Star Wars : Episode VI – Return of the Jedi
200 MPH
“The (Endor speeder bike) chase is about two and a half, three minutes long, and it’s a great chase. It’s with our heroes–who are usually up in ships flying through the air. This time it’s down on a level you can relate to–down on the ground in the forest, where we have all been before. And they are zooming through these giant trees at 200 miles per hour, careening around the trees, hitting them, and having a ball!”
- Howard Kazanjian
Producer
The Making of Return of the Jedi
Arete
When a guard moves to shove him, Luke jumps off by himself, flips back into the floating skiff, and catches his lightsaber, thrown by Artoo. This striking style of action marks Luke as having achieved another characteristic of the classical Greek hero: Arete — excellence.
Star Wars: The Magic of Myth
Art of Inspiration
“Ralph (McQuarrie) is better at inspiring people through his art than anyone I know. His paintings are more than just paintings, they tell a story, they illustrate his designs, they give everyone at Lucasfilm something to shoot for.”
– Joe Johnston
Special Effects Art Director
Bantha Tracks #14
November, 1981
Be the Ewok
“You set up mirrors wherever they go so that as they are walking along, they see that they are actually Ewoks; they are not people anymore. Each Ewok actor has to see himself as an Ewok or he will never come off as one.”
– Jedi Director Richard Marquand
Bantha Tracks #20, May 1983
Beginning of the Future
“In the time line of the film industry, Jedi would be the beginning of the future, not a giant leap. Because it was basically a wire-frame model, it wasn’t up there on the complexity scale, but it worked great as an effect.”
- Bill Reeves, founding member of Lucasfilm’s first Computer Division
on the first computer generated imaging used in Star Wars: the rebel war room hologram in Jedi
Star Wars Galaxy Magazine #8
Better Door Caricature
“Our first Jedi expedition was last September, when we recorded the sound for an enormous door that opens in an early scene. I remembered an ammunition dump with a large, old iron door that had been sitting, rusting since World War II. It opened with a squeaky kind of scrape. That’ll be my basic door sound, and once I add an earthquake rumble and some other things, it’ll seem like an even bigger and better door caricature.”
- Ben Burtt, Sound Designer
Bantha Tracks #17, August 1982
Big Little People
“Over 120 little people responded to the original Ewok casting call in London. Some applicants were rejected, being told for the first time in their lives that they were too tall.”
– Classic Creatures: Return of the Jedi
1983
Blue Harvest Letdown
“When shooting (Jedi) in the United States we called the film Blue Harvest. Camera Slates, invoices, hotel reservations, call sheets, production reports, and crew hats and T-shirts all read Blue Harvest. So when a visitor would ask, ‘what are you shooting’ and we said ‘Blue Harvest,’ they went on their way. Can you imagine what would have happened if we had said, ‘We’re shooting the next film in the Star Wars trilogy’?”
– Howard Kazanjian
Producer
Return of the Jedi: The Illustrated Screenplay
Body Movement Synchrony
“I remember George saying one day (during editing of Return of the Jedi), ‘Threepio is out of synch.’ I said, ‘What do you mean Threepio is out of synch? He doesn’t even have a mouth!’ But you know, it was true, and it was very important to George that every little inflection, any kind of body movement coming from the robots and the different creatures, be put with the right syllables.”
- Duwayne Dunham
Co-Editor
Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays
Calamari Instruction
“Look right! Look left! Shout out the first command! Gesture at something you see out the left window! Now react as if a big explosion has just happened off to the right! Shield your eye on that side! Shout the next command!”
- Richard Marquand, Director, giving instructions to Admiral Ackbar on set
Bantha Tracks #18, November 1982
Carbon Spoiler
“It doesn’t spoil anything for people to know I’m coming back. They know I’m gonna get out of that carbon stuff. But it’s not how I do it, not if — but when.”
– Harrison Ford
August, 1980
Carbon Thaw
Having Han Solo coming out of carbon freeze on-screen was not in the original draft of Return of the Jedi. In the second draft, Han fell out of the block looking quite dead. When Leia took off her helmet and kissed Han, he woke up suddenly.
– Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays
Conclusion
“The part of the film that has always moved me most is the throne room battle in which Luke Skywalker confronts and defeats Darth Vader and the Emperor. It combines high drama with a really beautiful set, on which is staged the conclusive confrontation between the light and the dark sides of the Force. In that sequence, the whole story of the trilogy — which ultimately is about Luke’s journey — is resolved.”
- Rick McCallum
Producer, Star Wars Trilogy Special Edition
The Art of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi
Dancing with a Princess
“I enjoyed working in Yuma, Arizona, on the big sail barge in the desert there. That was nice, and we stayed at a nice hotel, and I used to play the harmonica with the band at night when we came back to the hotel. I’d play the harmonica, and dance — we were dancing with Carrie Fisher!”
– Kenny Baker (Artoo-Detoo)
Star Wars Insider #39
Dancing with an Ewok
“Threepio always tries to look his best at the end of each movie — even (in) Return of the Jedi. Do you know how hard it is to look good whilst dancing with an Ewok?”
– Anthony Daniels
Star Wars Insider #42
Dare to be Cute
“We realized that (the Ewoks) were getting to be a very cute creature, a very teddy bear-like creature, which first we fought a great deal. But, eventually we dared to be cute.”
– George Lucas
Classic Creatures: Return of the Jedi
1983
Darth Dub
“We need so much looping because many of the actors don’t speak in their characters’ voices. Either they are wearing a mask or helmet where you can’t record them, or their voices, like Darth Vader’s, will be dubbed later by a different actor. We don’t even attempt to get those voices down during shooting, because they are thrown away. We concentrate on Luke and the others that can be used.”
- Ben Burtt
Sound Designer
Bantha Tracks #17
August, 1982
Degrees of Confrontation
“There was a feeling I had that I would like the (Jedi lightsaber duel between Luke and Vader) to be bigger than the fight in Empire. And then George said that it doesn’t have to be bigger, because basically it can’t be. George is very blunt. He said, ‘It’s just a couple of guys banging sticks against each other. Don’t worry about that. It is bigger because of what is going on in their heads. That is what makes it bigger.’”
- Richard Marquand
Director
The Making of Return of the Jedi
Different Spaceships
“Creating new ships comes down to designing something you’ve never seen before. We’ve all seen spaceships in different movies, books, and TV shows. What haven’t we seen yet? It’s always a challenge. It has to do with taking the character of the ship and taking the character who is using it and trying to let the design tell a little bit of the story. Like Darth Vader’s Star Destroyer. It’s all about him; it’s menacing-looking, it’s long and lean, it looks evil.”-
Joe Johnston
Art Director/Visual Effects Creator
Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays
Disappearing Discipline
“One of the things that will never get explained in the films is how Ben was able to retain his identity, because it happened somewhere between the third and fourth movies. I set up that this is a discipline that he learned from Yoda; Yoda told him how to do that.”
- George Lucas
1997
Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays
Don’t Tell Me…
“It’s sometimes funny when we go out and buy (supplies). We go crazy in hardware stores. When we bought our tubing elbows from the building supply company, the guy said – ‘Don’t tell me, you’re from Lucasfilm, right?’”
– Steve Gawley
Model Shop Supervisor
Bantha Tracks #22
November, 1983
Down the Line
“When we were doing [Jedi], I remember I had done a series of sketches of Vader’s home, and there was a sea of lava that his house looked out on. I remember having trouble drawing it because everything was either orange or a shadow; it was very intense. But before we got too far, George said he would save this for somewhere down the line, and I stopped working on it.”
– Joe Johnston
Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays
Earthly Limitations
“In the first movie we were on sand–it was all kind of a brown color. In the second one, I put it in the snow, so it was all kind of white–and then I did the green, swampy kind of thing. In the third one, you know, what can you do? In terms of environments, you have to shoot it somewhere on this Earth. So, a forest was really about the only thing I had left.”
- George Lucas
Return of the Jedi Special Edition, 1997 VHS release
Endor Costume Inspirations
“Han’s costume actually resulted from a discussion that came about when we were fitting Harrison Ford. He suggested a duster, and we did a mock-up of one immediately. It seemed like the right choice, and we went for it. The helmets Luke and Leia wear were modelled after World War II helmets that had fabric on them. I used to go to a surplus store, and I had seen a lot of helmets that were made out of cloth. So I bought some of them and adapted them to a new and original design.”
