BTS The Jedi clothing / hairstyle thread

It's clearly a Chiang painting, and he was the one who used that type of uniform in other paintings before. He also had less stuff used in AOTC than in TPM, and didn't work on ROTS at all. I heard somewhere online (so take it with a grain of salt) that he was a bit frustrated that the design aesthetics of the prequel movies were moving farther from what he established in TPM/what his work looks like. He might have used this design just because he felt it looked better, even though it wouldn't get used. And/or, because it's viewed from the back here, it's hard to tell if this is truly a different design for the Jedi uniform or is just a Chiang-ized stylization of it.

 

Yeah, that all makes sense.

Just based on what we can see of Obi-Wan's legs & arm, the design is clearly the same as Chiang's early ones for TPM, though - his hair is black, the outfit's black, the boots are the same, the pants billow out at the thighs, there's a shiny leather brace covering the forearm. Very odd thing to do.

 

There's a painting he did of the Jedi fighting Dooku in which it's easier to see the costume's details. If I'm remembering everything correctly, there are shoulder pads and gauntlets, but it's not quite as ornate as the TPM options.

There are a number of possibilities relating to this:

1. Chiang simply liked that design better.

2. We know they were developing new/altered looks for some Jedi costumes (The Art of Episode II). What they ended up with was close to what was in TPM, but perhaps they thought there might be room for more variation. Of course, when doing the Clone Wars tv series, the characters were shown with just those sorts of additions to the Jedi robes, so maybe there was something going on behind the scenes? Some back-and-forth, perhaps?

3. We don't know at what stage of the script-writing process those paintings were done. The AOTC script was finished exceptionally late, and because of that - or even just because of the way concept departments are dealt with sometimes - the artists might have only had very general ideas of the context of certain work. It's possible, for example, that the landing pad painting was 'a Jedi confronting Boba Fett and the young clone boy X designed last week.' In such a case, perhaps he just threw in his 'generic cool-looking Jedi.'

Also, some of Ed Natividad's drawings for Obi-Wan (?) on Kamino have him with a ponytail/topknot. And Chiang's drawings for the droid factory sequence - done in reshoots, so it was late in the process - show Anakin with film-accurate attire, though it's still Chiang-ized (anything he draws will bear his own style, even if it's clearly supposed to be the film costume).

 

I've no idea of the actual circumstances, but it almost looks as if Chiang kept pushing his original design, threw a hissy fit when it was rejected again, then left.

I'm of two minds about his original concept - it's very different to what was being settled upon as the Republic-era Jedi outfit as early as ROTJ (based on the designs for Luke), but perhaps something so different could have altered the way the PT was perceived from the start. Instead of constantly trying to connect most of the audience to the OT via the visuals, toss us all into the deep end and just say straight out that it's a different era, a different sort of story, you're not getting a duplicate of the original SW trilogy.
Making the Jedi outfit in TPM so closely based on Obi-Wan's Jedi robes from SW/ANH almost seemed to be dumbing things down, although such dumbing down had already occurred with Anakin's robes in ROTJ:



Not to mention the Luke designs, plus the final version:



The kimono style of Luke's vest/tunic is very apparent in his 'Jedi' outfit for ROTJ, much as it is for Vader's outfit in SW/ANH:



None of it's definitive, though - Uncle Owen & Luke wear what's already been referred to as 'peasant clothes' in SW/ANH that are very similar (as do many Tatooine residents), all directly influenced by Japanese styles anyway.

Even more reason for the PT to take a step back & do something new, far away from this backwater dump everyone eventually ends up on. Oh well.

 

I hope we will see some elegant jedi wearing the newest fashion like Lucien Draay in future sw movies.

 

But we did not! There're actually very few visual links between TPM and OT. Artoo, lightsabers, villains in black cloaks, Tatooine, Jabba's cameo and maybe the area where the duel takes place. Jedi garb is instantly recognizable, just like the lightsabers. We're all used to it now, but when I saw TPM first, it didn't feel like a familiar Star Wars universe at all (or almost).

