Star Wars: The Phantom Menace turned 25 years old earlier this year, and to celebrate this momentous occasion (that definitely doesn’t make me feel old) the official Star Wars site has been pumping out some fun articles about the film’s development.
The most recent of these is an interview with the one and only Iain McCaig, who is quite possibly one of the most talented and prolific concept artists in modern cinema.
McCaig has worked on so many incredible films that listing them all simply isn’t feasible, but a few of his most famous projects include Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and several Marvel films such as Avengers: Endgame and Guardians of the Galaxy.
He also did the concept artwork for the first Titanfall game so you know this dude is legit.
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He’s perhaps most well-known for his work on the Star Wars franchise though. McCaig has worked on all three of the prequel films, Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens, and the Obi-Wan Kenobi miniseries.
In his interview detailing his work on The Phantom Menace, McCaig dropped a bit of a bombshell out of nowhere that kind of recontextualises the entire Star Wars franchise.
As he explains, the roles of Obi-Wan Kenobi and Qui-Gon Jinn were reversed in the original script for the movie.
"For a time, the older Jedi was named Obi-Wan and the younger Jedi was named Qui-Gon. It was very poignant that at the end, as Obi-Wan dies and Qui-Gon defeats Darth Maul and stays with his Master as he passes away, he not only takes on his Master’s quest, but he takes on his name…"
The most baffling thing about this change is that, as McCaig points out, the original ending would have actually tied into Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope in an extremely satisfying way.
"Qui-Gon becomes Obi-Wan. That’s why when you see Alec Guinness in A New Hope, he puts his hood down and goes, ‘Obi-Wan? Now that’s a name I’ve not heard….’ Because he’s not Obi-Wan, he’s Qui-Gon. And right at the end, George changed it."
Man, George Lucas seems like his own worst enemy sometimes because I think this original ending absolutely slaps and I have no idea why he opted to change it at the last minute.
Perhaps it might have been too obvious to fans, as it would have been weird for Ewan McGregor to do an absolutely spot-on Alex Guinness impression but for someone else in the movie to go by the name of Obi-Wan, but I do not care
Somebody go back in time and tell Lucas he was cooking with this ending before he changed it, because I want to live in that timeline.