A small strange mystery:
JW Rinzler in The Making of Star Wars erroneously describes the third image in my previous post as a sketch for a droid “in the bottom-left corner” of McQuarrie’s painting of the Death Star prison-block elevators. But one look at those threatening mandibles (not to mention the needle in the droid’s right claw) reveals that this is an early iteration of the torture droid used on Princess Leia.
This seems to be deliberate obtuseness (or censorship?) on Rinzler’s part… since the droid’s two pincer arms in McQuarrie’s sketch were almost certainly inspired by the early Christian legend of the martyr Saint Agatha (a frequent subject for Renaissance painters). During the persecution of Christians under the Roman Empire, Agatha, a convert from a Roman noble family, was tortured and had her breasts cut off by red-hot pincers.
And what’s on the very same page of The Making of SW, in the bottom left corner? Ralph McQuarrie’s pencil storyboards of a bare-breasted Princess Leia.
So in what draft exactly is this mentioned?
Also looking at the storyboards you mentioned, I can’t really see the same as you do. It just looks like she’s wearing a white outfit, and if I’d have to compare it to anything it’d be Padme’s outfit during the arena scene in AOTC.
The closest I can find in Rinzler’s book to suggest this costume, or rather lack of costume, is this unfinished drawing by Tavoularis whcih seems oddly out of place with all the other concept art;
However, speaking of censorship, or at least Lucas going for something more kid-friendly, I find it interesting how Tavoularis’ storyboard show stormtroopers where you can actually see their eyes. Not only are these third-draft storyboards more violent in general (there’s a lot of limbs being torn/shot of in this version) but giving us the ability to see their eyes really makes them a lot more sympathetic and human, as opposed to the faceles Imperial grunts that we’re used to. I think it’s really fascinating how simply covering up someones eyes can makes such a huge difference.
I can only imagine how different SW would have been had moments like this actually ended up in the final film;
.jpg)
On a completely different note however, having started reading Rinzler’s book myself recently, there is one unused costume in the concept art which has fascinated me quite a lot.
A lot of the drawings of Han Solo has him wearing this weird helmet-like thing (I really have no idea what to call it). It looks really cool and I can’t really figure out why it was never used in the final film considering it was used so prominently in McQuarries artwork (it even showed up in the fourth draft storyboards by Ivor Beddos, only Ben wore it instead of Han).
The only explanation I’ve been able to find is that it might have been too similar, or perhaps too obviously inspired by Flash Gordon, that they might have tried to avoid legal problems or maybe Lucas simply felt he needed to make something more original.
