Sorry about another Star Wars post, but I ran across this link, which is a review of sorts of the original script science fiction author Leigh Brackett submitted for the then-untitled sequel back in 1978, just after the first movie had become a blockbuster.
George Lucas had read some of Brackett's space-opera science fiction and apparently liked the thought of what she could do in his universe with Luke, Leia, Han and the rest. Her work on movie classics like Humphrey Bogart's The Big Sleep (adapted from her own short story) and John Wayne's Rio Bravo probably impressed him as well.
The author of the site notes that Brackett, ill from cancer, died soon after submitting this first draft. It has several familiar story points, but many of them show up in different ways. There is no Yoda, but Luke learns the ways of the force from a froglike character named Minch. No Hutts, bounty hunters or carbonite, as Han Solo turns out to be the stepson of a powerful political figure he and the other rebels contact to try to win support for their cause.
The draft itself can't be put online, although some pirated copies are around the net -- surprise, surprise. But the synopsis here makes it obvious that the finished product made a much superior movie, with The Empire Strikes Back usually considered the best of the six. Had Brackett lived and her draft been accepted, she probably would have made many of the revisions ultimately done by Lawrence Kasdan that gave us the movie we saw in 1980.
Some Star Wars lore suggests that Lucas was unhappy with Brackett's submission either way, and there's probably no way to ever know for sure. Even if it had been utterly and completely awful, though, it's got one thing going for it that would instantly catapult it into the top rank of Star Wars movies had it been filmed as written: No Jar-Jar Binks.
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