Star Wars: Episode VII to be directed by J.J. Abrams **NON SPOILER THREAD** — Page 57

cain spaans said:

I have a question what if in the future Vin Diesel was in a Star Wars film what do you think?

Fast & Furious - Tatooine Drift

"You never had me. You never had your speeder."

cain spaans said:

I have a question what if in the future Vin Diesel was in a Star Wars film what do you think?

GlastoEls said:

We had this with The Rock a couple months back.

Background character, low key, no problem.

I know, I just thought that google image scrawl was funny :-D

Re: Christopher Walken as Han:

If Walken had been cast it wouldn't have been Mark Hamill as Luke. Lucas wanted to cast Han and Luke as a duo--he thought Hamill was the actor who worked best opposite Ford. But to play against Walken, Lucas had a different unknown in mind, a guy named Will Seltzer, whom Lucas saw as a bit more mature and "grown-up" than the golly-gee-gosh wide-eyed Hamill.

Lucas compared Seltzer's take on Luke to Richard Dreyfuss in American Graffiti--in fact, when Dreyfuss refused to come back for More American Graffiti, Seltzer was cast in the film essentially as his replacement. Seltzer hasn't been in much of anything since. (Although, for Nintendo nerds, he's probably best known as the villain Putnam in 1989's glorified advertisement The Wizard.)

In his audition tapes Seltzer looks rather like a young Jesse Eisenberg--curly brown hair and gray eyes. I would guess Lucas deep down wanted somebody more WASP-looking, more the blond Flash Gordon type, for Luke; that's what all of Ralph McQuarrie and John Mollo's concept art shows.

As for Leia, apparently the other lead contender for the role (besides Fisher) was Terri Nunn, who went on to fame as lead singer of the band Berlin. Nunn was a minor at the time--apropos of the script, where Leia is described as 16 to Luke's 20 (NOT twins yet!). But Lucas went with Fisher (who was 18) largely to avoid the legal issues involved with having an underage cast member.

FWIW, apparently Hamill and Fisher themselves thought the most likely contenders to beat them in the casting call were Robby Benson and Jodie Foster. Both were actually considered--Foster, like Nunn, was a minor at the time.

More far-out casting ideas Lucas considered, early on in casting sessions, were to cast an African-American as Han (possibly inspired by Leigh Brackett's black space outlaw Eric John Stark?) and a Japanese-American actress as Leia (along with Toshiro Mifune as Ben Kenobi--the two characters coming straight out of The Hidden Fortress). Lucas actually selected actor Glynn Turman as his candidate for a black Han; this impulse later gave birth to the character of Lando, who when you get right down to it is really a clone of Han.

I am glad he went with Hamill/Harrison. The alternatives seem pretty lame to me.

I actually believe that we can see an artifact of Lucas' changing casting ideas for the role of Luke in the ANH script drafts.

The third draft, written in August 1975, before any serious casting sessions started, introduces Luke Starkiller thusly:

LUKE STARKILLER, a farm-boy with heroic aspirations; who looks much younger than his twenty years. His short hair and baggy tunic give him the air of a simple-minded, but lovable lout with a prize-winning smile.

The "short hair" described here is rather generic, but perhaps recalls the clean-cut hairstyle of Flash Gordon. More importantly, it suggests that Lucas didn't have any specific ideas about casting yet.

The fourth draft script was completed on January 1, 1976. Lucas probably wrote the bulk of it during December. That was the month of the casting sessions; Seltzer auditioned early on, whereas Hamill came in at the tail end of the month.

It is thus probable that, if he worked his way through the script over the month, revising it scene by scene, Lucas' description of Luke (coming early in the text) might reflect a mind's-eye picture of Seltzer rather than Hamill.

The fourth draft text bears this out:

LUKE STARKILLER, a farm boy with heroic aspirations who looks much younger than his twenty-two years. His curly hair and baggy tunic give him the air of a simple, but lovable lad with a prize-winning smile.

Luke has suddenly gone up in age! (Seltzer was a few years older than Hamill, and likely older than Lucas originally had in mind; Luke was just 18 in the second draft.) Also, he now has Seltzer's "curly" (brown) hair instead of a WASPy crewcut.

Now check out the text of the revised fourth draft, from March 1976, by which time Hamill had been cast:

LUKE STARKILLER, a farm boy with heroic aspirations who looks much younger than his twenty years. His shaggy hair and baggy tunic give him the air of a simple, but lovable lad with a prize-winning smile.

Luke has gone down again in age, a fitting change if the younger Hamill had edged out Seltzer in Lucas' mind. What's more, Luke now visibly has Hamill's "shaggy" (blond) hair. Funny, that.

you guys may not like the PT but when I saw ROTS I thought that was the best theater experience ever but then I saw James Bond Skyfall and I was proved wrong but I wonder if episode VII will top that

cain spaans said:

you guys may not like the PT but when I saw ROTS I thought that was the best theater experience ever but then I saw James Bond Skyfall and I was proved wrong but I wonder if episode VII will top that

Do you happen to know a guy named Ken Kraly?

Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

cain spaans said:

you guys may not like the PT but when I saw ROTS I thought that was the best theater experience ever but then I saw James Bond Skyfall and I was proved wrong but I wonder if episode VII will top that

Do you happen to know a guy named Ken Kraly?

LOL. :D

Wexter said:

cain spaans said:

you guys may not like the PT but when I saw ROTS I thought that was the best theater experience ever but then I saw James Bond Skyfall and I was proved wrong but I wonder if episode VII will top that

You should check out that Battlefield Earth flick. It is like James Bond... IN SPACE!

well if you also have seen the James Bond film Moonraker it is alot like Star Wars and funny thing at the end of The Spy Who Loved Me it says "James Bond  will return in For Your Eyes Only" but that was until after the release of Star Wars they decided to "put James Bond in space" so they made Moonraker instead and after that they want back to For Your Eyes Only