Booman

Pretty off topic but I came across another design inspiration from ANH, apparently one of the droid designs is lifted straight from the cover of a science fiction book as a homage to the illustrator, who worked the concept art for Jodorowsky’s Dune adaptation among other things. To quote the art director from ANH;

“In Star Wars, there’s a robot in the line-up with the sandcrawler when they’re buying R2-D2 and C-3PO… I did do a homage, because I felt I should, to Chris Foss, because he did some very early designs for that and he was always a favorite of mine. So I made one and designed it up out of scrap as if it might have been in a Chris Foss painting, and that was my homage to him, because I always thought he was a genius as an artist.”

I found this earlier today and I’ve been thinking about it ever since…

screams in the void said:

^ Isn’t there a similar graphic to that in Rogue One when Jyn Erso is transmitting the plans from the tower on Scarif ?

Shows up a little later in the movie, but here it is. I really appreciate the consistency between the computer readouts in Rogue One and ANH. Honestly I think this gets overlooked quite a lot.

Here’s some rarely seen images from when they were filming the scene where the Jawas carry R2 to the Sandcrawler. I’m pretty sure this was all just for one shot, the one with the matte painting of the crawler. Apparently this was filmed fairly last-minute in the film’s production, in Death Valley CA rather than Tunisia.

Some more info: https://www.reviewjournal.com/news/nation-and-world/little-aliens-in-death-valley-yes-the-proofs-in-the-original-star-wars/

Oh yeah! I remember noticing that when I watched 4K77 for the first time. My guess is that it made more sense to have the background jawas wear black ski masks, as they’d be so far away from the camera. It’s not really the sort of thing you notice unless you’re specifically looking for it. Here’s some screencaps from the 4K scan.

Let’s also not forget this legendary cameo from one of the film crew!

It would be honestly be my dream to see someone do a full-fledged Star Wars project which fully commits to the production techniques from '77 (shooting on real film, analog compositing, drawing effects onto the negative, etc). It would be incredibly ambitious, but not impossible!

John Doom said:

Colors still look unnatural to me, at times. 😄 And what’s with this purple-green-orange abomination!?
https://thedigitalbits.com/images/articles/starwars4k_2019/sw4-sc149.sh24-missing-y-wing.jpg

Good god, that’s gotta be one of the most terrible looking frames from the 19SE I’ve seen so far. It kills me to think someone at Disney/Lucasfilm saw that and decided “yeah, looks good enough”.

Let’s not forget how Leia took the time to comfort Luke over the loss of Kenobi, when she literally had just experienced the destruction of her home planet along with the death of her adoptive parents. That’s probably one of the most admirable things any character has done in a Star Wars film.

TavorX said:
Not really a big issue for me nonetheless. I can easily imagine some of them can conjure up a space adventure to another planet and that drier planets are preferable.
Does make me wonder out of nonsensical curiousity, do they build sandcrawlers? Seems so, given the cramped dimensions inside. Or stolen and retrofitted to their liking.

This is basically confirmed by the description on the back of the Offworld Jawa action figure, which was the first leak involving their appearance in the show if I’m not mistaken.

Ships traveling to and from Tatooine have resulted in some Jawas leaving their desert home-world. Those that do arrive on new planets continue their old habits in their new surroundings, but their obsessive need for technology still drives them.

As for the Sandcrawlers, I’m pretty sure it’s officially been said that they’re repurposed mining vehicles. So it’s totally not out of the question to assume that the mining operation that manufactured and subsequently abandoned the Sandcrawlers on Tatooine did the same exact thing on various other planets. It seems like lazy writing at first but it’s actually pretty effective worldbuilding once you think about it.

Just found out that the TIE Pilot helmet completley re-uses the helmet design for the rebels.

For some reason I’ve always considered them as two completley separate designs, but once you compare them from the same angle it becomes obvious that they literally just took the front of a stormtrooper helmet and stuck it on the front of the rebel helmet. Pretty genius if you think about it.

ZkinandBonez said:

However, I do wish they had stuck with this opening concept that was even storyboarded.

This one’s great too, although it’s a bit too reminiscent of ANH for my taste. Maybe it’s just me but I think the “stardestroyer flying over the camera” concept has been somewhat overused. It worked perfectly in ANH but certainly the following films could have used something more original.

ATMachine said:

The freeze-frame awakens.

“Yep. That’s me, Luke Skywalker. You’re probably wondering how I got myself into this situation. Well it’s a long story…”

That would have made for a way better opening imo, although I can see why they wanted to shy away from having a 30-year-old rotting hand be literally the first thing you see in the film. Maybe they didn’t want to set the bar too high.

Mocata said:

The original cantina bartender voice also makes me laugh.

“OI! We don’t serve their koind 'ea!”

“What?”

“Ya droids, they’ll have to wait oit-side, they don’t wantem 'ea.”

I love how genuinely confused and bewildered Luke sounds when he responds to him, it’s like he’s never seen an australian in his entire life.

