Unbeknownest to most people, Star Wars was originally released in 1973 as a low budget blaxploitation film entitled Vader Sessions. Darth Vader was the star of this earlier version- a frustrated intergalactic pimp (surrounded by a bumbling bureaucracy of white know-nothings) who was as quick to dispense beat downs as he was love advice.
Many cite the original film's downer of an ending, in which Vader has a nervous breakdown, kills his most promising pupil and blows up his own death star, as the primary reason for the film's dismal showing at the box office. After a disasterous opening weekend, Twentieth Century Fox pulled it from theaters and spent the next 4 years re-casting, re-editing and re-dubbing it into the glorious anglocentric epic we've all come to know and love. James Earl Jones was kept on as the voice of Vader, albeit in a slightly neutered capacity.