- Nilo Rodis-Jamero
Costume Designer
Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays
Ewok Individuality
“Once the direction of the design was established, I started doing weapons and different fur patterns so that we could distinguish the characters. If you look at cattle, you’ll notice that they all look different, their coats have different patterns. We were concentrating on giving the Ewoks different headdresses; some of them had armor, some of them had ritual kinds of beads, distinctive fur coloring, etc… It was an interesting design experience to basically take these teddy bears and come up with six or eight different ones.”
- Joe Johnston
Art Director/Visual Effects Creator
Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays
Ewooks
“The Wookiee planet that I created for Star Wars was eventually turned into the Ewok planet in Jedi. I basically cut the Wookiees in half and called them Ewoks! I didn’t make Endor a Wookiee planet because Chewbacca was sophisticated technologically and I wanted the characters involved in the battle to be primitive.”
- George Lucas
Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays
Fallen Angel
“Father, please. Help me.” And at last Vader seizes his master in order to save his son. As the Emperor’s lethal electric charges rain back on Vader, he throws his master into the shaft at the core of the Death Star. Regeneration has occurred within the very walls of the tyrant’s kingdom. Vader has detached himself from his evil master and has been transformed through his son. Vader is, in a sense, a fallen angel who reveals his true essence at last.
– Star Wars: The Magic of Myth
Falling Up
“On the barge there’s a sequence where Boba Fett gets knocked over, and we didn’t really have the right shot to make the sequence work, so I reversed one shot of Boba Fett falling down and made it look like he was getting up.” –
George Lucas
Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays
Fast and Scary
“The X-wings look like they’re basically hot rods. The TIE fighters look frightening, especially the interceptors we used in Jedi. They not only look fast and deadly, they were intended to look scary.”
– Joe Johnston
Art Director/Visual Effects Creator
Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays
Functionality
“Dealing with the droids is sometimes easier than dealing with the human characters because in a sense, they’re more functional. They can actually do things. The fact that Threepio can speak a lot of different languages and Artoo can do mechanical things made it easier for me to incorporate them in the story.”
- George Lucas
Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays
Funeral Pyre
” Vader’s costume burning at the end was not there originally. This was added at the last minute. I remember that we said, ‘What happened to Vader? Did Luke leave him on the Death Star?’ So the scene was shot up at Skywalker Ranch, and we used the same music from Star Wars in the scene where Luke is staring at the two suns on Tatooine.”
- Duwayne Dunham
Editor
Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays
Funky Rebels
“We take a different approach towards Rebel equipment, vehicles and transport equipment than we do for the forces of the Empire. Rebel equipment is not as sleek, it’s not as high-tech – it’s almost funky in comparison to the cold, hard-edged and menacing lines of the Empire fleet.”
– Ken Ralston, Visual Effects Supervisor
Return of the Jedi Official Collectors Edition, 1983
Furry Tibetans
“For the Ewoks, I was inspired by a recording on a BBC documentary of an elderly woman speaking Tibetan. It was very high-pitched and sounded like a good basis for Ewokese to me. Eventually then, what evolved was a pidgin, or double talk version of words from Tibetan, Nepali and other Mongolian languages. Huttese was created by the same process.”
– Ben Burtt
Sound Designer
Bantha Tracks #17
August, 1982
Gift to the Fans
“George literally decided that day to include Boba — he said it was his ‘gift to the fans.’ George directed me in the scene. I was supposed to stroke the cheek of one of the palace dancers, but the lady had a lot of grease paint on, so I came up with just chucking her under her chin.”
- Don Bies, (Boba Fett – Return of the Jedi Special Edition)
Star Wars: Boba Fett magazine
Go Fish
“In Star Wars, Princess Leia leads only a small part of the Rebel Alliance. The Commander of the entire Rebel Fleet is Admiral Ackbar — a member of the Mon Calamari race of highly intelligent master chess players from the planet Dac.”
- Maureen Garrett
Director, The Official Star Wars Fan Club
Bantha Tracks #17
August, 1982
Guardian of the Labyrinth
The Emperor is now the monster at the heart of the Death Star’s labyrinth. In the Greek story of Theseus and the Minotaur, the maze is guarded by a creature who is half man and half animal. Here the guardian is Vader, who is half man and half machine.
