I mentioned that like over 150 or so pages back I think. Rey and Finn were originally the first characters conceived by Lucas, but under different names, with Rey being Kira and Finn being Sam. Kira was conceived as a young force sensitive orphan (designed after Kristen Stewart) from a junk planet who sets out on a journey of self-discovery after her adoptive community is destroyed by a mysterious force (the main villains who I will get to in a moment). Unlike Rey, Kira always wanted to leaver her homeplanet yet she was always held back. She was described as a loner and a gear-head with a love for machines. She eventually meets Sam, originally conceived as a young white male and loner mercenary who is very anti-social "but oozed charisma" who is also later revealed to be an orphan. An early piece of concept art also shows him wielding a blue lightsaber (which I guess is why Finn briefly wields one in the film just to get fucked over). Concepts (most of which were made during the Disney transition period) also toyed with the idea of him being an ex-trooper under one of the imperial remnants. There are a lot of initial initial concepts and ideas that got thrown around during the making back when George was in charge, but one concept was that Kira meets Sam at a local spaceport and convinces him to get her off-world in hopes of joining the highly esteemed Jedi Academy of Luke Skywalker on Yavin 4. They are eventually joined by a character who was never given a proper name, simply referred to as
@JohnDoe as a tentative title until they could figure out a name for him, however he never got an official name as that's when Disney and JJ decided to take the reigns in their own direction and just do a repeat. However, what is known is that John Doe was originally conceived as a tall and muscular black man resembling Mace Windu (although any connection is unknown but some like to theorize that Mace Windu survived Anakin's attack and eventually fathered this guy) and he went through three concepts: In the first, Doe was a jedi who came to protect Kira and help escort her to the academy, in the second he was a bounty hunter with a wookiee companion (not Chewbacca) who was hired to hunt down Sam but decides to join him and Kira under unknown circumstances, and finally he was re-imagined as a New Republic officer who was also helping to escort the two youths to Luke, however Doe ended up sacrificing himself to protect them at some point in the movie. John Doe was eventually devolved into the character of Poe. Some pieces of artwork produced shortly after George was pushed out had Sam as a reluctant stormtrooper who was forced to join forces with Doe to escape and both crashed on Kira's planet, where Doe dies and Sam is rescued by Kira instead. Supposedly this was done because Disney didn't want a likeable "criminal" character for a young generation and JJ didn't want a competent male lead to upstage Rey so they changed Sam from a mercenary into a reluctant trooper, and eventually into the bumbling Finn.
Throughout the original movie concept, the characters are constantly under the threat of the main villainous of group of the film who are simply known as the "Jedi Killers" led by a mysterious villain who was never given a proper name, simply referred to as "Uber" in early concepts. Not much is known about Uber, what is known is that he was a powerful, highly intelligent and mysterious figure who was clad in a mysterious robe and helmet and that he created the Jedi Killers, an entire organization of genetically enhanced force-users whose one goal was to hunt down all jedi and abduct any force sensitive they could find. Some rumors floating around also claimed that, like Snoke, Uber was from the Unknown Regions, dabbled in cloning technology to boost the numbers of his organization, used genetic engineering to increase the power of his subordinates, and that he first became active after ROTJ after the Empire started fighting amongst themselves over who would take charge after the Emperor's death and (like Snoke) ended up recruiting an imperial faction to his side, but Uber was successfully defeated by Luke and the New Republic, and he was forced to retreat into the Unknown Regions to rebuild and seek revenge against Skywalker, which is probably why he's hunting down force sensitives and jedis. Because of this, some theorized that "Uber" was (or was at least based on) Atha Prime, a character who was from a cancelled sequel project that was originally pitched by Kenner to George a year after ROTJ. Like Uber and Snoke, Prime was an enigmatic figure from the Unknown Regions who managed to convince an imperial remnant to his side (which was led by Grand Moff Trachta), but unlike Snoke (who is described as more of an occultist) Prime was a master geneticist who mastered the cloning technology from the Clone Wars as well as genetic manipulation, although Uber seems to posses traits of both a geneticist and an occultist. The possibility of Uber being Prime is thought to be hinted at in the final old canon story released in 2015 titled SkyeWalkers: A Clone Wars Story, which featured Prime and hinted at his return as a future villain after his defeat at the hands of Anakin and Obi-Wan, which some thought was supposed to be a lead-up to the original concept of VII. The novel also revealed that Prime bore many aliases, such as Eon Null and Zeta Magnus, so Uber wouldn't be that ill-fitting as an alias.
