Until the recent GREAT REBELLION, the JEDI-BENDU were the most feared warriors in the universe. For one hundred thousand years, generations of JEDI perfected their art as the personal bodyguards of the Emperor. They were the chief architects of the invincible IMPERIAL SPACE FORCE, which expanded the EMPIRE across the galaxy, from the celestial equator to the farthest reaches of the GREAT RIFT.
Now these legendary warriors are all but extinct. One by one they have been hunted down and destroyed as enemies of the NEW EMPIRE by a ferocious and sinister rival warrior sect, THE KNIGHTS OF SITH.
— The story's introductory text.
The Star Wars is an 8-issue comic book mini-series published under the non-canon Infinities label of the Star Wars Legends franchise, released in 2013 and later rereleased in trade paperback and as part of Star Wars Legends Epic Collection: Infinities Volume 1. It is a retrospective Early Draft Tie-In that retells the story of the original Star Wars film — based on George Lucas' first draft of the film from 1974.
While the comic shares similarities with the original film, it has a substantial amount of differences, including settings, story beats, characterization, and so on. Abandoned concepts for the first film, like Luke Skywalker as an aged general and Han Solo as an alien reptile with green skin are abundant, as are references to other parts of early Star Wars lore, like the fact that Cloud City was planned to appear in the original movie.
Tropes:
- Adaptational Attractiveness:
- The Emperor is portrayed as a fairly handsome middle aged man as opposed to his elderly, disfigured look in the original movies.
- The Darth Vader of this timeline is also in much better shape than in canon, with only a few scars on his face.
- Adaptational Badass:
- C3-PO was just a wimpy protocol droid in the movies. Here, he gets fed up with R2 so bad that he lifts him into the air and tosses him into the distance.
- Imperial soldiers also wield lightsabers themselves and can put up a better fight than Stormtroopers.
- Adaptational Heroism: The one Sith Lord in this series is portrayed as disliking working with the Empire, and being a Friendly Enemy or Worthy Opponent to Annikin, even freeing the latter from Vader's trap.
- Adaptational Jerkass: Princess Leia is much ruder here than her canon counterpart, and has a Slap-Slap-Kiss thing going on with Annikin.
- Adaptational Ugliness: The Han Solo of the movies is a ruggedly handsome scoundrel played by Harrison Ford. The Han Solo of this comic is a green alien that resembles Swamp Thing.
- Adaptational Villainy:
- Valorum, who was a well-meaning if ineffectual chancellor in The Phantom Menace, is revealed to be a Sith Knight in this continuity.
- Darth Vader himself is MUCH worse than he was in the movies. The comic lacks any signs of a possible Heel–Face Turn from him, he's crueler towards Leia, taking sadistic pleasure in torturing her, and his reasons for ultimately betraying the Emperor are entirely selfish.
- Adaptational Wimp:
- The Space Fortress (the early idea for the Death Star) has no superlaser dish here (although the cover depicts it as having one, it's not present in the story). It isn't shielded here either, as a starfighter strafe is able to blow open a small chunk of it, sucking out chunks of its crew from the inside.
- The Force (referred to as The Force of Others) doesn't appear to give its believers or users powers in this continuity, appearing more like a more standard religion than the "Energy That Flows Through All Things" it is in canon.
- The Emperor is still a very compelling politician, and Vader is both a crafty schemer and capable swordsman, but neither of them have their Dark powers or menacing presence.
- Imperial Star Destroyers, which are massive battleships capable of devastating a planet in the main series, are now common starfighters. A larger-sized Star Destroyer does pop up in the third issue, though.
- Adaptation Name Change: R2 has the D2 dropped from his name, and the Death Star is just called the Space Fortress in this story. Lightsabers are also called "Lazerswords" now.
- Adaptation Species Change: In this story, Han Solo is a Urellian, a tall reptilian with a reputation for hunting Wookiees on their home planet of Yavin, instead of a human.
- Adapted Out: Obi Wan is absent from this story, and is replaced by an older Luke Skywalker in the role of teacher to young protagonist Annikin Starkiller. Also, while R2 and Threepio's escape pod venture is left intact, R2 doesn't encounter Jawas in this timeline, instead bumping right into Annikin in the Aquilae desert, and Threepio is later found by both Annikin and Leia.
- Alternate Continuity: The miniseries is set in its own continuity that is separate from both the canon timeline of the original movies and the Legends timeline based on them.
- Bizarro Universe: Of a sort. The Obi-Wan character is named Luke! The Luke character is named Annikin! Han Solo is a big green alien! Darth Vader scoffs at someone's devotion to that sad, old Jedi religion!
- Bright Is Not Good: Emperor Cos Dashit, the prototype for Palpatine, wears primary colors and a lot of gold medals, instead of being shrouded in black robes. He's no less a tyrant, though.
- Composite Character:
- Kane Starkiller is basically a mashup of Obi Wan Kenobi with the mostly robotic body of Darth Vader.
- Annikin has traits of Luke (The Hero of the story), Han Solo (his brash and impulsive personality, as well as romancing Leia) and Anakin (shares similar name).
- Prince Valorum is a menacing knight with dark powers, like the more familiar version of Darth Vader. But he's also only partnering with the Empire out of opportunism, making him a bit like Boba Fett.
- Cool Crown: The royal family of Aquilae wears ornate halos on their heads.
- Cool Starship: The Death Squadron starfighters, which look more like real life fighter planes, but have fins that, along with their wings, make them vaguely resemble X-Wing starfighters.
- Death of a Child: Deak Starkiller dies at the start of the story, when his family is ambushed by Imperial forces.