– Star Wars: The Magic of Myth
Hand-To-Hand
In myth, one of the ways in which the hero proves himself is through hand-to-hand combat. In the best heroic style, Luke is able to vanquish the horrific rancor without the use of his lightsaber. But this sense of triumph is short-lived, as Jabba decides that Luke, Han, and Chewie will walk the plank, pirate-style.
– Star Wars: The Magic of Myth
Honky-Tonk Woman
“I went in to see the first mock-up of her (Sy Snootles), and she had these little teeny lips. And it just occurred to me — Wouldn’t it just be great if at the end of this long snout there were these giant, red lips. Mick Jagger lips.” –
George Lucas
Classic Creatures: Return of the Jedi
1983
Hot Heads
“You even have to take the creatures’ heads off so the actors don’t faint from the heat. When we first started shooting, we had a lot of trouble with the creatures fainting. I almost passed out myself. The work can be a bit trying, but it’s a lot of fun to do. It’s a great crew; we’re a family.”
– Carrie Fisher
Bantha Tracks #16
May, 1982
I Love You Déjà Vu
” ‘I love you,’ ‘I know’ was very popular in The Empire Strikes Back, so when we got to this scene in Jedi, we though it would be fun to use it again.”
– Lawrence Kasdan
Co-Writer, Screenplay
Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays
Image thanks to (Star Wars Behind the Magic)
Internal Grand Canyon
“This leads to the reactor chamber of the Death Star, which is quite spectacular. It is a sort of internal Grand Canyon, built of cardboard tubes, light sticks, sprinkler pipe, fluorescent lights, and mirrors.”
– Steve Gawley, Model Shop Supervisor
Return of the Jedi Official Collectors Edition, 1983
Juggling George
“By the time we got to the third film, we had so many different characters that it got a little more difficult to deal with all of them. Juggling with all the different characters and keeping them all in the air without ever dropping them was a challenge.”
– George Lucas
Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays
Kindred Spirits
“I don’t think Bib Fortuna was particularly evil. I felt he was someone who knew that he could never be number one, but was very attracted to the idea of power. He obeyed Jabba the Hutt and felt a kindred spirit with the great slug.”
– Michael Carter (Bib Fortuna)
Bantha Tracks #24
Spring, 1984
Lava Caves
“The Emperor was going to be in a cave surrounded by lava. The throne room was down in the lower levels of what turns out to be the Empire’s headquarters planet. I imagined it to be dark and spooky with enormous buildings and a metal surface and, down below, huge avenues like on Wall Street in Manhattan. George stated that he wanted a planet that was a city with endless built-up areas. In my mind it was built a thousand years ago, layer after layer. The Emperor’s office would be at the bottom of it, so far down that you would have lava.”
- Ralph McQuarrie
Concept Artist
Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays
Like a Woman
“Leia’s character undergoes quite a change in Jedi. They found a way for her to be very nice while remaining strong and committed. Leia is quite feminine, her character is as clearly defined as ‘the boys’ are, and she even dresses ‘like a woman’. At least I’m not always telling Harrison what to do.”
- Carrie Fisher (Princess Leia)
Bantha Tracks #16, May 1982
Little Black Belt
“Since most of the Ewoks live in trees, we had to find a good number of little people who could do stunts. One even had a black belt in karate.”
– Stuart Freeborn
Make-Up And Creature Design
May 1983
Little Furry Guys
“I did hundreds of drawings of little furry guys in the woods. A lot of them were troll-like, gnomes. Some of them had cute little puppy-dog faces. George said, ‘Make them cute.’ So I did more drawings. Then I did one with a little bonnet with his ears poking out the top. George came in and said ‘That’s it.’ So that’s how the Ewoks were designed.”
- Joe Johnston
Conceptual Artist
ILM: The Art of Special Effects
Man in Black
“I remember George telling me that in samurai movies costumes say a lot about the characters; the way the costume is folded, the way it’s tucked in is very important. So I thought, Luke has become a Jedi; he is more distant, more serious. I thought, What do gunslingers wear when they mean business? They wear black.”
