. Looks like Boucher hasn’t worked for Deadline since 2020 and I cannot find current employment information for him. That’s a huge bummer.