Aliens of the Mos Eisely Cantina

The purpose of this thread is to discuss our favorite aliens of the famed Mos Eisely Cantina. Feel free to share stories of your love for your favorite alien, or just tell us why you like some of the aliens in there. Which one is your favorite? Have you devoted a part of your life to any of these characters....such as a collection of memorabilia?

As for me, I think my favorite alien in the Cantina is this cyclops-looking Abyssin:
[image=http://www.starwars.com/databank/species/abyssin/img/movie_sm.jpg]

I'm not sure why I like him, I just think he's pretty cool looking. I really wish that Hasbro would make him into an action figure.

 

[image=http://www.starwars.com/databank/character/momawnadon/img/movie_sm.jpg]

Favorite Alien, all the way man. Seriously, what the hell is up with this guy? Evolutionally he doesn't make any sense! With technology he might be able to do something, but his body is designed in a way that makes him off balance, which would limit his ability to walk, run, or get through doorways. In conclusion, he is a metaphor of all the scientific impossibilities in the Star Wars movies.

 

-LHS-The_Pope: That's Momaw Nadon you're talking about! He's an Ithorian who also goes by the nickname, Hammerhead. Obviously, he's my favorite Cantina alien, too. I have his action figure, and his body is totally off just as you've said.

BTW, you can see members of his species in the audience for the pod race in TPM and in the night club in AOTC.

 

Count me in as another Hammerhead fan. I always loved Momaw ever since I saw him as a kid. He's always been one of the aliens which sorta "defines" Star Wars for me, sorta like Klingons and Star Trek.

I also have a liking for BoShek. Without him, we would have never met Han and Chewie. Then there are his sideburns and his flight suit, gotta love those.

 

Momaw Nadon aka Hammerhead for me. Just a really neat design, and as Kyle Katarn said, he's one of those things that's easily recognizable as Star Wars.

Other nifty Ithorian sighting: In the Senate, during wide shots, you can sometimes see the Ithorian delegation. Nice Senatorial outfits.

 

I wish I had a picture to post of the werewolf with red glowing eyes. It's not Lav Sivrak (the wolfman who was removed from the SE, but still has an action figure), but the other werewolf, who's in the background of one shot in the SE--I think it's the second shot of the cantina scene.

In the original version, this red-eyed wolf-person drinks from a mug in his own close-up, but again (for reasons known only to Lucas) he was replaced by an underwhelming CGI alien. I don't know his name, so I call him "Jack". As in "Wolfman". His snarling teeth are lit by reflected light, and his eyes glow crimson! What more could you want??

(I believe both werewolves were removed from the SE because of Lucas' falling out with Rick Baker, who won an Oscar for his work on An American Werewolf in London, and who, incidentally, not only designed the suit (uncredited) for the 1976 re-make of King Kong, but also played the giant ape as well! Put that on your resume! Rick designed most of the creatures in the cantina scene.)

 

My favorite alien in the Cantina: [image=http://starwars.com/databank/character/chewbacca/img/movie_bg.jpg]

 

From the OS, on why the wolfmen were replaced:
In supplementing the existing cantina alien footage, pinch-hitter Rick Baker pulled a number of pre-existing masks off-the-shelf to fill in the booth-based reshoots. This included two different furry-faced wolfmen in the cantina.
...
[bunch of stuff on the EU]
...
The off-the-shelf canine masks long bothered Lucas, and when it came time to do the Special Editions both aliens were replaced with more elaborate creations.


The replacements are puppets, by the way, not CG.

 

Thanks, Lord Hydronium! But I feel that instead of replacing them with beret-wearing, pipe-smoking puppets, he might have enhanced the look of the originals through CGI, or creating more elaborate masks. Those wolf-dudes are classic STAR WARS characters--Lav Sivrak being a character in several EU books--and they should not have been cast aside in so cavalier a fashion!

Does anyone know the name of the red-eyed werewolficus? He's my new best friend.

 

Lak Sirvak is the wolf.

Hammerhead is by far my favorite.