I agree with the sentiment, but I think they were stuck after ROTJ. Imagine as a newcomer to the saga watching I-VI - the peasant robes would look out of place in ROTJ if you hadn't seen them in the PT as a standard Jedi outfit.

 

I agree, absolutely.

There was potential for something really exciting and creative, showing the Jedi to be far more than we ever imagined. When I heard about the prequels I thought the stuff in the OT would be the tip of the iceberg in terms of the Jedi. I think far more could have been done, to be honest. Lucas sacrificed, "Holy ****, that's what the Jedi used to look like-!" for, "That's obviously the Jedi."

Thankfully, a lot of the comicbooks and video games have experimented with the Jedi in both appearance and character.

 

It's easier for comic books, games and even TCW: they don't have to worry as much about consistency.

They better come up with something creative in the ST

 

Darth_Nub BTW here's the image I meant (not the best scan, but good enough for now):



The Jedi really do wear leather boots in the films. Perhaps it's just the way Chiang likes to paint leather (though the arm braces and shoulder pads are different... and the specific sheen of the leather is rather more like Luke's boots in ROTJ). It's hard to see Obi-Wan here. I wonder if there's a better version of this image online somewhere.

 

Just came across this old quote from Bantha Tracks when replying to another thread in the CT forum, had forgotten it had a few additional tidbits regarding Luke's Jedi outfit:

- Mark Hamill, Bantha Tracks #18, November 1982

I suppose he's really just stating the bleeding obvious, but Hamill's basically saying that Luke would have the same look & uniform in the ST as he does in ROTJ. Not a huge surprise, but it's something.

 

This is a good point, and should be emphasized. The Jedi having a distinctive look to them would defeat the much of the purpose of the Jedi. Remember, what we see in the PT is an anomaly - they're really not soldiers or military leaders, and even in AoTC pretty much have to be dragged into that role when there's seemingly no other choice. Most of the time, they're supposed to be more like James Bond - secret agents who can fight when they need to, but do a lot of investigating, infiltration, negotiation and such. Because of that, the ability to blend in to the background and to not stand out as Jedi Knights on first glance is really important. Having a "Jedi look" to them would be like FBI or CIA agents who were supposed to be doing undercover work going around wearing black suits and sunglasses and looking like Hugo Weaving in the Matrix movies.

So Jedi tend to wear the simplest and most nondescript (species and culture-appropriate) things they can. Remember, in ANH, Obi-Wan and Owen are dressed virtually identically. They're just simple working-class clothes. If there were Jedi on Earth, they'd wear jeans and pullovers.

 

A lot more people than just Jedi wear robes and hoods. Jedi wore them so that they wouldn't have some stylish wardrobe that made them higher in status than everyone else. The Jedi served the Republic, and so went by peasant's robes.

Ben's old robe seems a lot like everyone else's on Tatooine.

IMO I like the whole robe thing

 

Even Luke's outfit in ROTJ doesn't stand out much.

 

It could also just be a tradition of Force wielders to wear robes. I've always seen the correlation between the Jedi and the monks of our history, like the Shaolin monks and and monks of christianity. Jedi are kinda like the knights templer or hospitalers...

 

One thing that I believe needs to be emphasised regarding the Jedi uniform is that many are retroactively reading the specific PT concept of the Jedi Knights (warrior monks wearing peasant robes, abandonment of possession etc) into what GL perceived the Jedi of the Old Republic to be when he was making the OT. They're not necessarily the same thing.

