With just over four decades of film, TV, video games and comic books to its name, the Star Wars franchise has shown that there is always room for change. Even before the first film in the series was released, ideas were being tossed around that seem strange, even by today's standards. Years later, when the prequels were being developed, George Lucas and concept artist Iain McCaig had things down to a science, but that still didn't stop some crazy concepts from slipping through.

During early work on The Phantom Menace, the two creators attempted to figure out how certain characters from the original films would look when they appeared in the prequels, with one of the most important being Obi-Wan Kenobi (Alec Guinness), who appeared as an older man in A New Hope. In the theatrical release, Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) is the padawan to Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson), a cavalier Jedi who brings in Anakin Skywalker to be trained as a Jedi, but at one point, Kenobi was almost Jinn's master.

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As McCaig explains in The Art of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, Lucas played around with having an older Obi-Wan after Qui-Gon was created. The idea was to make Jinn the apprentice, and McCaig even put together a concept design for Lucas to see how the Jedi would look compared to his first appearance. The final result appeared like a younger version of original Obi-Wan actor Alec Guinness, with two braids coming from the top of his head and no facial hair.

Had the movie continued on that course, Obi-Wan's life would've been altered drastically. Of course, in The Phantom Menace, Qui-Gon dies at the hands of Darth Maul and Obi-Wan has to take over Anakin's training. But had Qui-Gon died with Obi-Wan as his master, Anakin would've immediately filled the void, putting Qui-Gon's massive impact on the saga in question. In the end, a younger Kenobi worked better because of the immense responsibility he felt in taking care of Skywalker while he himself was still learning.

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Changing Obi-Wan's age could've also put pushed forward the events of Revenge of the Sith. As it stands, they're 19 years between the events of the final prequel film and A New Hope, but an older Obi-Wan throws that timeline for a loop. Either the Jedi was going to be much older come the events of Episode IV, or characters like Luke and Leia were going to be a lot younger.

Star Wars has proven repeatedly that things don't always have to stay the way they started. And while it's entertaining to see these possibilities presented, more times than not, the idea that would've worked best is the one that ended up appearing on-screen.

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