Star Wars: George Lucas Almost Gave The Force This Much Longer Name
George Lucas went through a lot of drafts for "Star Wars" before finally completing the film fans have come to know and love. Digging into what could have been is a fascinating exercise. Han Solo was once a big alien, and Anakin Skywalker was Annikin Starkiller, the apprentice to (not the father of) an older Luke Skywalker. A lot of changes over the years have made Star Wars much better, but not everything that Lucas cut disappeared into the void forever. Many of the ideas from those early drafts have made their way into canon over the years, including since Lucas sold the franchise to Disney.
One of the many interesting details in the original Star Wars drafts is that at one point, the Force was referred to as "The Force of Others" – a longer and admittedly less catchy name. In this same iteration of the story, Lucas outlined a much more complicated understanding of the light side, the dark side, and the Jedi themselves. The light side was referred to as the Ashla, and the dark side was called the Bogan. The Jedi were referred to at points as the Jedi Bendu, and the emphasis on the Force being an actual forcefield was much more central to the concept.
Like many of the original ideas that inspired the first "Star Wars," this more enumerated picture of the Force was ultimately expunged by Lucas. It would have given the supernatural elements of the film a more traditional fantasy flavor, for sure. And, for those who think the movies would have been better with them, there's good news.
Disney has implemented many of George Lucas' original Force ideas
If you're a true Star Wars superfan, your ears likely perked up at the prior mention of the Ashla, the Bogan, and the Jedi Bendu. These specific words have been brought back into the modern canon, largely under the creative guidance of current Lucasfilm chief creative officer Dave Filoni. In "Star Wars Rebels," the burgeoning rebellion makes a temporary base on a distant planet called Atollon, where Jedi Knight Kanan Jarrus (Freddie Prinze Jr.) encounters an ancient being strong in the Force called the Bendu (voiced by acclaimed "Doctor Who" star Tom Baker).
The Bendu introduces himself as the embodiment of the middle of the Force, balancing both extremes of the light and dark, which he identifies using Lucas' original language as the Ashla and the Bogan. It's particularly fitting that this character debuts in "Rebels," as the animated series takes massive inspiration from Lucas' early drafts, basing characters like Chopper and Zeb Orrellios on old designs for R2-D2 and Han Solo.
With Filoni's live-action series "Ahsoka" likely diving even deeper into ancient Force lore in Season 2, more and more of Lucas' original ideas could come back. We might even get a proper explanation in canon for the Whills, the mystical creatures who shaped the flow of destiny in the early conceptions of Star Wars and might have already been featured if Lucas' plans for a sequel series had been followed.
Could more of Lucas' original Force lore become canon?
The appeal of Star Wars has always been its balance of grungy space opera aesthetics — bounty hunters, grimy cantinas, galactic gangsters, etc. — with a brand of magic that pulls heavily from ancient mythology and Arthurian legend. Any time that mainline Star Wars stories have delved into the more extraneous elements of Force mythology, it's been a bit contentious. Some fans love the Mortis arc from "The Clone Wars," which is teased heavily at the end of "Ahsoka" Season 1, but other fans have expressed less interest in the franchise becoming more fantastical and supernatural.
Lucas ultimately opted to eschew the more extreme aspects of his high fantasy storytelling from Star Wars, but we've gotten more and more of it over the years in the prequels, the Old Republic era of the Legends timeline, and Filoni's various projects. At first, Lucas planned for Star Wars to be a legend told in retrospect from the perspective of the Whills — creatures connected to the Force who influence all things in the universe. The Whills themselves have since been mentioned cursorily in projects like "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story."
It's unlikely that these elements of Star Wars will ever become as pivotal as Lucas once intended, but it is interesting to see more and more of them become canon. With "Ahsoka" Season 2 potentially returning to Mortis, an upcoming Star Wars film exploring the origins of the Jedi, and another movie stretching things beyond the sequel trilogy, there's no telling where the story could go.