- Decomposite Character: Darth Vader is split in two characters: the Tarkin-esque general who still bears Vader's name and body armor, and his Dragon Prince Valorum who is a Knight of the Sith and even wears a breath mask. A portion of Vader also gets doled out to (the heroic) Kane Starkiller, a former Jedi and partner of our wise old mentor figure, father to the eager young apprentice character, who is now more machine than man.
- Enemy Mine: In this series, the Sith are forced to team up with the Jedi to fight the Empire.
- Expy: This version of Chewbacca is a lot like Prince Thun from Flash Gordon. Prince of a semi-savage tribe of big hairy humanoids, who initially fights our hero but comes to respect and ally with him? Yep.
- George Lucas Throwback: The influence from Flash Gordon serials is a lot more obvious here, in terms of visual design and plot structure.
- Half the Man He Used to Be:
- When Count Sandage tries to arrest Kane Starkiller at gunpoint, Kane replies by slicing him in half with his lightsaber. In the Aquilae desert, Luke chases an Imperial down and bisects him. In the Gordon Spaceport cantina, Luke ends up having to fight two thugs who pick a fight with him, and he slices one of them in half, in addition to slicing off the head of one thug and the arm of another.
- When escaping the Empire in the spaceport, Han Solo lets a heavy gate drop down just as a stormtrooper is about to crawl after them, crushing him in half on-panel.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Kane Starkiller gives up the very rare power supply to his robotic body so that the others can use it to help smuggle two children on board in their ship in suspended animation capsules. Later, Clieg Whitsun pulls one off, too.
- Horse of a Different Color: In Issue 4, the Imperials are seen riding ostrich mounts. Ostrichs with teeth. Luke ends up hijacking one of them (after he and Annikin killed the others) to chase down one of the survivors and bisect him with his saber.
- Killed Mid-Sentence: One of the Imperials is killed by Luke before he could finish his words."But...they said...the Jedi were ex—!" *Luke bisects him)
- Living on Borrowed Time: Kane Starkiller states that despite most of his body being robotic now, he doesn't have much longer to live.
- Motor Mouth: R2 in this time is a chatterbox who is constantly whining and won't shut up. When their escape pod lands on Aquilae, Threepio gets so fed up with it that he lunges at him, picks him up and throws him far away from him!
- Mythology Gag: The comic is absolutely loaded with in-jokes relating to the original movies and the Legends universe.
- The obligatory Starkiller reference, a reference to Luke Skywalker's early surname, has its origin shown here as the surname of both Annikin and Kane Starkiller.
- Deak, Annikin's younger brother, is modeled in appearance after Anakin Skywalker's younger self from The Phantom Menace. He even says "Yippee!" at one point. Valorum is named after Chancellor Valorum from The Phantom Menace. In the third issue, the Imperials are seen using STAPs similar to the kind used by the Trade Federation. A side character is also named Count Sandage, with his surname taken from bit player Wan Sandage from Episode 1.
- Kane Starkiller has had most of his body replaced by robotic parts except for his right arm and hand, similar to what Darth Vader became in the movies.
- In issue 1, Kane Starkiller enters the war room calls for someone named Montross, a reference to Jango Fett's rival bounty hunter from Star Wars: Bounty Hunter.
- The Imperial Capital Alderaan is a floating city resembling Cloud City from Bespin. This is a reference to the fact that Cloud City was planned to appear in the first film in early drafts, but it was held over for The Empire Strikes Back.
- The establishing shot where they see Gordon Spaceport is based directly on one of Ralph Macquarrie's concept paintings of Luke seeing Mos Eisley in A New Hope. While driving through the town, a vehicle based on Luke's original landspeeder can be seen in the background. Luke slicing off the head of one of the thugs in the Gordon Spaceport Cantina is a reference to the fact that in the original film, the plan was for Obi Wan to slice off Pondo Baba's head in addition to his arm, as proven by a behind the scenes photo.
- Han Solo's starship is now identical to the Tantive IV (which was the original design for the Millennium Falcon in concept art).
- Off with His Head!: Luke, while riding an ostrich mount, jousts with two Imperials on their own mounts, and lops off both of their heads with one swing. In the fight at the Gordon Spaceport cantina, he slices off the head of one of the thugs.
- Robotic Reveal: Early in the first issue, Kane Starkiller reveals that he's a cyborg, with only his head and right arm remaining intact.
- Schizo Tech: You're probably used to laser swords by now, but at one point General Skywalker reads off some kind of holographic interactive screen made to look like a scroll.
- Shout-Out: C-3PO's design is much more obviously inspired by the Maria-robot from Metropolis.
- Super-Strength:
- Threepio in this time, in contrast to the slow, clunky protocol droid, is much more nimble here, and is capable of lifting up and throwing R2 far away from him!
- Kane Starkiller has a lesser example of this due to most of his body being robotic now. He reveals his robotic body by effortlessly smashing his fist through a table in anger.
- Suddenly Speaking: Unlike the main timeline, R2 is fully capable of speaking plain basic here.
- That's No Moon: At the end of the first issue, an officer rushes in to warn Kane Starkiller that they've picked up something big on the sensors, describing it as an asteroid or comet heading for Aquilae, which turns out to be the Space Fortress in the next issue.
- Too Dumb to Live: For some reason, the Space Fortress has its reactor core on the outside of the station. At least the original Death Star hid its core below an exhaust port!
- Toothy Bird: The Imperials ride ostrich mounts, and these birds have rows of sharp, jagged teeth like dinosaurs.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: Deak gets killed off in just a few pages into the first issue.
- What If?: The entire premise of the miniseries is "What if Star Wars had been told exactly as it was written in its 1974 story draft?"
- Would Hit a Girl: Annikin has zero compunctions against clocking Leia when she gives him lip.
- Zeerust: Like in the original movie, elements of this pop up. For example, in #5, when Luke is at the spaceport, he's forced to show his Component Receipt, which looks like a transparent floppy disk.