Finally, Uber would not actually serve as the omnipresent villain of the story, instead he would act through his main agent, an unnamed red skinned Twi-lek based on Darth Talon, a perverse and manipulative dark sider who would use any means to kill jedi or corrupt others. One early storyboard portrayed her introduction, in which she appears being harassed at a cantina before being saved by a Jedi Master of the new order, eventually she seduces the jedi and sleeps with him, but its all a ruse as she quickly kills him. Her main goal in the story was to kill Sam and Kira before they could reach Luke Skywalker but eventually she aims to corrupt Anakin Solo, the youngest son of Han and Leia who is under Luke's protection. It was also hinted that Kira and Sam were to be revealed as the long lost children of Han and Leia who were separated and sent away to keep them safe from the Jedi Killers, which pretty much makes them a re-imagining of the Solo Twins, although I personally think they might have also had a chance of being revealed to be their grandkids, since they said the film might have taken place 40 years after ROTJ. While the Galactic Empire is no more, it would still have an antagonistic presence within the story as many imperial remnants remain as well as worlds that were loyal to the Empire much like in old canon, and Uber's faction would also have his own imperial remnant serving under him.
Eventually everything was changed by Abrams and Michael Andt, and stripped of everything but its bare bones, with the only things remaining from the original concepts being Kira, Sam, Doe, and Uber, however Kira was renamed Rey and made more "tragic" with an obsession of not wanting to leave her planet, Sam was changed to Finn and bore no similarity with his original incarnation so it was like they completely got rid of Sam, Doe was changed to Poe with him now being a "Resistance" officer because it sounds more marketable, but originally they were going to kill Poe off much like Doe but in a less memorable fashion, with Poe originally dying shortly after he and Finn crashed, but since Oscar Isaac was hesitant about playing Poe, JJ changed it so he survives and randomly disappears for no reason. Uber was pretty much completely revamped into Snoke, with the only thing remaining from the original being that they were from the Unknown Regions and led an imperial remnant which was now the First Order because repeating the same formula from the first movie was deemed more marketable. JJ and Andt also diminished Finn, Poe and Luke's roles in the films because they thought they would undermine Rey's, with Luke getting the worst of it, since they outright say they made him into a macguffin so as to not steal the spotlight from Rey and overshadow her. Nothing remained of the Talon lookalike, but they kept the idea of a "jedi killer" and they used Uber's mask as a basis for what would eventually become (after countless redesigns) Kylo Ren's mask.
On another interesting note, the "special lightsaber" for the original concept of 7 was not a crossguard saber, but a dual-blade saber with both red and blue beams that was said to be related to its owner's themes and powers of "fire and ice" and duality, however very little is known about its owner other than that he might've been bald. The saber was designed by Rick Carter.
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Luke was also going to have a bigger role in the new trilogy and would undertake Kira's training personally through 7 and 8, and he would finish Leia's training before dying heroically at the end of 9 (this is based on what Mark Hamill said according to George although there's some debate if this was George's original idea in the 80s after ROTJ or the idea George presented in 2012).
However this was all changed which upset Mark. Like the Disney Trilogy, this trilogy was also set to take place some 20, 30 or even 40 years after the original.
Here are pictures of concept art and promo material that were made when George was still around. Note that a few of these were made as they removed George, like the ones of Sam as a stormtrooper. I don't know at what point the pics of Kira in the junkyard were made as they could've been conceived before or after George left. There's also concept art of the characters exploring a sunken Death Star in search for a relic of the Emperor's containing info on all the sacred and historical jedi sites which is to be incorporated in IX, however I don't know if the sunken Death Star artwork is from before or after George left as Rick Carter did most of these at the time as he was doing art for JJ, like JJ's initial "red start destroyer" idea, and JJ was really pushing for maguffins at the time too.
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Also note that Rey's speeder and the aliens looked more interesting before Jake Lunt Davies took over as designer.
There's more to post, but frankly this post is already too over-cluttered as it is. Later I'll try and post info on the last restaurant in Galaxy's Edge, followed by the Cantina and lame-ass toy store.
