CT Classic Trilogy Rare and Behind the Scenes pics and footage

"Tauntauns were much more vital to the plot of the film in early iterations, too. In scenes that were shot and later deleted, the medical droid Too-Onebee examines the bodies of dead tauntauns inside the rebel base. What killed them was a mystery, but it tipped the rebels off about the presence of the wampas, the ice creatures that also played a much larger part in the original story of The Empire Strikes Back. It’s hard to imagine what Empire would have looked like with these scenes still in the film, but there’s every chance people would have loved tauntauns even more than they already do." Full article Creating a Galaxy: Making Tauntauns for TESB It's great that starwars.com continues to publish quality articles. I had never seen or heard of the tauntaun with 2-1B.

 

Darth Vader, such a diva

 

Just noticed that this great and rare compilation of ANH BTS footage didn't make it here, yet:

 

There are many scenes from the deleted Classic Trilogy, which have never become public. I wonder why?

 

^ Beautiful! I only had this image in stamp size in a Japanese ESB book from 1980, great to see it here in higher resolution!

Regarding the above deleted scene, I believe it would have looked to ordinary, to much "down to earth". The general issue seems to be that before the arrival of home video and a public demand for extra, unseen materials the filmmakers considered their final cut (if they had that opportunity) as the last word.

If we look at the first draft for ESB it becomes pretty clear that the first part of the film would have been more like James Cameron's Aliens but the test footage with the various Wampas failed miserably and could not have remedied in the editing room, either.

 

Question: since John Mollo did the costumes in both SW 1977 and ESB, why did the Imperial rank insignia change so visibly between films?

 

Nibelung wrote

Question: since John Mollo did the costumes in both SW 1977 and ESB, why did the Imperial rank insignia change so visibly between films?

(Questions thread would be better suitable I assume)

I'd love to know the answer myself, but believe I can offer a sound theory:

Now, the rank system he designed for the Acquilan Rangers (hope to be able to illustrate his sketch ASAP) had the color "blue" for the lowest ranks of commissioned offers, followed by "red" and ultimately yellow-orange for top brass.

In the final film (ANH) yellow-orange had taken the middle position, but red was 'superior' to blue as showcased by the Alliance rank plaques (with Willard, "the commander of the Rebel Forces" wearing 4 red dots with one blue dot in the center of his rank plaque, not to dissimilar from his Imperial opponent Admiral Motti).

Yet, the rank plaques in ANH were admittedly confusing for the viewer as we only learned what an Imperial general and admiral and an Alliance general would wear as a rank plaque (and Praji could have just been another commander "-in-chief" of something).

Apparently, Mollo and/or Lucas felt that the ESB should feature a larger variety to get a better and basic understanding. Now, we saw an Alliance "commander" plaque with three blue dots (Commander Skywalker) and three red ones (Major Derlin) that could be distinguished from the higher ranks that simply featured more dots.

Correspondingly, the Imperial rank plaques underwent a major overhaul as the amount of colored bars (like their Alliance counterparts) now visibly conveyed to audiences who had the highest rank, helping to distinguish lieutenant, captain, general and admiral (ROJ added commander to the ensemble, to be distinguished from "captain" thanks to the extra chest pocket cylinder).

In addition (I'm so certain of that that I'd bet real money on it) Mollo and/or Lucas apparently felt the need to emphasize (because a "general" was commander-in-chief of the Imperial Starfleet, I wouldn't dismiss the possibility they got some mail to answer from military personnel that had watched ANH) that the "Imperial Forces" are synonymous with the "Imperial Starfleet" -

LUKE
I won't be drafted into the Imperial Starfleet that's for sure...

- i.e. there is no such a thing like the "Imperial Army" (a conjectural invention of West End Games) but only Imperial marines, at best.

While "blue" was intended to be an 'inferior' color in ANH, I'm confident that John Mollo, given his historic knowledge, changed the symbolic meaning of the colors "blue" and "red" for the ESB (and ROJ).

