One of John Alvin’s poster concepts for ROTJ shows Luke with a yellow or orange saber, so apparently that was in the mix for an alternative color to replace the blue blade as well. Harking back to Ralph McQuarrie’s Deak/Vader duel painting from the 1975 SW rough draft.
Yes, his eyes are less visible in the side view as a result. In the 04 version they were strikingly visible there (especially with the greater blue tint).
OK, so this is a new change then.
Echoing ChainsawAsh: the colors are changed, which may go along with the overall changes to the color timing.
The new version has Palpatine’s skin tone visible and less of a blue tint. In the Blu-ray version his hologram is blue all over except for his yellow eyes. I forget, were the '04 DVD version colors like the new Disney+ or the Blu-ray?
And because they’re announcing these deals up front as soon as they’re made on paper, rather than waiting to see whether they actually go through to production or not.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85MK2GDkoxo
I have to admit, I like the original “Silver” Death Star concept quite a bit.
Great find. Do you know what DVD set these are from? I remember having seen them before but I can’t remember where exactly.
(Slight nitpick, but could you please add the title of the video, or some kind of description, so that it’s not just a link?)
They’re on the SW Saga Blu-ray set.
Greedo should’ve listened to Tuco Ramirez.
It’d already been done.
Somebody ought to make “Han spoke last” T-shirts.
Greedo babbled last.
Not in the original version he didn’t! 😉
Somebody ought to make “Han spoke last” T-shirts.
It’s a bit strange that the new canon puts so much emphasis on the Kyber Crystals “bleeding”.
The name comes from the Kiber Crystal(s) in the 1975 second & third drafts of SW, which were magic Force talismans but not AFAIK used to power lightsabers.
Originally the name derived from the Khyber Pass on the border of Pakistan & Afghanistan: a far-flung frontier of the British Empire in the Victorian era, and hence featured in many tales of 19th-century imperialist derring-do. (The more things change…)
As a result, in Cockney rhyming slang “Khyber Pass,” or just “Khyber” for short, was used to refer to one’s buttocks.
Lucas originally planned to make Luke’s lightsaber red and Vader’s blue, but Hirsch suggested switching them because of his knowledge of Christian iconography from the Renaissance era he’d studied in art history at Columbia University in the mid-‘60s.
from this article on Paul Hirsch’s new book
This dovetails with mention of the early lightsaber colors being swapped (and the tractor beam gauge also) in Paul Duncan’s SW Archives book.
I have given a name to my pain, and it is Paul Hirsch.
*shoots laptop*
Care to elaborate, or is this just more negative waves?
It’s no secret that I’m no fan of “blue lightsabers = good, red lightsabers = bad”, is it? It didn’t bother me so much in the OT, as there were only three lightsaber wielders running about, but I’ve since found it incredibly trite and irksome after the PT made it universal. The status quo’s even more vexing now with the revelation that Lucas initially seriously considered the inverse.
This I agree with. It shouldn’t be as simplistic as “red = evil, blue & green = good”. What the wielder does with the blade should matter, not just its color. (Having said that, the color dichotomy seems like a storytelling tool ripe for subversion, but good luck finding that in SW stories released these days.)
It’s also worth remembering that Luke’s green blade in ROTJ was meant to suggest him being somewhere between light & dark, due to his conflict after learning that Vader was his father and Ben & Yoda lied to him. Of course the prequels threw that out the window.
Now you’ve got me started on lightsaber history!
Only one lightsaber color is mentioned in the 1974 rough draft – that of protagonist Annikin Starkiller – and it’s red.
Ralph McQuarrie’s production paintings for the 1975 second draft introduce the idea of multiple colored lightsabers. But these are still a bit unusual: in his painting of Darth Vader dueling Luke Starkiller’s brother Deak, Vader’s saber is blue and Deak’s is golden. Meanwhile, lightsaber-wielding stormtroopers have white lightsabers to match their white armor.
George Lucas initially tried to achieve the lightsaber effects in-camera by using special spinning rods (powered by hidden electric cables) with a luminescent coating. When a light was shone on them, they would appear to glow. This method only allowed for one color to be used on all lightsaber blades in the same shot. Tests on the Blu-ray show that red and blue were considered, but Lucas ultimately opted for white lightsabers across the board.
A few of Ralph McQuarrie’s later publicity paintings for SW 1977 adopt this design – for instance, his early art for the novelization cover, which is a new version of his painting of the Deak/Vader duel.
When the in-camera effects proved unsatisfactory, Lucas decided to use rotoscoping to enhance the effect. This allowed for McQuarrie-style individually colored blades to be introduced.
Evidently the initial notion was red = good and blue = evil, matching up with the blue saber color McQuarrie gave Vader, as well as Annikin’s lightsaber color in the rough draft. But as we now know, Paul Hirsch convinced Lucas to flip the colors. (As Michael Kaminski has also noted, the 1977 film’s lightsaber color scheme matches the color motifs of swords in Lord of the Rings.)
