Star Wars Creator George Lucas Had to Fight Fox Execs Who Wanted to Change the Film’s Ending

The story of how George Lucas got the first Star Wars movie made continues to be one of the most interesting tales in the entertainment industry. Sure, Stars Wars is one of the biggest hit franchises around, now, but getting that first film (now called “A New Hope”) into theaters was truly an ‘against-all-odds’ achievement. From George Lucas abandoning the studio system to make Star Wars, to all the problems that happened during production, the film often seemed doomed before it was every birthed. 

Today’s movie fans are coming back to the story of creating Star Wars: A New Hope for a different reason: the ongoing discussion of how studio executives can (and often do) ruin a project’s creative potential with excessive meddling. Vice TV has a series from The Toys That Made Us creator Brian Volk-Weiss, called Icons Unearthed: Star Wars. The show is giving a new generation of fans some deeper insight into what all went down with making the Star Wars movies – including talking to people involved we rarely hear from, like Marcia Lucas, George Lucas’ ex-wife, who edited A New Hope and seldom does interviews. 

One gold nugget of insight that Marcia explained in detail was how executives at 20th Century Fox wanted to change the ending of Star Wars: A New Hope form the iconic finale we now know and love. In Marcia Lucas’ telling George Lucas went so over budget and had so many difficulties making Star Wars that the only thing execs were willing to commit to was an ending that would have seen the Millennium Falcon in an aerial dogfight with “four TIE fighters.”

Stories of executive meddling in Star Wars: A New Hope have definitely been told before – but this is a pretty wild detail to get more insight about. It’s hard to know for sure how the executives planned to integrate the sequence, but there’s an obvious connective point: 

After Han Solo and Luke Skywalker successfully rescue Princess Leia and Obi-Wan Kenobi falls in battle with Darth Vader, the heroic group escapes the Empire. The Third Act of Star Wars sees Luke take up with the Rebel Alliance and join the mission to destroy the Death Star, resulting in the major climax and hero-worship ceremony that is now one of the most iconic parts of A New Hope. From the sound of things, execs wanted end the movie with the heroes escaping after Kenobi dies, and having to have a space dogfight with some TIE fighters (including Vader’s?) in order to get away. 

That’s speculation, but it sounds about right. If that had been the case, though Star Wars would likely not have been the crowd-pleasing hit it is – certainly not as a standalone movie. The third act “Battle of Yavin” was the finale that made movie audiences stand up and cheer, as well as cementing Luke Skywalker’s hero’s journey arc as one of the greatest in movie history. Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi would come later and expand the mythology, but Star Wars: A New Hope is still good as its own movie, without the franchise that followed. 

Good thing the filmmakers won that fight, instead of the suits. 

Star Wars: A New Hope is available to stream on Disney+.