I must admit that one of the things I'm eager to know about in Episode III is how Anakin Skywalker receives severe injuries, which inevitably lead him to wear the famous breathing black armor body suit. In an interview in Starlog in 1980, Mark Hamill recalls a brief background sketch on which he had been told about the character of Vader:
"I remember very early on asking who my parents were and being told that my father and Obi Wan met Vader on the edge of a volcano and they had a duel. My father and Darth Vader fell into the crater and my father was instantly killed. Vader crawled out horribly scarred, and at that point the Emperor landed and Obi Wan ran into the forest, never to be seen again."
However, we now know that Anakin and Vader are the same person, so the information that was told to Mark Hamill is false. One interesting thing about all this, is that Lucas did revealed that he at one point considered the lava theory to be the established timeline in Star Wars, but gives no indication if it is in the upcoming Episode III. Another interesting thing that I digged up was that the second draft of "The Empire Strikes Back", indicates that Vader fell into a nuclear reactor shaft instead of lava. If this is the case, then it would explain such ailments as mutation, radiation sickness and extensive cancer. Three years later, aspects of the tale of the molten pit resurfaced in a more official form. In the novelisation of Return of the Jedi, Obi-Wan Kenobi told Luke Skywalker:
" We fought ... your father fell into a molten pit. When your father clawed his way out of that fiery pool, the change had been burned into him forever --- he was Darth Vader, without a trace of Anakin Skywalker. Irredeemably dark. Scarred. Kept alive only by machinery and his own black will ... "
Does anyone know if the lava theory or the nuclear reactor theory is the true version?
Whitestar