Planet/location Concepts By Ralph McQuarrie For The Original Star Wars Trilogy (that Were Reused Later).

Planet/location concepts by Ralph McQuarrie for the original Star Wars trilogy (that were reused later).

Coruscant started out as Had Abaddon, capital of the empire, and was going to be featured in RETURN OF THE JEDI. It was very very close, but eventually Lucas decided to go with a second Death Star.

Alderaan. I used to wonder why McQuarrie had bothered designing Alderaan as it would only be seen from space anyway. But Alderaan wasn’t always Alderaan: in one draft, the planet was a giant gas planet, and the capital of the New Galactic Empire.

Sicemon, originally the site of Jabba’s palace in RETURN OF THE JEDI. It was then re-purposed as the home of the rebels, then abandoned.

An abandoned “ice castle” on Hoth where the rebels would have their base of operations (you can spot a tiny Han and Chewie).

These images show Vader’s castle, which I’ve featured before. (In fact I’ve featured several of these images before, but I just wanted to do this overview and didn’t want to exclude the more significant concepts.)

The sinkhole planet that would become Utapau. This one dates back to 1976 I believe.

Bonus: This one, by Doug Chiang, is a concept painting for Jakku, which was conceived as a junk planet. Should have used it! I mean THAT is a planet you’d want to escape from. Plus we had already seen a sand planet.