ATMachine

Owyn_Merrilin said:

SilverWook said:

More pics.

http://www.ew.com/ew/gallery/0,,20647938_20695713,00.html?hpt=hp_t3

Bit of a tangent, but that link led me here: http://www.ew.com/ew/gallery/0,,20647938_20361457,00.html?stitched#20770650

It's a similar collection of pictures for the Empire book, but what's interesting is the specific picture. It's a picture of Irvin Kirshner's copy of an early version of the script, and what stuck out to me was the line where Yoda says "the tree, remember your failure at the tree." In the final movie, that line had the word "cave" instead of tree.

You're probably wondering what's so interesting about this, and here's the answer: there's a note in the annotated Heir to the Empire where Timothy Zahn talks about why he described the cave as having a tree growing out of the top of it. He says it was because the track on the soundtrack album used in that scene was "The Magic Tree," and he wanted to gracefully solve a discrepancy that had bugged him growing up listening to the album over and over again. Looks like we now finally have the real answer, which is that the title of the song is a holdover from an earlier version of the script.

So, uh, this may be a bit of thread necromancy, but I kind of just realized that the magic tree thing from ESB was almost reused in Willow.

Apparently in early outlines for Willow, there was a scene with a tree growing above the mouth of a cave where a fierce dragon lived. The tree itself would have been ordinary-looking on the outside, but with an inner core of solid gold (a reference to Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress, where Princess Yuki's golden treasure is hidden inside sticks of firewood).

Interesting to see Lucas reusing that idea.

No, if it's a girl I would think you named her after a Star Trek character in a skintight catsuit. Which is kind of creepy.

I don't know specifics about much else that was changed due to fan backlash. The biggest thing I can think of is Jar Jar being mostly shunted off to the sidelines (except for bringing in a dictatorship, great job there).

As I recall, that was exactly what happened. It was one of his daughters--probably Katie, now that I think about it. I believe she was a teenager at the time.

Return of Ridiculous Jedi?

Poor choice of words, obviously. No stocks of celluloid were harmed in the making of that pile. ;)

But apparently Lucas actually did film them and then cut them out after an Internet backlash: http://www.ign.com/articles/2002/01/11/nsync-not-nstar-wars-after-all

Go figure. Maybe it was because he was particularly sensitive to that sort of criticism at the time. After all, this was right after the release of TPM so visibly shattered the pedestal he was so accustomed to standing on. He probably grew a thicker skin as the prequels wore on.

But as I understand it, 'N Sync were actually filmed. Lucas just took out their cameo when people complained.

Heads up, guys: according to this SW.com blog post, JW Rinzler has written another OT book, due for release on October 28, this time about the costumes of the OT. It's called (no prizes for guessing the title) Star Wars Costumes: The Original Trilogy.

It should include not just photographs of the surviving costumes in the Lucasfilm Archives, but pictures of the original costume concept art as well. And Rinzler has apparently interviewed all three of the principal costume designers for the OT: John Mollo, Aggie Guerard Rodgers, and Nilo Rodis-Jamero.

There's another book added to my "must check out" list. The Storyboards book was pretty neat, after all.

Yeah, I have a foot in both puddles, as it were.

If you're curious, I did update that TFN post with more info about the green saber in ROTJ.

Hmm, good point. I hadn't thought about the atmospheric combat idea--we were only going to see them operating in space in ROTJ.

I think the B-Wing was named for how it looks when "standing" on its long wing directly opposite the cockpit end. In that position its main body and crossbar look like the vertical line and midpoint of a B, with the upper and lower loops removed. Still kind of a poor resemblance, I know.

But what really bugs me about the B-Wing is that the ILM guys intended the whole wing structure to rotate around and around, while the cockpit stayed level with the "ground," as they called it. But it's space! There is no ground! So there's absolutely no reason for that feature beyond "it looks cool."

I'm undoubtedly taking things too seriously for a simple space opera. But it still seems a ludicrously impractical feature for my money.

Darth Lars said:

Somewhat off-topic:

When I saw TPM the first time, I thought first that Amidala's handmaidens were clones and that Palpatine and the Trade Federation was after Naboo's handmaiden-cloning technology. :-þ

That's funny.... in the very first rough draft of SW 1977 (which was the overall template for TPM) Princess Leia's family does have cloning technology, and it is why the Empire is after her.

