Boba Fett Was Supposed To Be The Main Villain In Return Of The Jedi

The name Craig Miller has been making it's way around websites lately.  If you haven't heard of him yet, he's Lucasfilm's first fan relations officer.  I have no idea what that title holds, but apparently it allows you access to some pretty cool Star Wars facts.  To give you an example, he recently spoke with Inverse and told them that Return of the Jedi was supposed to be a lot different than the one we were given.  Here's what he had to say about the original idea for the movie:


“Originally Boba Fett was set up in Empire as a character, and the third movie’s plot was going to be more about Boba Fett rescuing Han Solo and all of that. Boba was gonna be the main villain… That was set up, why he was taking Han Solo away, why there was a thing with him in the Christmas special.”


So the question has to be asked...why did they kill him off so quickly in the movie if he was supposed to be such a major player in the films?


“When George decided not to make a third trilogy, he completely jettisoned that story line, which is why in the first ten minutes, Boba Fett gets bumped into and falls into the mouth of a giant monster. So he took what was planned for the third trilogy, which was the confrontation between Luke and Darth Vader, and the battle with the Emperor, and that got squished down from three movies to one movie. And that became the plot of Jedi.”


What we learned from Miller is that Return of the Jedi was going to deal with Chewie, Leia, Lando, and Luke trying to rescue Han from the clutches of Boba Fett, the bounty hunter that was to be the main villain in the film.  Even though that never ended up happening, Boba Fett still remains one of the most popular characters in the Star Wars universe.  He's so popular in fact, comic books based on the Star Wars universe had him escape from the Sarlacc Pit and continue on with his own adventures.  Now that Disney owns the rights to Star Wars, it doesn't sound like we'll see Boba Fett return.  In their "expanded universe" novels, his armor was found by some Jawas and ended up being sold to someone else. 


And did you catch that line up above about how Lucas decided not to make the third trilogy?  I thought he said in an interview that there had never been talks about there being nine films in the story?  So what gives?


“At first there was one film, and then George originally announced that it was one of 12, and there were going to be 12, and then that changed to, oh there was never 12, there was only 9, and he was going to make 9. And then during all of it, George kind of lost interest in continuing it… While we were working on The Empire Strikes Back, George decided he was going to complete the first film trilogy and that would be it.”


After watching the prequels, I'm glad he lost interest in making the films.  What do you think of the idea to have Boba Fett as the main villain in Return of the Jedi?  Would you have rather seen that than the one we got, or do you like how the movie ended up turning out?  Let me know your thoughts in the comments section down below.