Journal of the Whills, Part I

For other uses, see Whills.
Blue-exclamation-mark

The content of this article was canceled.

This article covers a product that was canceled or replaced by another product.

The Journal of the Whills, [Part] I,[2] or Journal of the Whills, Part I was a handwritten two-page partial outline for the story that would, after many further rewrites and explorations of ideas, become Star Wars (1977). It was written by George Lucas, starting around January 1973.[1][3]

Plot summary

The outline begins: "This is the story of Mace Windy, a revered Jedi-Bendu of Ophuchi, as related to us by C.J. Thorpe, padawaan learner to the famed Jedi." Thorpe, called C.J. or C.2. (it switches back and forth in the document), stands for "Chuiee Two Thorpe of Kissel. My father is Han Dardell Thorpe, chief pilot of the renown galactic cruiser Tarnack."

When Chuiee reaches 16, he enters the Intersystems Academy to train as a potential Jedi-Templer. There, he becomes padawaan learner to Mace Windy, a Warlord to the Chairman of the Alliance of Independent Systems. Windy becomes the victim of a court conspiracy: those who fear that Windy is more powerful than the Imperial leader of the Galactic Empire, some of whom are his comrades, arrange for his replacement and expulsion from the royal forces. Though Windy has been dismissed, Chuiee begs to stay in his service.

This leads to the even more fragmentary story of Journal of the Whills, Part II. After 4 years, Windy and Chuiee have their greatest adventure. They guard a shipment of fusion portables to Yavin, where they are summoned to the desolate planet Yoshiro by a mysterious courier sent by the Alliance chairman. The narrative drops off at this point.

Inspiration

The outline draws inspiration from the first chapter of the the 1931 John Carter novel A Fighting Man of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs.[1]

For example, the following passage from Burroughs' first chapter parallels Lucas' outline:

Never shall I forget the occasion upon which I first laid eyes upon Sanoma Tora. It was upon the occasion of a great feast at the marble palace of The Warlord. There were gathered under one roof the most beautiful women of Barsoom[4]

Never shall I forget the occasion upon which I first set eyes upon Mace Windy. It was at the great feast of the Pleabs. There were gathered under one roof, the most powerful warriors in the Galaxy[5]

Legacy

When George Lucas began work on Episode I, he took the Journal of the Whills out of the Lucasfilm archives, and reread it. It sat on his desk as he wrote the first handwritten script for the first prequel.[6]

Sources

Notes and references

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Star Wars Year By Year: A Visual History, New Edition
  2. ↑ The Making of Star Wars: The Definitive Story Behind the Original Film
  3. ↑ Star Wars Year By Year: A Visual History, New Edition, The Star Wars Archives: Episodes IV–VI, 1977–1983, and Kaminski, Michael. The Secret History of Star Wars, Legacy Books Press, 2007. support a January 1973 date for Journal of the Whills, while The Cinema of George Lucas incorrectly dates the outline to 1972.
  4. ↑ https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/70691/pg70691.txt
  5. ↑ https://medium.com/@Oozer3993/everything-known-about-the-journal-of-the-whills-outline-d8db1f1410ea
  6. ↑ The Cinema of George Lucas
In other languages