CT "Luke Skywalker has returned to his Home Planet of Tatooine"

Luke says at the end of Empire, "We'll meet you at the rendezvous point on Tatooine"! But here's the thing:
Unless you were enough of a fan to dig into the background materials, like the novelization, you wouldn't have the got the name of Luke's home planet at all in 1977, meaning that in 1980, 'Tatooine', to you, could have been any old planet. Hence, why I'm wondering if the opening statement of ROTJ's crawl, that we were heading back to the first planet we ever saw, wasn't intended to work as a surprise. I wasn't around back then, so I'm curious.

 

I've always known the name of the planet. I was under the impression that it was common knowledge. Many of the names were learned from toys as well. Some kids had the toys before they saw the movies. The word "Ewoks" was never used in Return of the Jedi, but it quickly became a household word. Most people had not seen the Star Wars Holiday Special and probably weren't introduced to Boba Fett until Empire, but Boba Fett became a household name despite the fact that his name is never spoken in Empire. The toys were every bit as popular as the movies if you were a Star Wars fan back in the day. I believe that there was a Tatooine play set released when the first film was released, so I'm pretty sure most kids knew the name of Luke's home planet, just as they knew who the Ewoks and Boba Fett were.

 

The name had been out there from the SW comics of the time as well.

 

It is indeed interesting to try to see the films without any external information (such as names), and imagine what a "virgin" new viewer would understand.

This particular example works better if you've seen the PT first ).

 

In the first three drafts, Lucas had named the desert planet Utapau. He had even intended it to be that name going into the fourth draft and final film, but then decided he wanted to call it Tatooine which was the name of the desert region in Tunisa where much of the exterior areas were shot. But because he didn't commit to the name until filming was done, there was no reference to it in the film. Lucas wasn't intending it to be a surprise for where Jabba was living. He had just decided that since Jabba was already on Tatooine looking for Han, that he would just live there.

 

Very interesting point, I'd honestly never thought about that. There were certainly sources that named Luke's home planet before 1980, but like today, there were probably plenty of viewers who only went to the films and didn't pay attention to tie-in material. Although, the original 1976 novel did use Tatooine's name, and I think because of that Lucas did not intend for the ROTJ opening crawl to be a surprise, he likely just forgot the name wasn't used in the first film. He may have also not expected audiences back then to remember the quote from Luke.

 

I was that way when I saw TFA and TLJ. The name of the planet Crait was never spoken on screen, and neither were D'Qar or Ahch-To. I only found out those names after the fact.

 

Yeah, we definitely knew the name of the planet in 1977. But I always said it wrong, I thought it was "Tatoonie" for a while and then "Tatooing". But my brother always corrected me. We did have the album soundtrack though, maybe the name was listed on that somewhere. It was beautiful double vinyl set. I wonder where that dang thing is today. Mom probably tossed it out lol.

 

Comics, magazine articles, behind the scenes tv specials and novelisations were all full of images of Luke's home planet labelled "Tatooine" during 77, 78, 79.

It would have been fairly easy for most people to pick up on.

 

Leia's last name (Organa) is also never spoken in the films (and for a long time I didn't even know about it), nor is the Emperor's name in the OT. Sometimes I wish there was nothing but the films, so we could really have that fresh experience of not knowing anything else.

 

That's only if you partook of those things. Many people did not back in the 70's and 80's and thus didn't know those things going into the PT.

 

I've always found it funny that the only movie that names Tatooine is the only movie that doesn't show Tatooine.

There was a great thread long, long ago where people where trying to figure out where in the movies various things were named. For example, ESB is the only movie that names the X-wing. "Lord Vader, ship approaching. X-wing class."

 

What's really interesting is that I recently discovered that after being a fan for 40 years, I've been pronouncing "Tatooine" wrong. I've been pronouncing it "Ta-TOO-in" rather than "Ta-too-EEN." And, believe it or not, despite having seen The Empire Strikes Back a gazillion times, give or take a few hundred million, I had no idea look was saying "I'll meet you at the rendezvous point on Tatooine." I thought he was saying "I'll meet you at the rendezvous point on Tato-8." Don't ask. I had no idea what Tato-8 was supposed to be. I just thought it was a passing reference to a planet that they were supposed to meet on before heading to Tatooine. Doh!

 

Star wars was a cultural phenomenon and a novelty that people were insatiable for. Many people DID partake those things and there was great interest and demand for material which was happily supplied by merchandising and tie ins. Tatooine was name dropped pretty heavily by that stuff. Plus news and TV were all over the phenomenon in those years and the name of Luke's home planet was mentioned. Telling people what they didn't know already know about Star Wars from the movie itself was their angle.

Star Wars had that kind of impact on the public conscience more than any other film before or since.

 

Very good questions, I think you're on to something and you're probably correct, i.e. the prologue of ROJ spelled out "Tatooine" to make general audiences understand, that that was the planet a) we saw in ANH and b) got mentioned by Luke in ESB (the scene that connected Jabba to Taooine in ANH had been deleted from the film, so general audiences couldn't possibly know that Luke's home planet and Jabba's residence were one and the same - then).

All those interested in Star Wars backgrounds and the various publications quickly learned about "Tatooine" being the name for the ANH desert planet (adopted from the Tunisian City Tataouine - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tataouine - located south the Tunisian island of Djerba - Mos Eisley and Anchorhead - and the Chott el Djerid desert - Lars Homestead).

