The legacy of George Lucas’s Star Wars prequel trilogy has transformed in the decades since they were released. During a recent interview with Iain McCaig, a Star Wars concept and storyboard artist, StarWars.com reported that George Lucas originally had a very different plan for the characters in The Phantom Menace.
In some versions of the story, the names of Ewan McGregor and Liam Neeson’s characters were swapped, so that McGregor would play Qui-Gon Jinn and Neeson Obi-Wan McGregor. This also meant that, in that version, the real Obi-Wan Kenobi died.
“For a time, the older Jedi was named Obi-Wan and the younger Jedi was named Qui-Gon,” McCaig explained. “It was very poignant that at the end, as Obi-Wan dies and Qui-Gon defeats Darth Maul and stays with his Master as he passes away, he not only takes on his Master’s quest, but he takes on his name. Qui-Gon becomes Obi-Wan.”
McCaig also explained that this version of the story added extra resonance to the very first film.
“That’s why when you see Alec Guinness in A New Hope, he puts his hood down and goes, ‘Obi-Wan? Now that’s a name I’ve not heard…’” McCaig added. “Because he’s not Obi-Wan, he’s Qui-Gon. And right at the end, George changed it.”
To be clear, McGregor was always playing the younger version of the character that Guinness played in the original trilogy, so the change was just to who had originally had the name. Even so, it’s a change that would have had ripples throughout the series and changed the entire legacy of the Obi-Wan character.
