The moment the original Star Wars movie hit theaters in 1977, folks were lining up around the block to see it. Immediately, this weird vision of sci-fi storytelling that George Lucas couldn’t get any studio to approve of was the hottest thing in Hollywood. Lucas would use follow-ups like The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi to firmly establish Lucasfilm as an independent entity separate from Hollywood. The endless extensions of Star Wars were the perfect money-printing device for Lucas and his cinematic exploits. But just as “there’s always a bigger fish” or “crystal critters” are elusive, so too is it eternally wise to have a back-up plan for major film projects.
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If Star Wars had flopped, then lingering plot threads and character arcs would’ve been dangling in the wind. To that end, Lucas had a plan. He commissioned a 1978 novel entitled Splinter of the Mind’s Eye that could serve as the basis for a low-budget sequel if Star Wars had gone awry at the 1977 box office.
What is Splinter of the Mind’s Eye?
When author Alan Dean Foster was hired to ghostwrite the novel adaptation of the first Star Wars movie, he also got an assignment to write a second book. That would be Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, which was supposed to be the basis for a cheaply-produced Star Wars sequel should the film flop. That cumbersome title already makes this project sound like it would’ve been ill-suited to be a genuine Star Wars movie, yet Lucas wanted some “pre-existing” material to draw on for a Star Wars 2 should the original feature fail.
The restrictions of a low-budget movie informed many details in Foster’s writing, including the murky planet that didn’t have elaborate backdrops. Retrospective pieces on the book also allege that Lucas insisted that an extensive space dogfight get jettisoned from an early Mind’s Eye draft since that sequence wouldn’t have been possible on a B-movie budget. This meant Foster was working within a lot of pre-existing and larger parameters for drumming up his book, not the least of which was the personalities of Luke, Han, Leia, and friends that Lucas established in the first Star Wars.
Very quickly, it became clear Splinter of the Mind’s Eye’s status as inspiring a B-movie Star Wars sequel would be redundant. Ten months before the novel’s debut, Star Wars became a pop culture phenomenon. Once this title hit bookstores in March 1978, Mind’s Eye was consumed voraciously by audiences of all ages craving more Star Wars mayhem. However, those readers would never see this story emerge on the big screen. Instead, an even costlier Star Wars sequel would arrive in 1980 through The Empire Strikes Back. Star Wars didn’t need to retreat to B-movie cinema after all.
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Splinter of the Mind’s Eye’s Larger Legacy
Though it didn’t inspire a theatrical movie adaptation, Splinter of the Mind’s Eye did have a significant legacy on Star Wars media. For starters, it helped initiate the franchise’s Expanded Universe. Splinter of the Mind’s Eye established that Star Wars was not just confined to the big screen. Stories could happen in any medium. The era of Mara Jade and countless other characters, stories, and planets was only possible thanks to this novel’s publication back in 1978.
Though Mind’s Eye is now non-canon in Star Wars mythology, ripple effects of its existence still reverberate into modern properties in the franchise. Most notably, Mimban, the planet that Splinter of the Mind’s Eye takes place on, was reimagined as an early central location in Solo: A Star Wars Story. Meanwhile, Cassian Andor would mention that he spent time on the planet in an Andor Season 1 episode. Decades later, Splinter of the Mind’s Eye’s mythology keeps on bubbling to the surface of Star Wars media.
Most crucially, Alan Dean Foster’s work writing the Star Wars novel adaptation and Splinter of the Mind’s Eye solidified him as an icon in the world of genre movie novelization adaptations. Foster would go on to write countless other books in this domain, as well as his own standalone texts. He even returned to the galaxy far, far away to pen the novelization adaptation of The Force Awakens. Though it never resulted in a B-movie Star Wars sequel, Splinter of the Mind’s Eye still proved a very impactful work in this franchise’s history.
Star Wars: A New Hope is now streaming on Disney+.
