May The Fourth: You Like Us Because We're Scoundrels

In honor of today's holiday - and you do know what that holiday is, don't you? - we've got a treat for you guys: Swatches from Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan's half-typed/half-handwritten first draft of THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. Kasdan himself donated this to our library - it's not the original document, but the only extant copy of Kasdan's own. Because it's a first draft, a lot of the dialogue and description is different from the final shooting draft, and what we see in the movie.

If anyone was at Jason Reitman's live stage reading of EMPIRE a few months ago, you may have noticed the crowd - and Reitman himself - taking a moment to appreciate this "locomotive on stilts" line describing a wounded AT-AT:

These next two images are contiguous, featuring Han and Leia's first kiss. The dialogue that wound up being "You like me because I'm a scoundrel" in the final film was initially much bulkier, and Han's character was even more aggressive:

And because we're celebrating all of STAR WARS, not just EMPIRE, here's the unforgettable first appearance of the franchise's most beloved character:

What? Yousa can't take a joke?