- Nilo Rodis-Jamero
Costume Designer
Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays
Maternal Memories
“The part that I never really developed is the death of Luke and Leia’s mother. I had developed a backstory for her in earlier drafts, but it basically didn’t survive. When I got to Jedi, I wanted one of the kids to have some kind of memory of her because she will be a key figure in the new episodes I’m writing. But I really debated on whether or not Leia should remember her.”
- George Lucas
Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays
Monster Menu
“We were essentially building these costume figures around our own bodies because we really didn’t have any idea who the performers in England would be. To compensate, we made a number of generic monsters — small, medium and large.”
– Phil Tippett
Creature Designer
Spring 1983
More Tentacles
“Before, there was just a couple of tentacles, and there was kind of a funny mouth with a few spikes sticking out of it. There wasn’t anything alive about the whole thing. And so what we’ve managed to do is create a kind of a beak that comes out and attacks them. And, more tentacles–and, it just looks more realistic and much more threatening.”
- George Lucas
Return of the Jedi Special Edition, VHS release
New Heroes
Throughout this final phase of the trilogy, new heroes are made as the crisis demands it; Luke, Han and Leia have become mature leaders who inspire others. Thus, it is Chewie who saves the day at the shield bunker, Lando and Wedge who will blow up the Death Star, and ultimately, Vader himself who will destroy the Emperor.
– Star Wars: The Magic of Myth
Nine-To-Five
“It’s Neverland. It’s Oz. It’s a galaxy far, far away — a great place to go and live out the fantasies you can’t get in the nine-to-five world.”
– Mark Hamill
Spring 1983
Not Easy Being Cute
“It certainly wasn’t much fun being an Ewok, either at Elstree or in the forest while we were shooting. Every so often, on the set, we had to peel them out of their suits and take off their specially designed sets of underwear, because they would be soaking wet, and send them (the underwear, not the Ewoks!) off to the laundry while they put on a spare set. I have a lot of respect for their endurance.”
- Howard Kazanjian, Producer
Return of the Jedi Official Collectors Edition, 1983
On His Own
“I felt that one of the major issues in the third film is that Luke is finally on his own and has to fight Vader and the Emperor by himself. If you get a sense that Yoda or Ben is there to help him or to somehow influence him, it diminishes the power of the scene.”
- George Lucas
Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays
Organized Disorganization
“We were going for a feeling of the whole sky being filled with battling ships, but without the chaos — sort of organized disorganization.”
– Dennis Muren
Visual Effects Supervisor
Bantha Tracks #21
August, 1983
Perpetual Princess
“As far as most people are concerned, I’ll go to my grave as Princess Leia. In the street they call out, ‘Hi, Princess,’ which makes me feel like a poodle. See, my grandmother had a dog named Princess.”
- Carrie Fisher
The Official Star Wars 20th Anniversary Commemorative Magazine
Personas
” Frank Oz is the persona of the most nubile, the most sensuous, the most well rounded performer ever to grace the silver screen. Frank Oz is — Miss Piggy.”
- Billy Dee Williams
Classic Creatures: Return of the Jedi
1983
Preservation
“Someone had the idea to take a publicity shot of George Lucas amid a sea of models and miniatures used to make the trilogy. ILM then added a starfield with the ominous Death Star under construction hovering overhead. It wasn’t until that day on the gigantic ILM soundstage that we had seen all these pieces in one place. We were stunned by the volume of it. George turned to me and said, ‘You know, we need to save all this stuff. We need to start an archive. You’re in charge of it.’”
– Deborah Fine
Director of Research and Archives 1978 – 1996
From Star Wars to Indiana Jones: The Best of the Lucasfilm Archives
Primates and Potatoes
“(The rancor was) described by its designer as a cross between a gorilla and a potato.”
– Classic Creatures: Return of the Jedi
1983
Pull the Chain
“She (Carrie Fisher) loved Jabba. She just adored him. I was just worried for her because the chain that goes around her neck and that he holds is very tight. The guys inside Jabba couldn’t pull the chain properly because they couldn’t grasp with the three-fingered hand very well. So I told them ‘Well, just hold the chain and try to keep it taut.’ They didn’t have any feeling, so they choked her. She said ‘Hey, pull the chain, pull the chain. I want to feel that I’m really being captured.’ So she encouraged them to do that.”
