I suspect the wardrobe given to Carrie Fisher didn’t help. The way that dark dress billowed around her made for a disturbing resemblance to Mary Poppins.
I can totally see Dooku attending the opera on Coruscant. He probably would dig the brother/sister incest scene in Wagner’s Ring Cycle. 😉
I still have hope this might be better than TLJ, since it apparently deals with largely unexplored aspects of SW. I think Rian Johnson works better with relatively plastic characters who he can mold in his own fashion (Rey, Kylo, Rose) than when he has to color inside previously established lines (see: the Luke storyline).
I am still worried about the potential for glib, immersion-breaking “shuttle parkers” style humor though. Not to mention half-baked plotlines like the mutiny arising from Holdo’s bizarrely unexplained secretive decision-making.
Hmm, on second thought, maybe I shouldn’t be so hopeful after all.
The prequels showing how Anakin becomes Vader make for an interesting case of dramatic irony in the classical mold. I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing at all.
I do think it would be cool if, instead of Anakin having literalistic visions of Padmé dying in childbirth, he had more symbolic ones of suited Darth Vader striking her down. That way, first-time viewers watching chronologically would get a reveal of their own, comparable to that of “I am your father” from watching in release order.
This is foul sorcery.
There’s so much content, and it’s really fast.
Get thee behind me, I say
This is foul sorcery.
Yes. It provides an important thematic mirror to unmasked Anakin in ROTJ being digitally altered to remove Sebastian Shaw’s eyebrows and make his eye color look like Hayden Christensen’s.
Biggs Darklighter was born with that mustache.
I think that’s an issue with the production design on a lot of modern films. The materials are too high-quality and too well-designed for what would realistically be in that setting. See also: any live-action depiction of Superman’s costume since Superman Returns.
Along with postmodernism TLJ also exhibits a disturbing glibness in its storytelling.
Why is Holdo so ridiculously secretive? It doesn’t matter, she just is!
Who is Snoke and how did he rise to such power? Who cares, he’s boring, let’s kill him!
And Canto Bight is described as a place where the people lord it over the poor and oppressed, but instead of using this to further the plot – say, by having Rose & Finn fall under suspicion & be exposed as Resistance spies after they feed a beggar – we get the asinine “shuttle parkers” gag.
I applaud that article writer for acknowledging the obviousness of Abrams & Johnson’s clashing ideas, rather than trying to rationalize it away (like fans sometimes do with both this and the obviousness of Vader not being Luke’s father before 1980).
Agreed. The real answer was just like you said, Lucas’ relaxed views on continuity and if it is really that important. There’s definitely ways to explain it though I think. I did use to feel that it was one of the weaker elements of the OT, as far as it having very little set up and feeling tacked on. But over time I’ve realized the very PG incest vibes give Luke another similarity to King Arthur, who in some iterations of his legend had unknowingly slept with his own sister, resulting in Mordred, who would go on to betray Arthur and destroy Camelot.
Not really prequel related I suppose. Though you could argue the prequels parallel Arthurian legend as far as the Republic being like Ancient Rome which feel in the time before Arthur, and his father Uther Pendragon being analogous to Anakin in some ways. So the prequels continue that tradition of mirroring real myths that the OT started.
I don’t think these parallels were intentional but they do make me enjoy them more. Repeating ideas, even if it was unknowingly.
Some parallels with Arthurian legend were definitely intended with the third draft of SW 1977, where Ben Kenobi has a mechanical hand. Like how Bedivere, the knight who takes Excalibur to the Lady of the Lake, has one hand in some versions. Plus the battle where Luke’s father died is called “the Battle of Condawn”, echoing Camlann where Arthur and Mordred died.
And Gene Roddenberry frequently showed his black-&-white print of The Cage on the Trek convention circuit back in the 70s.
The Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker would be a nifty alternate title.
“Combine Han and Biggs.”
– George Lucas’ notes about ideas for the Star Wars third draft, 1975
The Ewok movies had traditional opening credits.
Back in 1984-5.
Opening credits are a thing of the past on most TV shows nowadays. On US network broadcasting it cuts into the ever-expanding commercial time. The main reason Game of Thrones had one is it was the best place to stash the on-screen version of the books’ endpaper maps.
Even online-based shows like Star Trek Discovery just have a ten-second title card. I wouldn’t expect much more than that in The Mandalorian.
Here’s one that I found pretty recently, it’s the sort of thing that hides in plain sight and blows your mind when you finally connect the dots in your head.
So if you have some knowledge of the production of the original Star Wars, you’ll know that the Falcon’s early design was ultimately repurposed and used for the (much larger) Blockade Runner. It would have had a linear interior, basically a single hallway running the length of the ship.
It wasn’t until I saw the following production image that I realized the interior set design from the abandoned “linear falcon” concept made an appearance in the finished film. When compared to the sketch it’s almost an exact match.
I assume that this particular set was built as the Falcon’s interior, and quickly redressed for use as Princess Leia’s ship. This would mean that the Falcon’s original design made it way further into production, which is something I was absolutely unaware of. It’s just weird to think that the famous scene of Leia putting the plans in R2 technically takes place in what was once the Millennium Falcon’s interior.
And that small corridor was originally supposed to be the whole set for Leia’s starship – the large, gleaming white corridor with rectangular walls was a late addition during filming, using extra money Lucas got from Fox.
I think those “pipe/vent things” in the third picture were originally supposed to be escape pods.
This site has a photo of the Rebel helmet prototype.
http://www.starwarshelmets.com/original_rebel_pilot_helmets.htmAlso another shot from ESB.
http://www.starwarshelmets.com/original-TIE-helmet-costume-overview.htm
It’s definitely a prototype Rebel pilot helmet then. The mouthpiece is the same.
Looks like a modified pilot helmet with the roundel repainted and a large visor. I wonder if it’s a prototype of the stormtrooper or TIE pilot helmets, or even of the early full-face Rebel pilot helmets from the first film’s storyboards.
There’s also some stormtrooper upper body armor painted black attached to it.
That IG droid is painted white, like K-3PO in Echo Base. (K-3PO also has a red Captain’s insignia painted on, which looks rather like a large vampire bite.)
I recall hearing that 4-LOM’s torso was based an unused mold for C-3PO from the first film.
It mentions IG-88, “Tuckuss”, Dengar, Bossk, and Boba Fett all by name:
The group standing before Vader is a bizarre array of galactic fortune hunters: there is BOSSK, a slimy, tentacled monster with two huge, bloodshot eyes in a soft baggy face; TUCKUSS and DENGAR, two battle-scarred, mangy human types; IG-88, a battered, tarnished chrome war droid; and BOBA FETT, a man in a weapon-covered armored space suit.
And during filming, Zuckuss’ name – then spelled “Tuckuss” – was intended to apply to Dengar (and vice versa?), while the script doesn’t mention 4-LOM at all.
Combined with Inception, maybe.
I think it’s so far outside of any studio graphic designer’s experience these days that it isn’t even given a thought.