I really think you should consider showing them the New Trilogy at some point in the sequence, my reasoning being that they should have the opportunity to watch The Rise of Skywalker in an actual movie theatre. This may sound weird, but hear me out on this. If there’s anything I missed out on in terms of Star Wars, it’s the experience of watching the movies for the first time in the cinema. Nothing can compare to watching a story unfold on a huge screen, in a gigantic room full of people, all while being bombarded by sound and music from all directions. I watched both the original trilogy and the prequels (in that order) on a tiny 4:3 television in my living room, and I remember being so disappointed that I couldn’t see them on the big screen. By the time The Force Awakens came out I was fifteen, and it had been 10 years since I saw the previous movies for the first time. Although I was excited to finally have the chance of watching a Star Wars movie in a real theatre, I was bummed out that it was happening this far into my life. I felt that it would have had a much stronger impact on me if it had been earlier.

You’ll be doing your child a huge favor by letting them watch a Star Wars movie in a theatre when they’re still young. To me this is far more important than any viewing order. A kid probably isn’t going to think about how the backstory lines up anyway, I sure didn’t when I was a five-year-old. So if this means sitting your kid through the original trilogy and the first two films of the sequel trilogy before The Rise of Skywalker hits theatres, then so be it. Just give your kid this experience while it’s still possible, now is the perfect time.

LexX said:

I can see the similarity, but to say it’s almost an exact match between the drawing and the set, it’s a bit of a strecth. I can’t see anything in common than the roof profile and then there’s one round entrance.

Plus the pipes on the ceiling and the grating on the floor… I think it’s pretty reasonable to assume that they had to redress the set.

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.

There was at least one more unused alternate angle that was shot for the Leia hologram, and interestingly enough it found it’s way into this scene from The Last Jedi.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qL1rawqyC24

I remember seeing a still from the raw footage of this angle (Leia with a black background behind her), although I don’t know if the actual video is anywhere on the internet. I might do some digging and see if I can find it.

I remember noticing one instance in the prequels where they reversed a shot of Anakin for about a second or two so they could extend the scene. It’s during the part in AOTC where he’s describing his Tusken Raider killing spree to Padme. There’s probably countless examples of editing artifacts like these being left in scenes due to the editing together of separate takes into the same shot.

Honestly I think Lucas went a bit overboard with his merging of takes. It kinda takes something away from the actors’ performances in my opinion. I guess he was just really eager to take full advantage of the new tech, that’s just my thoughts though.

Perfect.

red5-626 said:

You know how when your driving a car and all the traffic stops, and you learn there has been an accident and you can’t move until they pull the wrecked cars off the road.
That’s how my life feels right now.
I can’t move forward, I can’t move backward.
can’t play the radio or run the AC because I might run out of gas and batteries.

Think of it like this: at least you weren’t the one who got in a car wreck.

If we’re only relying on info from ROTJ and disregarding anything else that’s “canon”, I think it’s much more likely that what is said about the Sarlacc in the film is mostly false, comprised of legend and rumor. It’s not like there’s any reason to open it up and actually see how long it takes to be digested, so why not hype it up a bit? Surely it would make watching an execution-by-Sarlacc much more entertaining…

Alright here’s one that completley blew me away. Has anyone else noticed the number 94 on the wall next to the docking bay entrance?

I’m honestly not sure if I’m stupid for not realizing this earlier. I always figured that the design was just a jumble of shapes until someone pointed it out for me.

SilverWook said:

Great idea for a thread, Booman!

Those guys are officially called spacetroopers and have had action figures in recent years. I’ve seen behind the scenes photos of them being filmed, (back in the states just like the Cantina inserts) and the backpacks and airhoses were pretty much cobbled together as they were never going to be seen in closeup. (My Google Fu is failing me tonight, but the pics are out there.) The hoses just tuck in under the helmet. One of them was played by Joe Johnston.

Damn, I guess I still have a lot to learn. At least I managed to find that BTS shot you mentioned though! I did some more digging and found out that one of the cylindrical parts on the backpack also appears on the Death Star surface, which totally proves the “cobbled together” idea. I guess the person tasked with making the backpacks just saw that part sitting in the shop and said “eh, that looks good enough”.

Also while we’re on the topic of Mon Calamari…

This clueless background guy doesn’t get nearly enough recognition!

If you’re like me, you’ve watched the Star Wars series a countless amount of times. During the occasional viewing I find myself noticing a small detail that I hadn’t seen before, and it always leaves me dumbfounded when I consider how many times I had watched the film without managing to see it. I can only assume that the same can be said for everyone else on this site, which is why I pose the following task:

• Post a small detail in a Star Wars film that took you many viewings to notice

I’ll start with an example. This is a pretty recognizable shot from ANH, right?

Well somehow despite having watched this movie over and over, it was only recently that I realized how the troopers in the foreground have these specialized space-backpacks. They might even be jetpacks for all I know, and they obviously don’t match the sandtrooper gear either which makes them an entirely unique design. I don’t think they show up anywhere else aside from this one particular shot.

It just amazes me how many little details and design concepts go into these movies, many of which are completely glossed over by the average viewer. I encourage you to post your own, maybe we can all discover something we didn’t know about.

I really hope the lack of marketing isn’t intentional on Disney’s part, but there’s something in the back of my mind telling me that it’s a possibility. Maybe they’re concerned about it being a flop, so they’re opting not to draw attention to it. I really hope I’m wrong… it looks pretty promising from what I’ve managed to see. Another thing to think about is that it may end up being a departure from the other recently produced Star Wars stuff in terms of maturity, which might be reason for them to shy away from putting it out there so to say. Only time will tell…