George Lucas Almost Ruined Beloved Star Wars Movie By Removing Its Worst Line

By Chris Snellgrove
| Updated 29 minutes ago

While younger fans have done their best to rehabilitate the Star Wars prequels, most older fans still agree that The Phantom Menace was pretty bad and that Attack of the Clones was an overstuffed, equally embarrassing sequel. However, the third time was the charm for George Lucas: Revenge of the Sith felt like a proper Star Wars movie, especially after the disappointing films that preceded it. Unfortunately, the film is held back by some of Lucas’ trademark excess and bizarre dialogue. The most famous example of this is Obi-Wan Kenobi infamously warning Anakin Skywalker, “I have the high ground;” Anakin attacks anyway, getting sliced up and left to burn.

It’s a notoriously goofy moment in franchise history. Like, when they’re dunking on Star Wars writing in shows as normy as Gilmore Girlsyou know you wrote something pretty stupid. Interestingly, though, this notorious line was almost removed from Revenge of the Sith altogether. In one version of the duel scene, Obi-Wan never says anything about the high ground, but he still ends up beating Anakin by accidentally slicing his former apprentice. This would have ruined the movie’s most iconic scene by turning it into accidental comedy. Fortunately, Lucas changed things up and added the high ground dialogue, effectively saving the best Star Wars prequel by giving it the worst line in the franchise!

Dueling Fates

All of this information comes to us courtesy of Revenge of the Sith stunt coordinator Nick Gillard. In an interview with Empire, he revealed how the first version of Obi-Wan and Anakin’s duel went down. “Originally, they both land on the side of the lava flow and immediately start fighting. Anakin disarms Obi and grabs him by the throat,” he said. “He’s about to chop his head off, but Obi sucks the lightsaber into his hand in a defensive move to try and block it, and in doing so cuts straight through Anakin’s arms and legs.”

What happened? George Lucas. According to Gillard, “[George Lucas] wanted something else.” He then added that, “George is the creator. We would be foolish to second-guess him.” While Gillard’s loyalty is laudable, he accidentally shed some light on why most of the stupidest stuff ended up in the prequels. Basically, Lucas would get some weird idea or another in his head, and he was surrounded by so many sycophants that nobody wanted to tell him this was a bad idea. This is presumably why Jar-Jar gets farted on, why Anakin rambles about sand, and why Qui-Gon’s obsessed with midichlorians: Lucas came up with these things without anyone to tell them these are dumb ideas.

Burn, Baby, Burn

In this case, though, George Lucas had the right idea. Sure, the high ground dialogue is dumb, but at least it’s charming, adding some levity (even if by accident) to one of the franchise’s most serious scenes. Speaking of unintentional comedy, the original scene that Gillard describes sounds like it would have been a little too goofy. Like, Obi-Wan wins the duel through an act of self-defense, which some might think seems fitting for a Jedi. But this description also makes it sound like the Jedi Master dismembered his old apprentice completely by accident, which would arguably ruin Star Wars far more than hearing Obi-Wan screaming out, “I have the high ground!”

In the final version of the duel that made it onscreen, Obi-Wan Kenobi is forced to make a haunting decision. He has to fight Anakin to save his own life, but he can’t bring himself to kill his old apprentice. Instead, he dismembers him, which ends up being far crueler: Anakin is disabled and disfigured, and instead of getting a clean death, he slowly burns, nearly to death, before getting rescued. All of this adds weight to Obi-Wan’s words about Anakin in A New Hope: he truly loved his former apprentice, and that final duel hurt him as much (okay, almost as much) as it hurt young Skywalker.

Saving The Best Prequel With The Worst Dialogue

There you have it, Star Wars fiends. Originally, Revenge of the Sith lacked any dialogue about having the high ground, and Obi-Wan and Anakin’s final duel was very different. But George Lucas personally intervened to create the scene that we know and love (or perhaps loathe). It’s the kind of decision that only the Maker could, uh, make, and it was a good one. With a single decision, Lucas saved the best of the Star Wars prequels, and he did so by adding the worst dialogue in the galaxy.

Sadly, nobody was willing to clap back at him like Harrison Ford reportedly did on the set of A New Hope: “You can type this sh*t, but you sure can’t say it!