Offically sanctioned Ewok firing a blaster? If so, we’ve come a long way from Lucasfilm forcing Topps to remove a knife from an Ewoks hand back in the 90’s.
What’s this about Topps and Ewok knives? I want to hear that story.
Ok, so there are identical twins and fraternal twins, why can’t there be…uh…some term for twins born two years apart?
Or maybe they’re half-siblings. Vintage 1977-canon taste with the same incest flavor!
Seriously though, GL first decided that Leia would hook up with Han rather than Luke in late '77 – the very same time that he began thinking Luke’s sister should appear as a new character in a future SW film.
And virtually all of Ralph McQuarrie’s concept art from the first film shows Luke and Leia with identical blond bowl haircuts. Join the dots.
Simply put, you’re wrong. The SW 1977 shooting script (the revised fourth draft from March 1976) DOES say that Luke is 20 and Leia is about 16.
This is not to be confused with the “public version” of the shooting script, which came out in the wake of the movie’s release. This was altered after the fact to be a mirror image the actual film - a practice Lucasfilm would continue with future movies.
And even that gives Luke and Leia different ages: Luke’s age is now 18, but Leia is still “about sixteen years old.”
Or maybe the revolution will not be competent.
Actually, Luke and Leia were respectively 20 and 16 in the shooting script for the 1977 film. So they weren’t the same age, and thus not twins.
However, nobody said anything about them not being related – in fact, the instances of brother/sister incest in both Wagner’s Die Walkure and the Arthurian mythos involve half-siblings born at different times. But that might be a little more than you wanted to know.
^ Bringing back an idea from the 1975 third draft maybe? In that version bonding with a Kiber Crystal was how Jedi first opened themselves to the Force IIRC.
I think what’s really exciting about that picture is the fact that they’re standing in front of a set complete enough that greenscreen isn’t anywhere in sight.
I agree that he presents better as a puppet than as CGI, but the puppet itself could have been much better.
Also agreed. Maybe the ILM practical effects shop gave up after the second crack at it – the first try at a Yoda puppet ended up being used for a female Yoda-species Jedi on the Council (Yaddle).
Good point! Though Rommel committed suicide on Hitler’s orders (to spare his family) after meeting with the conspirators of the July Plot.
Whereas Jerjerrod gets killed by the Rebels when the Death Star blows up. And though he’s clearly appalled by the order to blow up Endor, he nonetheless obeys it, since he’s still working under the the Nazi mentality that “orders are orders.”
I far prefer Creepy Puppet Yoda, creepy as he is, to the wrinkly abomination that is CGI Yoda.
^ Having competent, non-genocidal Imperial officers in the service of crazy lunatic masters is obviously inspired by WWII – think of von Manstein or Rundstedt or Guderian vs. Hitler and Goebbels.
It’s a good plot device for SW and I too am rather fond of the Jerjerrod scenes.
^ You’re a bit late.
Still funny though.
Ric Olié is still cooler than Ur-Wedge.
This reminds me of that time that ATMachine tried to convince us that Gillian Anderson was in Star Wars.
No, not Star Wars. I said The Star Wars, with a The. There’s a difference.
Incest still can’t be ruled out of that plot line though. ;D
^ That was for reasons of plot security on set, rather than that detail not being decided by shooting time. The scripts also don’t mention Luke having his hand cut off and replaced with a prosthesis. (Earlier drafts call for special insert pages at those particular points.)
Actually, they didn’t plan it to necessarily be Leia. He, IIRC, was actually gonna find another jedi who we didn’t know. Otherwise, Lucas definitely has an incest fetish.
With all the other deliberate Siegfried and King Arthur parallels elsewhere in the OT, I’d say it’s actually damn surprising that the sibling incest is so downplayed in the films.
BAEL ORGANA LIVES
This makes me wonder what conspiracy theory the Empire told its citizens about who really blew up Alderaan.
I guess it didn’t bother GL though (cf. the Neimoidians, whose voice actors were deliberately told to mimic line readings by non-English-speaking actors saying the lines phonetically.)
Well I mean, to play Devil’s Advocate here, I would imagine Neimoidians might not speak English as their native tongue and they do have very odd mouths so I would assume they would speak English pretty awkwardly.
http://www.davechen.net/2012/02/racism-stereotypes-phantom-menace-star.html
In a 1999 article for the Boston Review, Alan Stone corroborates Gottlieb’s take on things. He also identifies one of the reasons why Lucas got himself in trouble: he made the aliens English-speaking. Unlike aliens from the previous Star Wars films (see: Chewbacca, the Ewoks, all the people in the Cantina scene), the aliens in this film spoke our language and had accents and other characteristics reminiscent of the ones found in ethnic stereotypes:
What has made my student and many other cultists of his generation feel betrayed is the new ingredient in Lucas’s recipe: aliens who, unlike any of the previous exotic life forms, suggest racist stereotypes. The evil henchmen in this story seem to be Fu Manchu style Asians, and the primitive Gungan people who live under the sea suggest old Hollywood stereotypes of African-Americans.
Exactly. Hiring non-English-speakers to voice the Neimoidians wouldn’t have been a bad idea per se, but doing that and then having English-speaking actors imitate those voices for the final cut is rather too close to Charlie Chan-style old Hollywood yellowface.
Nah, it’s not necessarily weird to not notice those things – but it’s definitely the sort of racial coding that ought to be avoided when writing.
I guess it didn’t bother GL though (cf. the Neimoidians, whose voice actors were deliberately told to mimic line readings by other non-English-speaking actors saying the lines phonetically.)
edited due to scourge of the double post
Uh, yes? He’s a money-grubbing businessman/slave-owner who has a huge nose and lives on a desert planet where he gambles in chariot races straight out of Ben-Hur.
Double posting because this was too hilarious to not post
Take it to Jerry Springer, Darth!
Darth Vader’s been playing too many LucasArts adventure games. ;P
