theprequelsrule said:
Bingowings said:
Not that much work went into the other bounty hunters.
Bossk it the head of one Cantina denizen in the space suit of another.
Dengar is mostly cloth with some oversized stormtrooper armour.
4LOM is a an insect head on a protocol droid body.
Zuckuss is basically the same head over a brown robe, even IG88 is partly made from re-cycled airplane parts (already used in the first film as a drinks dispenser).
None of them had custom ships and none of them had the same amount of air time and not much of them was designed from scratch.
Fair enough. The irony here is that they looked just as cool as Fett. No wonder Empire went overbudget.
I think it went overbudget because it was underbudgeted in the first place.
The first film was relatively cheap to make in modern terms (as were ROTJ and the PT), but it was still quite expensive for a genre film, nothing like Star Wars (high production values, special effects heavy, well cast, family Science Fiction Fantasy) had been made since probably The Forbidden Planet.
The second film could have coasted along at the level of the first film reusing all the same models and props (Splinter Of The Mind's Eye was plan B if Star Wars wasn't a big hit).
But I doubt if we would be talking here if it had.
In most ways ROTJ is ESB's Splinter Of The Mind's Eye.
Almost everything that works about that film is recycled from one of the others and almost everything that was new (with the possible exception of the Jabba puppet) was lacking the same sophistication that the first two films had (even so it also cost about the same as ESB despite having all those pre-built props and pre-designed concepts to pool from).
ESB attempted to up the game started by the first film (something rarely attempted with sequels before or since). That's why Kersh took so much effort on building the characters and making the film feel right. To top the first film in terms of look was bound to cost more than the first one (especially as the new locations meant not much could be recycled in terms of sets).
While some people here still prefer the first film most of what the general public view as Star Wars came from the second film.
As for Solo being more cool for modern audiences I remember when the first film came out my primary school music teacher (who in 1977 was already in her fifties) was raving about Han and nothing else.
In her eyes he stole the show.
So it's not a modern thing.
Solo (and Leia ironically considering the bombshell Lucas threw into the plot) was pretty much sidelined in ROTJ and while Luke is the primary character the success of the first two films was down to it being a well balanced ensemble piece.
Having his arc mirror Luke's would underline the main message of the film and the saga as a whole.