Given the direct influence the Lensman series had on the SW Saga, it's far more likely that GL originally envisioned the Jedi to be something of an elitist, military force - one which perhaps even wore uniforms similar to those of the Empire in the OT. That's why I quite like Chiang's design as a sort of 'what-if' concept, and sometimes view the eventual design as something of an easy cop-out to make it easier for audiences to immediately identify the lead characters as Jedi Knights.

zombie's stance on the issue is that Obi-Wan was wearing typical Tatooine desert garb, being a fugitive, Yoda was simply wearing rags that bear a vague resemblance to Obi-Wan's, and the ghost of Anakin was wearing the robes he once wore as a Tatooinian farmer. I don't agree with that completely, I think ghost Anakin's robes were cementing the 'Jedi look', to a certain extent, as early as ROTJ (Anakin & Obi-Wan's specific Tatooine heritage was not necessarily something as certain as zombie believes).

It could have been a 'Jedi Master' concept, however - your average Jedi Knight might have still worn a military-style outfit in the PT. Luke's ROTJ outfit is quite different, and although part of the concept was to emphasise his straying towards the Dark Side, plus, perhaps, a new look for the new age of the Jedi, I believe the slicker look was closer to what the Jedi Knights of the PT were meant to look like, circa 1983.

 

Is there a separate thread for this already? If not, I guess this ought to be it then. We do have the old Temp Boards Thread archive thread, but we haven't added anything new to it in a while.

I'll confine myself in this initial post to discussing the prequels, but OT discussion is also fair game.

I started thinking about reviving this topic when I was looking through JW Rinzler's book about the prequel storyboards recently, as something caught my eye.

Namely that this version of Obi-Wan...



...is featured in Iain McCaig's TPM storyboards of the bongo ride to Theed.

Apparently the storyboards date from the rough draft, because Obi-Wan and Jar Jar are alone in the submarine; there is no Qui-Gon. In the rough draft Obi-Wan was a lone Jedi for most of the film.

The forehead tattoo is very unusual; it reminds me of Dr. Wellington Yueh from Dune, who had a diamond tattoo on his forehead. This tattoo marked the fact that he had trained as a doctor at the Inner Suk School, and there received Imperial Conditioning forbidding him to take a life, making him theoretically an unshakably loyal--and completely trustworthy--servant of his House.

Presumably the forehead tattoo here is likewise a marker of a fully trained Jedi Knight. I assume that the reason it was dropped was because Alec Guinness obviously didn't have a tattooed forehead!

As a graduate of the Suk School, Dr. Yueh was also permitted to wear his hair long, gathered in a queue over his left shoulder with a silver Suk School ring. Note that Obi-Wan here has a topknot himself, plus twin pigtails in front of his ears.

The topknot is an idea which is equally reminiscent of samurai hairstyles. Its use as a Jedi hairstyle dates back to the rough draft of ANH--where, however, it was not the hairstyle of all Jedi. Rather, only Annikin Starkiller and his father Kane wore "an odd bun" of hair on the top of their heads, a style said to be popular among the inhabitants of the Kessil System, where they had been hiding from the Empire.

As we've discussed before, the rough-draft script describes Obi-Wan as wearing an entirely black costume, as seen in this Doug Chiang production painting:



Black robes were then planned as the "uniform" of the Jedi, an idea harking back to Luke's black ROTJ outfit. This idea persisted for some time.

Doug Chiang's concept art of the black Jedi robes from the rough-draft period also includes details like a purple hood (symbolic of their elite status) and a Native American peace pipe (the "strange weapon" seen below):





Chiang also seems to have pushed for the Jedi to wear body armor, as seen in the painting shown above, as well as this one:


The second-draft script of TPM introduced Qui-Gon Jinn at the start of the film, as opposed to much later on Coruscant, as in the rough draft.

According to the Art of Episode I book, it was at this point that Lucas began toying with the idea of making Obi-Wan the elder of the two Jedi, and (according to JW Rinzler in the Storyboards book) actually having him die at the end of the film. Qui-Gon would be the younger Jedi, and ultimately would take on his master's name, becoming the Ben Kenobi of the OT.