Even during post-production editing, apparently. It was enough of a possibility that Lucas had ILM arrange its schedule so the trench-run effects were the first major model work done.
The thinking apparently was, Princess Leia’s rescued, the film can just end there, right? More importantly, think of all the money you’d save by not spending money on filming the trench run. Cash trumping Art, as is sadly standard practice in Hollywood these days.
Lucas originally planned to make Luke’s lightsaber red and Vader’s blue, but Hirsch suggested switching them because of his knowledge of Christian iconography from the Renaissance era he’d studied in art history at Columbia University in the mid-‘60s.
from this article on Paul Hirsch’s new book
This dovetails with mention of the early lightsaber colors being swapped (and the tractor beam gauge also) in Paul Duncan’s SW Archives book.
The name “Utapau” in ROTS goes back to the original SW, but the idea of a sinkhole city postdates the 1977 film. Perhaps most notably, it was considered as an idea for Mos Espa in TPM.
I thought the sinkhole planet was from the original film as well, although maybe I’m misremembering (ROTJ perhaps?).
Where did you learn about the hyperspace-through-shield idea in TFA coming from ROTJ?
It’s from one of the earlier drafts of the film, per Rinzler’s making of book. I’ll have to check when I get the chance which draft.
JEDIT: from the “Revised Rough Draft” 6/12/81 https://www.starwarz.com/starkiller/revenge-of-the-jedi-revised-rough-draft/
I’ve seen one book (maybe it was Kevin J Anderson’s Illustrated SW Universe) claim the sketches of a “crevasse city” were done for ROTJ, but I think that’s inaccurate; several of the drawings appear in the various Episode I art books.
Thanks for the info about the hyperspace thing!
The name “Utapau” in ROTS goes back to the original SW, but the idea of a sinkhole city postdates the 1977 film. Perhaps most notably, it was considered as an idea for Mos Espa in TPM.
Where did you learn about the hyperspace-through-shield idea in TFA coming from ROTJ?
It’s either a sign of his apathy toward the third film in the trilogy or a cheap way to make an alternate cut of the film for potential exhibition someday.
They’re using the 1975 third draft in the auditions, but Luke’s lines were actually written for Ben Kenobi.
In the 1974 rough draft Princess Leia Aquilae’s home planet was also named Aquilae, but in the 1975 third draft she’s Leia Organa from Organa Major. (In the second draft Leia mostly drops out except as a bit character.) Alderaan was the name of an Imperial planet with a floating cloud city until the 1976 fourth draft, when the cloud city dropped out of the script, and the name was recycled for Leia’s homeworld.
Luke’s homeworld is Utapau in the 1975 second and third drafts – or rather, its colloquial name is Utapau, but it’s officially known as Sullust, like Arrakis/Dune in Frank Herbert’s novels. The 1976 fourth draft changed the name to Tatooine, based on the actual location of Tataouine in Tunisia. (The hero in the 1974 rough draft is Annikin Starkiller, who is also from Aquilae.)
The mention of Aquilae in the clip above is mostly an offhand reuse of an old name. Like Sullust/Utapau/Tatooine, Aquilae in the 1974 rough draft is a desert planet.
That’s odd. AFAIK SW has usually tended less toward Oedipal parental incest and more toward Wagnerian sibling incest. 😉
And as that website mentions, the Rebel pilot helmets were originally meant to have their own style of faceplates.
“They always wanted to do Ewok Hunt” says Steve Arnold with a wry grin.
“I always remember, there used to be a thing on the whiteboard behind someone’s desk, whenever we’d have journalists in to visit,” reveals Chip Morningstar. “It said Ewok Hunt Design Meeting 3PM.”
“Better than Ewok Hunt 3PM,” quips Ron [Gilbert].
from this article about Lucasfilm Games in the 1980s
I personally won’t see TROS in the theater. I didn’t go to TLJ either.
No doubt there are what could be called hardcore fans who have no interest in the St altogether. But here’s my question, for someone like you, would watching and enjoying the Mandalorian make you more likely to see TROS in theaters?
Probably not. I’m intrigued by The Mandalorian and I think it looks good, but I’m very apprehensive about TROS and how it appears to deal with the aftermath of TLJ (which I also didn’t much like) by shoehorning in new plot ideas out of the blue.
I also didn’t like TLJ, but I think a lot of that is down to script issues. The movie had some decent ideas, but a lot of its execution feels half-baked, and it probably could’ve used a couple of extra script drafts before the cameras rolled. And everything I’ve heard so far about TROS suggests that it’s even worse in this regard.
Mind you, I do want to see The Mandalorian at some point, but I don’t plan to subscribe to Disney+ at launch, so I don’t know when that might happen. Hopefully Disney puts out some box set Blu-rays at some point.
I personally won’t see TROS in the theater. I didn’t go to TLJ either.