Just finished playing in a "The Play's The Thing" game run by Tomsawyer, in which we set aside the works of Shakespeare in favor of producing
Star Wars: A New Hope.
I was the Lead playing both Obi-Wan Kenobi and Princess Leia, while the Villain played Darth Vader and Luke Skyalker and the Ham played Han Solo. Here is a complete list of our edits over the course of the play:
1. Princess Leia's actor hates CGI and can't get in character without physical effects. Stormtroopers proceed to board the
Tantive IV and gun down the Rebels with cans of silly string.
2. Han Solo's actor thinks his character is somewhat underused and shoehorned into the plot, so he convinces the playwright to edit the script to that Han is one of Luke's friends on Tatooine who regularly visits him. Han appears in the scene where Uncle Ben and Luke buy C-3PO and R2D2.
3. Luke threatens the Jawas who tried to sell them a droid with a faulty motivator, and they give him R2 to placate him.
4. Leia's holographic message is replaced with a miniature cuckoo-clock Leia that pops out of R2's dome.
5. Obi-Wan Kenobi's actor has seen the light when it comes to CGI and insists that the Sand People be made to look more frightening in post. In the meantime the extras playing the Sand People will wear green morph suits.
6. Obi-Wan's home is full of Persian rugs because
7. Obi-Wan flat-out tells Luke that Darth Vader is his father when he gives him Anakin's lightsaber. "This was your father's. He killed like thirty kids with it before I hacked off his legs and threw him in a volcano."
8. While in the Mos Eisley cantina Luke starts a barfight brawl with the two alien thugs, which rages on in the background. Obi-Wan, Han, and Chewie negotiate passage on the
Falcon while hiding underneath a table.
9. Obi-Wan pays Han by selling him C-3PO.
10. When confronted with the bounty hunter Greedo, Han solves his dispute with him by challenging him to a card game...specifically, Uno. The audience is treated to a dramatic shot of Han slowly reaching under the table to slip a "Draw Four" card from his pocket when Greedo isn't looking. "I've been looking forward to this for a long time," Greedo says. "I bet you have," Han smugly replies just before the Uno machine spits dozens of cards into Greedo's face.
11. While being interrogated by Darth Vader and Tarkin, Leia tries to convince them that the Rebel base is on Tatooine. They destroy Alderaan anyway, because "Tatooine is too remote to make an effective demonstration."
12. Leia tries to attack Tarkin for destroying her homeworld, only for Darth Vader to chop off her left hand with his lightsaber!
13. Han rolls his eyes at Luke's performance with the training droid. "I call it luck," he says an instant before the remote shoots him in the crotch.
14. Obi-Wan's face darkens and he clutches his heart. "I feel a great disturbance in the Force..." *audible sounds of the actor passing gas* "As though a million voices suddenly cried out in terror..." *extended flatulence* "and were suddenly silenced."
15. Instead of hiding in smuggling compartments to avoid capture, the heroes conceal themselves within the false walls of the Millennium Falcon. From inside they observe the searching stormtroopers through large paintings of Chewie's family with holes where the eyes would be.
16. The dianoga in the garbage pit is replaced with Oscar the Grouch in order to satisfy advertising requirements.
17. While fleeing from the stormtroopers, Han runs into Obi-Wan and the two escape the stormtroopers together before running into Darth Vader.
18. Han quickdraws his weapon, but Vader blocks the silly string with his hand before yanking it away! Still, this distracts him enough for Obi-Wan to strike a killing blow and end the Sith Lord once and for all! With his dying breath Vader warns his old master "there is another..."
19. Luke and Leia arrive on the scene just in time to see Obi-Wan strike down Vader. Luke, who knows Vader is his father, screams "NOOOOOO!" and strikes Obi-Wan down in vengeance. Han and Leia escape the Death Star, but Luke remains to take his father's place in the Empire.
20. For the trench run scene the extras playing X-wing pilots must piggy-back ride stage hands in green morph suits so that they can be CGI'd into starfighters in post.
21. Han decides to stay and join the attack on the Death Star in the Millennium Falcon. Leia goes with him as a gunner, having received a prosthetic hand, and during the trench run she hears Obi-Wan urging her to use the Force. She takes the shot that destroys the Death Star, cementing her role as the story's new hero while Luke has already left to meet the Emperor on Coruscant and become the new Dark Lord.
22. Chewie gets a fucking medal in the awards ceremony.
Failed Edits:--Leia stows away on the escape pod with 3PO and R2
--Obi-Wan bribes the stormtroopers in Mos Eisley to look the other way by giving them 3PO
--Obi-Wan lets Luke get the shit kicked out of him in the cantina
--The Death Star was to be represented on-stage with a huge water cannon, which would blast the audience when Alderaan was destroyed. This would generate authentic fear and tension during the final scene as the station is preparing to destroy the Rebel base.
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