Young Qui-Gon was envisioned as looking like this:







The older Obi-Wan also had several concept art sketches done for him:





The top of the above two images shows Obi-Wan with a haircut much like that of Luke in ROTJ, when he is dressed as a Jedi Knight. The bottom image shows Obi-Wan with a much shorter hairstyle.

Both of these drawings seem to agree with a comment in the Making of Episode I book which reveals that "At one point, Lucas toyed with the idea of portraying Obi-Wan with the longish hair sported by Luke Skywalker in the original films--the idea being that Obi-Wan's hair would be cut short in Jedi fashion at the very end, signaling his rise to full Jedi Knight status. But since the idea would have required the actor playing Obi-Wan to wear a wig throughout most of the shoot, the idea was rejected."

In other words (follow me here, this gets confusing) when Obi-Wan was meant to be the elder of the two Jedi, he would have the short hair (already gone gray) of a mature Jedi Knight. The younger Qui-Gon, on the other hand, would have long dark hair in a ponytail, which he would cut short upon achieving knighthood status at the end of the film.

(Confusingly, a lot of the Episode I reference books, like the Making Of one I quoted above, ignore the switch of the names and roles of the two Jedi, and refer to the younger of the pair as "Obi-Wan" throughout.)

The idea of Obi-Wan as the more mature Jedi, with short white hair, seems to have outlasted the idea that all the Jedi would wear black costumes, judging by these drawings:




Note the Mohawk in the above drawing: it appears a lot in the TPM storyboards.

Judging by the storyboards in Rinzler's book, the artists generally adhered to the respective looks set forth in these drawings for Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan. The elder Obi-Wan (in the role of the final film's Qui-Gon) was drawn with short white hair with two front pigtails--and sometimes a Mohawk--while the younger Qui-Gon sported long dark hair and a ponytail, as well as, frequently, two pigtails of his own. Both Jedi were clean-shaven.

In other words, the younger of the Jedi in the second-draft storyboards carried over the character design of Obi-Wan from the rough draft (minus the forehead tattoo, naturally).

Amusingly, the older Mohawked Obi-Wan frequently appears in the TPM storyboards with a sleeveless vest that shows off his toned muscles. Qui-Gon, on the other hand, is dressed more decently.

Some wires seem to have been crossed at some point, however, because Benton Jew's storyboards for the duel against Darth Maul reverse the roles of the two character designs. The Jedi with the white Mohawk and sleeveless vest becomes the younger of the pair, watching helplessly from behind the laser gate as his counterpart with the dark hair and ponytail is cut down by the Sith Lord.

I suspect this may have something to do with the eventual return of the name Obi-Wan Kenobi to the younger of the Jedi. Perhaps Jew kept the pre-existing character design that corresponded to each name, while switching their roles. It's worth noting that according to the Episode I Insider's Guide PC program, the action in these storyboards corresponds to that of the "revised third draft script," in which Qui-Gon dies at the end of the film.

By the time the final draft of the script was reached, Obi-Wan (now the apprentice) was described as a young man of 25 with "very short brown hair, pale skin, and blue eyes," while his master Qui-Gon, "sixty years old, has very long white hair in a ponytail," and is "tall and striking, with blue eyes" as well.

Note the hairstyles. Obi-Wan, now the younger of the two Jedi, is still associated with short hair (which has now become a mark of Padawan status), while Qui-Gon, now the elder, is still associated with a ponytail. Their respective hair colors have changed, however, along with their ages. Obi-Wan now has brown hair instead of white, and Qui-Gon has white hair instead of dark. (Lucas asked Liam Neeson to dye his hair for the role, but Neeson declined.)

The storyboard artists, however, generally continued to depict Obi-Wan with light hair, and Qui-Gon with dark hair, in their black and white renderings. Obi-Wan also retained his dual pigtails, only one of which would appear in the final film (but not, thankfully, his Mohawk).