But yes, someone who'd see the original film for the very first time might be mislead to think that the planet's name is actually "Mos Eisley".

TARKIN Yes.

VOICE (over intercom)
We've captured a freighter entering
the remains of the Alderaan system.
It's markings match those of a ship
that blasted its way out of Mos
Eisley.

Add to this that Lucas used the confusing name "Dantooine" for the abandoned Rebel base in the final film. Frankly, I have to wonder whether he really wanted to name Luke's home planet "Tatooine" (originally Utapau) but perhaps couldn't stop the Tatooine references in time and ultimately just decided to stick with it.

 

Not everyone did partake of all things "Star Wars", even if they loved the movies. That is a fact. For instance, none of my other family members knew stuff ahead of time like the Emperor's real name and Leia's last name, when the OT came out. Most people just watched the movies, bought some of the merchandising and called it good. There were more of those people than there were who bought the novelizations, the poster books, the comic books, read the newspaper strips, bought the soundtracks and really looked at all the other merchandising material. Some people might have caught on to the name of Tatooine, early enough. If they had bought those materials and watched THS, or watched the Lucas interview where he talked about the duel that resulted in Anakin's demise and Vader's scarring. But most didn't find out about Tatooine's name until ROTJ came out. Just like most didn't know about Palpatine and Leia until the PT.

Being culturally significant only means that it was everywhere, but not everyone chose to go hog wild over it.

They'd either have to be stupid or not paying attention as both Luke and Obi-wan identify Mos Eisley as the name of the spaceport that will be the ideal place to finding a ship to take them to Alderaan.

 

Nobody said that everyone knew, @darth-sinister
You're arguing something that's only occurred in your life imagination.

Public interest in Star Wars and media coverage of all its aspects was unprecedented in the movies. Many people DID know the name of Luke's home planet before it was uttered in ESB. That is fact. More than any unnamed location in any movie made before it and probably since.

 

I never said that many people didn't know. I said that they only knew if they dedicated their life to knowing these things. That means buying all the merchandising where Tatooine was name checked. If they didn't buy the merchandising, they didn't know. If they didn't watch the news that talked about it, they didn't know. If they didn't read Lucas interviews, or watch them, they didn't know. It's that simple.

 

It's fairly cut and dried. I don't know why you're moving the goalposts to "I never said many people didn't know." I never said that you did. You did argue that "not everybody knew" when everybody knowing has not been proposed by anyone.

Yes. IF people don't learn the names of things from somewhere, they don't just spontaneously intuit them instead. I know how it works.

 

"Mos Eisley Spaceport" could have just had the same meaning as "Alderaan Spaceport".

My point remains that it is somewhat remarkable that although the Tatooine System isn't actually one the Empire would fight for (according to Tosche Station's Fixer), all the Imperials in both the deleted and actual scenes are somehow very well aware of its spaceport name:

COMMANDER [Number One]
We’ve started to search the spaceport at Mos Eisley. It’s just a matter of time before we’ve found the droids.

VOICE
We’ve captured a freighter entering the remains of the Alderaan system. It’s markings match those of the ship that blasted it’s way out of the quarantine on Mos Eisley.

("on Mos Eisley" according to the genuine fourth draft from March 1976)

But you're right that Luke tells Kenobi that he could take him to Anchorhead to get a transport to Mos Eisley, so that established Mos Eisley as a city, despite alternate intentions Lucas might have had earlier.

 

Even if you didn’t read the novels or the comics, the next movie would’ve made it very clear just what Tatooine was.

-> We see Jabba in his palace.
-> We see the twin suns.
-> It’s a desert planet, much like the one we saw in A New Hope. It’s the exact same planet.
-> Luke even blatantly tells Han, “I grew up here, you know.”

So even for a guy like me, who didn’t have access to all that material, would know instantly that Tatooine was Luke’s homeplanet.

 

That's not moving goalposts. All I'm saying is that it was not nearly as common knowledge as people are trying to argue. It is only knowledge to those who wanted to know more about "Star Wars".

Mos Eisley is known because people travel to and from Tatooine. Just because Tatooine is outside of the Republic, doesn't mean that there aren't records about the planet. And as the PT later showed us, the records tended to stretch out as far as Kamino which was well outside of the Republic.

I don't think there was any intention of calling the planet Mos Eisley. We know that in the first draft, the spaceport was called Gordon and was located on Aquilae. Beginning with the second draft, Anchorhead and Mos Eisley were both introduced and established as being on Utapau. That carried on with the third and fourth drafts with Tatooine ultimately replacing Utapau.

 

I started getting into Star Wars as a 8-9 year old in 1997-1998 and I learned many things from reading the Star Wars Kids magazine. I learned Tatooine and about the prequels from them though I used to pronounce it Tatoonie before Phantom Menace came out lol

 

Nobody said it was commonly known @darth-sinister

Unprecedented mainstream media coverage did put Tatooine in the public consciousness. It was an easy thing to find out even if you didn't specifically want to know or find out more.

 

I guess it is amazing to think that I cannot recall not knowing the name Tatooine. I was 5 going 6 when I saw it. But I had trading cards and action figures. I must have picked it up. It is possible I picked it up from a comic after the fact.