The same rough draft also has a handmaiden being given a distinctive necklace Leia usually wears, so the Empire will think she's actually the Princess. She's not a clone, though.

DuracellEnergizer said:

It'd be nice to think that people don't take lightsaber colours into consideration because lightsaber colours don't really mean anything or indicate the wielder's affiliation, but I know that's not likely to be the case.

 Agreed, so much. I always liked that in the McQuarrie paintings Vader's saber was blue and Deak Starkiller's was yellow.

DuracellEnergizer said:

I wonder if Jabba was inspired by Baron Harkonnen from Dune. Both are morbidly obese to the point where they (initially) can't move on their own power and both have sexual tastes which are, for lack of a better description, less than mainstream.

 The Declan Mulholland Jabba may have been--albeit with a large dash of Sydney Greenstreet added in. But slug-Jabba I think draws much more directly from Leto II in his sandworm form from God Emperor of Dune, which came out in 1981--right when Lucas began to write ROTJ.

Post-apocalyptic SW? Huh. Interesting. I know Lucas seems to have a fondness for the Mad Max films--he named a character in Willow after Mel Gibson in those movies.

Given Lucas's love of Kurosawa movies and Westerns, I suspect that if Lucas had gone through with the bloodied-up Leia idea, he would've modeled the makeup on how Toshiro Mifune looks in Yojimbo after the gangsters capture him and beat him up, or Clint Eastwood in the equivalent scene in A Fistful of Dollars.

That is to say, Leia would have hair half pulled out of its buns, a bloody nose and an eye swollen shut. Not a pretty picture, but it would certainly make her all the more badass when she took charge of the rescue party.

In the third draft script Lucas actually wrote that Leia's screams are audible after the door slams down in the exterior shot of the cell. That detail disappeared in the later revisions; maybe it was too macabre.

The same script later describes her as "bloody and mutilated" when Luke and Han enter her cell, and she's unconscious, suspended upside-down in the air by some sort of electronic restraint. She doesn't seem to be too seriously harmed though, as she wakes up a couple scenes later and starts taking charge of the rescue as in the final film.

Lucas had a tendency to reuse language from earlier draft scripts even when it no longer made sense. The "bloody and mutilated" descriptor was originally applied in the second draft to Deak Starkiller, Luke's brother, who was so gravely injured that his life was in serious danger, and he remained unconscious for the rest of the film.

Still, Leia being unconscious in her cell makes more sense than an idea that appeared in one outline. Namely, Leia refuses to go along when Luke and Han rescue her, as she suspects Vader is trying to implicate her in a bogus escape attempt. Han doesn't want to take the time to argue with her, so he punches her in the face and knocks her out, after which Chewbacca carries her.

That idea is actually recycled from the very first draft, where it's Annikin Starkiller who punches Princess Leia Aquilae. By the end of the script those two are fully in love. So, weirdly, that outline with Han beating Leia up may be the moment where Lucas started to consider them seriously as an item.

You shouldn't put that "eth" third-person singular present active ending on an infinitive like "bring" in that last sentence of yours.

Or rather,  I should say:

Thou shouldst not put that "eth" third-person singular present active ending on an infinitive like "bring" in that last sentence of thine, sirrah.

One thing I've just noticed which gives me new-found respect for the art department on TPM is that the costume designers seem to have made copious reference to the unused character concepts Moebius did for Willow.

The Jedi hairstyle that Obi-Wan Kenobi sports in the TPM storyboards from the rough-draft period is a dead ringer for Madmartigan's hair in the earlier movie (which was based on a Moebius design).

Likewise, Moebius's concept drawings for Sorsha (Willow's secondary villain and Madmartigan's love interest) feature her wearing a white Noh mask with ornamental red markings. Guess what shows up in the prequels as makeup on Amidala's face?

Plus, one of the drawings for Sorsha features her with a long blonde ponytail and an otherwise shaven head. That hairstyle got reused for bounty hunter Aurra Sing (who also received Luke's very long rifle from Ralph McQuarrie's old drawings).

