[canjobear]

Lucas only came up with the idea that Anakin = Vader after the original Star Wars was out, when he was revising the script for Empire. Before that we were supposed to take Ben Kenobi at face value when he said that Darth Vader betrayed and murdered Luke's father.

[notahacker]

And if you think that's a big deal to introduce a change like that, let's not forget that Lucas' first draft for A New Hope had Luke Skywalker as an elderly general, "Annikin Starkiller" as the protagonist, Chewbacca as a leader of a tribe of Wookies behaving very much like the Ewoks in Return of the Jedi (and a presumably-unrelated human pilot called Chewie!) and Han Solo as a giant green alien...

[fbdab103]

Taking place on a planet of Wookies would make the Empire losing the ground battle make significantly more sense. Legend has it that it was changed to Ewoks for the kid toy opportunities.

[PlunderBunny]

I don't doubt that for a moment, but I think I once heard an interview with Lucas where he explained that, by the time they got to the third movie, Chewbacca had 'become' more intelligent, and that he specifically wanted the empire to be defeated by a 'primitive' people.

[ethbr1]

Wow.

So basically, if one line of dialog in A New Hope had been less ambiguous as it happened to be written... Vader wouldn't have been Anakin?

[hgs3]

I'd say the original already isn't ambiguous: Kenobi directly tells Luke that Vader murdered his Father. The "from a certain point of view" scene had to be added in ROTJ to explain away the retcon.

[canjobear]

Ben Kenobi does pause in a pregnant way right before delivering the fateful line. In a way that almost looks like he's thinking about how to hide something. It works perfectly with the later revelation.

[ethbr1]

For reference: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hFB16GCocfw

It's crazy that essentially the entire Star Wars canon is built on one piece of dialog by Alec Guinness. (Not just Anakin/Vader, but the Force and the events around Order 66)

[MichaelDickens]

The face he makes at 0:56 does look like the face of someone who's trying to come up with a lie.

[lupusreal]

More likely it would just be left to the fans to come up with their own justifications for the retcon, like most other inconsistencies in Star Wars.