It also seems that when Lucas decided Qui-Gon should be the older Jedi, he decided to give him a beard as well, which is not reflected in any of the concept art before that point. It does show up in the later storyboards (though often dark in color).

I am writing all this stuff down mostly for my own future reference, because it confused me greatly when I would sort through the designs for the TPM storyboards and try to sort out the various conflicting character concepts.

----

The Jedi concept art for AOTC and ROTS is much less confusing, thankfully. The only unusual deviations of note from the final film that I know of concern Anakin's hair and costume.

For AOTC, concept artist Dermot Power wanted to robe Anakin in white, like Peter O'Toole's Lawrence of Arabia in the eponymous film. He also wanted to give Anakin a blond bob haircut, whose lower curl would echo the outer flange of Darth Vader's helmet. Lucas rejected both ideas, preferring to give Anakin brown robes (to show his troubled personality compared to the other Jedi, who dress in light earth tones) and the now-standard short hair and single braid of a Padawan.

For ROTS, I know there was considerable discussion among the concept artists about giving Anakin long hair with a ponytail. A lot of the animatics for the duel on Mustafar feature Anakin with this hair, and Hayden Christensen was even fitted for a ponytailed hair extension at one point. Apparently he didn't like it, which is why it was dropped. Instead Anakin has longish hair rather like Luke's in ANH.

There was also apparently an attempt to revive the Mohawk-and-vest look. It failed again. As it deserved to.

 

Wow that was a long read. I don't care for Prequel hairstyles. That is all.

Sent from my SGH-T989 using Tapatalk 2

 

i like the direction they ended up going in. nice and subtle.

 

Mod action: Merging with the old thread, which was a combination of several short threads on the topic

 

Thanks!

To the usual gang:
TOSCHESTATION
Lt.Cmdr.Thrawn
(and any others I may have missed, sorry)

Any comments re: my above new post and the information about the TPM concept art?

 

Isn't the Jedi supposed to be foremost, a religious order?

 

I agree, which is why I've never liked Doug Chiang's designs (I found Luke's RotJ get-up a little too 'action' for my tastes as well). And for the same reason I dislike the Clone Wars armour, though I do understand it signifies how their military role was spiritually corroding the Jedi. I'm glad there was none of it in RotS.

The light-coloured tunic+obi+tabards look isn't the coolest or the most flattering (especially on a medium-height, somewhat chunky guy like Ewan McGregor) but its humility (I agree with Narutakikun that they're supposed to look nondescript/working-class, not a distinctive 'Jedi uniform') and (out-of-universe) visual links to East Asian traditional clothing make it the most appropriate.

If the sequels decide to go with the secret-agent/armoured-ninja look, I'll be disappointed. At the end of RotJ, Luke proved himself truer to the Jedi Order's spiritual values than the old Jedi, as a whole, had been since before the Clone Wars. His look should reflect that spirituality.

 

Are there any "Punk" Jedi? Like with spiked hair or mohawks or weirdly colored robes?

 

Corellian Jedi favour green robes instead of the usual browns:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Corellian_Jedi

 

Some of the discussions on these boards have focused around the meanings of the films, how Lucas may have been trying to portray the Jedi of the PT as spiritually flawed, and how 'what a Jedi is' might be being changed by Yoda and Obi-Wan in training Luke the way they do. If that sort of thing is indeed the intended meaning of the PT/OT, I think using the more militaristic/less monkish look would have been very helpful in conveying that. They could have had Qui-Gon perhaps look more monkish, while the others' clothing (like Luke in Jedi) might have included samurai influences but be less flowing and natural looking. I think that that immediately would have told the audience something about who the PT Jedi were and how they might differ from the OT Jedi. It would have clarified some themes - IF, again, those themes are indeed the intended interpretation of the story.

ATMachine, I appreciate your clarification of the whole Kenobi/Jinn round-and-round, because the sparse mentions over the years that suggested something more was going on than what ended up in the final film tended to be confusing.