The Earth analogy to what we see in Star Wars is inarguably the ocean (space) and the islands or continents within (land). And the choice of British actors to portray Imperial characters is rather natural and logical, once we acknowledge that the historic allusion Lucas was obviously aiming for was a counterpart of the British Royal Navy of the 18th and 19th Century gone 'bad imperial'.
In the Royal Navy there was a clear uniform color code, i.e. blue for naval officers and red for the marines (nicknamed "lobsters"). Both the film Master and Commander and the Hornblower TV series (costume design John Mollo ) beautifully reveal the distinction and life aboard a Royal Navy vessel during this era.

Therefore, the new Imperial rank plaques in ESB and ROJ emphasized that the Imperial Forces are a combined service, i.e. both "navy" and "army" had been merged into the Imperial Starfleet.

The little tragedy here is that West End Games held on to that distinction which became popular belief, but never explained this: If blue was synonymous for the "navy" and red was synonymous for the "army" how comes that all Imperial officers (from ESB on) wear rank plaques with both colors which therefore makes a distinction between "navy" and "army" impossible?!?!



(Thanks for the question, I wanted to elaborate on the subject today, anyway)

 

It makes sense to me that the training for ground attacks, and the training for space attacks, are different enough that most officers specialise in one or the other - and that those two be different branches of the Imperial Military.

General Veers - commands ground assaults, rides in a walker. Call his branch of the service "Imperial Army"


Admiral Ozzel - commands space attack - from a warship. Call his branch of the service "Imperial Navy".

But the Service as a whole, is the Imperial Military, or the Imperial Starfleet.

 

Iron_lord

An "army" marches (through space?), "marines" require ships to bring them to their destination. Therefore "army" is a misnomer. We are looking at marines ("fleet troopers") that are historically a part of the navy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Marines#Early_British_Empire

 

They may also be garrison forces - like on Lothal.

In the Second World War - armies were often ferried to their battlezones via ships - that didn't make them Marines - they were still Army.

There are "Fleet Troopers" AKA "Marines" in Star Wars - but generally, they wear black uniforms, not olive.

 

Iron_lord wrote

There are "Fleet Troopers" AKA "Marines" in Star Wars - but generally, they wear black uniforms, not olive

Up to this day this remains an erroneous WEG conjecture to identify the Samurai-helmeted personnel as "Fleet Troopers" that's in need of rectification.

John Mollo clearly identified these as members of (Vader's) Guard Corps:

http://www.sci-fi-o-rama.com/2015/12/27/the-star-wars-space-armies-of-john-mollo/

And there is no reference whatsoever in the George Lucas Canon sources like the film novelizations that ever used that term, they are portrayed and described as security and controller personnel, add to this there are plenty of marines and fleet troopers already, usually known as "stormtroopers".

 

But thanks to new media like Rogue One, we see them even outside of Vader's service. Hence Mollo's old ideas, end up being discarded, or at least, heavily modified.

Star Wars Movies simply aren't just "George Lucas canon" anymore - with new ones expanding the universe.

And sometimes "erroneous WEG conjecture" wins - being made official.

 

Iron_lord wrote

And sometimes "erroneous WEG conjecture" wins - being made official.

Doesn't change the fact that it was erroneous in the first place and can be ignored if you're rather interested in what the makers of the OT intended to show us there.

 

"Naval Fleet Guards" or "Starfleet Guards" work better than "Vader's Guard".

 

I concur. Now, can we drop that strupid "trooper"?

 

A Trooper is a trooper everywhere - a Guard is only a guard when they're guarding things.

Trooper is more generic, which is probably why they went with it.

 

^ I concur and that's exactly the point, all these samurai-helmeted guys in black guard something throughout the entire OT, that they had to come out to defend or take back a bunker in ROJ is the exception rather than the rule.

 

At 14:43 you can see a Trandoshan mask in the Freeborn's creature studio, I can't remember seeing any in any of the versions of ANH.