If nothing else, it shows the TPM character designers were quite impressed by Moebius's earlier work for Lucasfilm. Too bad Lucas and Ron Howard didn't actually use most of his designs for Willow itself...

It's always struck me that, as far as the films go, Vader doesn't become a raging Force-choke-aholic until ESB. In the first film he only chokes one guy, and that's to prove a point about the power of the Force. He clearly enjoys it, but he doesn't even get to kill him. (Notably, Tarkin stops him--so he clearly has freer rein in the sequels, where his own authority is more paramount.)

I think Larry Kasdan really ran with the idea of Vader Force-choking underlings at the drop of a hat, to the point where it became a running joke.

However, this is certainly an improvement over the Leigh Brackett draft of the script, where Vader just nonchalantly dismisses stupid officers with lines like "Leave me, you incompetent idiot."

That was probably one reason why Lucas disliked the script--judging by Splinter he was probably much more on board with Kasdan's take.

How appropriate. You fight like a cow.

Yeah, those figures are indeed inspired by TPM concept art of the all-black Jedi outfits. The Qui-Gon one in particular shows off the body armor that Doug Chiang wanted the Jedi to wear.

The prequel Jedi robes may be extremely ugly but I'm pretty sure that (aside from the higher cut required for wire-fu) they were essentially what Lucas envisioned for the Jedi uniform when he made SW 1977.

ROTJ was the film that really introduced darker-colored, more "utilitarian" clothing to the Jedi, and then only in Luke's costume. The TPM concept artists initially ran with this idea--Doug Chiang lobbied to have Jedi in black body armor--but ultimately this lost out to the "just do it like ANH" idea.

I would argue that the confusion between Tatooine desert clothing and Jedi robes goes back to the original film. After all, Ralph McQuarrie on SW 1977 was told to put Ben Kenobi in a "Japanese kimono" apparently because it was the costume of a Jedi, and the final cut of Alec Guinness's robe is almost exactly that, in weathered white fabric with a brown undershirt.

On the other hand, John Mollo did draw concept art of Obi-Wan in a more typical Tatooine-style farmer outfit with a Japanese shirt, a vest and leg puttees, much akin to what he drew Luke wearing. This ultimately wasn't used.

(Mollo also put in a nice detail on his drawings of Ben's Jedi cloak that I liked very much: a silver tassel on the point of the hood.)

DuracellEnergizer said:

mfastx said:

DuracellEnergizer said:

I certainly hope they don't stick him in brown desert hermit bathrobes. Stick with the ROTJ look or go with something new, just don't continue the stupid "Jedi dress like moisture farmers" BS.

 Wasn't Anakin wearing those same desert robes at the end of ROTJ?  Why would he be wearing them? 

I prefer to think he took on that appearance because he knew Luke associated it with Ben, and wanting to appear as benign and non-threatening to his son as possible, choose to appear to Luke in that form even though he never wore those clothes in life. 

I would like to throw in a reminder here that the various scripts for SW 1977 actually specify that Jedi do wear robes of some sort, and that black robes are reserved for Sith Lords. Somehow the idea has come up that "the Jedi uniform" is actually the all-black costume Luke wore in ROTJ: an idea that really only dates to the making of ROTJ (Marvel Comics aside) and wasn't in full force even then.

I frankly suspect that the TPM concept art featuring Jedi in all-black outfits looks so cool to so many fans that it's become a piece of retrospective alternate-universe canon or something. (Which I can totally understand--TPM is a terrible movie but the concept artists for it cranked out some amazing stuff.)

timdiggerm said:

Does it shed new light on the DSII battle?

Not very much. There were some things storyboarded that didn't make the final film, but I think they were all previously known. For instance, when the Rebels realize the Death Star's shield is still up, two fighters can't pull away in time and are flattened against it.

There was also of course initially going to be a greater use of B-wings; storyboards show B-wing pilots as being the ones to destroy the shield towers on the Executor (a quick look at YouTube tells me that A-wings were substituted in the final film).

One thing that did catch my eye, though, was in the Hoth battle. Apparently the Empire was originally going to blanket Hoth with a kind of "electronic net" that prevented ships from leaving the planet. This was the reason the Rebels fire their ion cannon--to disrupt the net and let their transports escape. It was scrapped when ILM couldn't come up with convincing visual effects to pull it off.