 

Hammerhead rocks (anyone who thinks his head would overwigh his body need only see the Hasbro figure--his toes are huge to support his unwieldy bulk)! I will always think of Hammerhead as wearing a blue mini-leotard, since that's what Kenner gave him in 1978.

But Lav Sivrak, see, is the wolfperson in profile, who is taken aback by that worm-like claw-thing. His mouth is in a permanent grimace. The other lupine hominid has scarlet rays shooting out of his eyes (well, okay, they glow), as he sips gingerly from a cup of Jawa juice. Or whatever.

 

The Cantina Sequence is my favourite scene in ANH and in the OT for that matter.

All those extra's really make it work and "define" Star Wars for me. It was about the first time in ANH that we see how rich the Galaxy is in Species and Culture.

 

How the hell would hammerhead evolve though? It just makes me angry! His species should have evolved into something that would have been able to survive! In reality he would not be able to because his body is not made to balance well, you could just tip him over.

 

We can't really see his lower half. Maybe that's where all of his weight is located, so tipping him over wouldn't be as easy as you'd think.

 

Meh, he's still an evolutionary improbibility.

 

If you tipped Hammerhead over, he would fall on you and you would die. Hammerhead's species would always win in a fight.

 

Vortigern99, the red-eyed werewolf-like alien you want to know about is called a Defel. They come from the planet Af'El. In most light they appear as large red-eyed shadows. The Defel in the cantina is an old one and thus he was losing his ability to blend into the area around him. I don't know his name but you can check out the Defel card in the decipher Star Wars playing cards. It might have it there.

 

Nope, Decipher didn't give him a name. His card represented a "generic" Defel.

 

DarthLassic, that's really cool. Thanks for the lowdown on the Defel!

(I guess now that his close-up has been removed, he "blends in" better!)

 

I'm not particularly fond of the look of Lak Sivrak. He looks a bit too "monster movie" for me. But I agree, the Defel is a pretty cool looking creature. The Abyssin (mentioned above), and the Givin are also pretty neat looking creatures, as well as the Duros, Kitik Keed'kak (a giant praying mantis with a skirt, how cool is that?), and that good ol' Bith band, the Modal Nodes.

Here's a neat article on the OS about the naming of the cantina aliens (where I pulled the info on the wolfman from):

Cantina Roll-Call: Shedding Light on Some Alien Aliases

In this article, they say Decipher called him Arliel Schous, but they still only call him "Defel", so I'm not sur ewhat the whole deal is. Here's the context, and an interesting bit about the EU's take on the Wolfman:

The first wolfman went unnamed until Decipher Inc. described him as a "Defel" in the card game. The Defel first appeared in a 1989 gamebook as a compelling species of shadowy mercenaries that have the natural ability to absorb visible light. That worked well with the Defel barely glimpsed in the movie, but how do you explain photos of that original wolfman in plain lighting with clearly visible details? To alleviate that discrepancy, Decipher would later go on to explain that the Defel in the Cantina, Arliel Schous, is aging and is losing his light-absorbing talents, though that leaves readers to presume that any time an artist uses the "Wolf Man" mask as reference for a background alien, it is meant to be an aging Defel.

 

Arleil Schous is a different Defel entirely.

 

H?mm, I'd say the Duros. I bet that they are really Nute Gunray and Rune Haako after cosmetic surgery and on the run.

 

Nah, they're Ellorrs Madak and Baniss Keeg. Neimoidians are the genetic cousins of Duros, though.

 

The off-the-shelf canine masks long bothered Lucas, and when it came time to do the Special Editions both aliens were replaced with more elaborate creations.



With more elaborate creations? With an elephant? I'm talking about Ketwol. Look at his head.........an elephant! So GL was trying to get away from Lak Sivrak because he looked too earthly, but he replaced it with........an elephant! How much more earthly could he have gotten by that? Aside from the fact that he has humans in the movie.

 

The wierd-ass skull looking dude squated down in one of the corners. Anyone know what that is?