I’m a big alternate history geek and I recently stumbled onto a thread at AlternateHistory.com asking “What if Mark Hamill had been killed in the car accident that occurred between the filming of Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back?”
“Gone The New Hope” covers more than just the possible development of the Star Wars saga, branching out to feature the business of Hollywood and politics.
The reason I bring it up on the anniversary of the release of The Empire Strikes Back is that the the author recently reached May 4, 1980, in his timeline – the release date of his alternate Episode V, titled The Rebellion Strikes Back.
The author had previously noted that he had “accidentally” ended up writing an entire treatment for the second film of the series. He posted the complete first act on Sunday.
In this world, Luke Skywalker sacrificed himself to destroy the Death Star while Obi-Wan Kenobi was able to escape with his life. Han Solo is the main character going forward, with edits made to A New Hope to give him more character development.
Personally, I think it’s too awesome not to share. It brings in a lot of unused ideas from previous drafts of what became our Star Wars movies, as well as ideas that would later be used in the sci-fi of our timeline.
