The Star Wars #3

The scenes that you would expect to see in Episode IV on Tatooine and the Dune Sea occurs in this issue. With some subtle and blatantly different changes.

The droids emerge from their escape pod, argue over which direction to take, separate and somehow both wind up with General Luke Skywalker.

Princess Leia and her younger twin brothers have survived the assault on Aquilae. In the presence of Skywalker and his Padawan, Annikin Starkiller, it's imperative that the remaining royal family find safe passage off the planet.

Skywalker and company are attacked while attempting to reach the nearest space port. But instead of Tusken Raiders, they are attacked by stormtroopers brandishing laser swords. 

These storm troopers are way more violent than in the finished product. In A New Hope, they essentially barbecue Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru. Here in the rough draft, when dealing with a belligerent, the soldiers will string them up like on a rack, torture them, then kill them, while leaving them in place as a warning to others that the Evil Empire is not to be trifled with. George Lucas had added the death scene of the Lars family in order to secure a more favorable PG rating. Lucas felt a G rating might prevent older audiences from watching the film and I think he was right about that. But if he had kept the stormtrooper torture scenes in the final film, the first Star Wars film might have garnered a younger potential audience killing R rating! (Note: PG-13 ratings didn't exist until the mid-1980s.)

Lots of action. High levels of violence. This is not the Star Wars universe that I grew up with and I don't mind it one little bit. But we're almost at the half-way point and the heroes haven't even gotten to the space port. I have no idea where things are going. Is this really just a 7-issue miniseries?

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 9 out of 10 stars.