- Richard Marquand
Director
The Making of Return of the Jedi
Repositories of Exposition
“During the post-production on a Star Wars episode, Darth Vader and C-3PO’s lines get re-written because they don’t have any moving mouth parts to lip-sync new dialog with. If you find out at the preview the movie still misses some important concept, there’s no problem having C-3PO say something about it. Threepio and Vader are great repositories of exposition because they can say anything, even long after the film is edited together.”
- Ben Burtt, Sound Designer
Bantha Tracks #17, August 1982
Salacious Stardom
“We never knew he would be the star that he turned out to be. What happened was, when we weren’t even shooting with him, the puppeteer under the floor would be playing with Salacious and would have him do something unexpected, such as peck at somebody’s ear, or some other impromptu action, and we couldn’t help but fall in love with him. So, gradually, we enlarged his part.”
- Howard Kazanjian
Producer
The Making of Return of the Jedi
Sandy-Browny-Greeny
“Artoo doesn’t do sand and they had earlier found he didn’t do rocks. Years later they would find that he didn’t do forest floors either. In each case they would carefully lay plywood sheets on the tricky terrain and paint them the appropriate colour; sandy-yellow, browny-grey or greeny-brown. Cunning! Well, you never noticed, did you?”
– Anthony Daniels
Star Wars Insider #32
Size Matters
“We had to coordinate a lot of our model construction with what was being done in England and how their sets related to what we were going to do. Scale was very important. Based on what lens the cameraman was gong to use, what the size of the set in England was, and the size of the human beings in relation to the set; we could figure out mathematically exactly what size the model should be.”
– Lorne Peterson
Model Shop Supervisor
Bantha Tracks #22
November, 1983
Skiff Design
“On one level, the barge and the skiffs are very archaic. They had to look almost as if they were pleasure craft with decorative elements, yet they had to be high-tech vehicles that could float over land. The barge was designed before the skiffs, and the skiffs are almost like lifeboats from the barge. I wanted both vehicles to look alike, to have similar designs They had to look like they had been built by the same culture.”
- Joe Johnston
Art Director – Visual Effects
Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays
Skulls and Forests
It is no accident that the concluding sequences of the trilogy contrast the lush green environment of the Ewoks with the cold unfinished technological tomb of the Death Star. The Imperial weapon floats like a skull above the Endor forest, just as death is constantly hovering over life.
– Star Wars: The Magic of Myth
Slave Girl in Style
“George always talked about a slave girl outfit. I kept thinking, how am I going to do this in style? I mean, this is Leia. I actually struggled with that for a long time, and all I kept coming up with was clunky, Ben Hur kind of stuff.”
- Nilo Rodis-Jamero
Costume Designer
Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays
Special Edition Performance
“The scene in Jabba’s palace was supposed to have a big musical number, but unfortunately, we ended up with only a couple of shots. Now, thanks to digital technology, we’re able to turn this scene into the real musical number that it was supposed to be in the first place.”
- George Lucas
Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays
Stunt Ewok
“Kenny (Baker) really tried, but I was worried for his safety. When you’ve got quite small hands, you can’t even grip the handlebars. So I finally asked a stunt person (to fill in) for the sequence where the Ewok first steals the bike, and he takes off so fast that he is just holding on with his hands, and his legs are flying out behind him, sort of flapping in the wind. To do this, we stood the bike up on its rear end and had the stuntman in the (Paploo) costume hold on; then he is hanging there and sort of kicking his legs. The effect (was) wonderful.”
- Richard Marquand
Director
The Making of Return of the Jedi
Sultan Slug
“He’s based on all those sort of evil sultan-like characters — Marlon Brando would be a good example, in The Godfather. There’s always been this sort of rotund, evil sultan who sat on his bed while people were being tortured.” –
George Lucas
Classic Creatures: Return of the Jedi
1983
Super-Weak Explosion
“One of the things we discovered was that a model has to be made of super-weak materials to blow up convincingly on film. In creating an explosion big enough to blow up a really strong model, it happens so quickly that it just vaporizes the model and you barely get anything on film. We got to where we’d make the pyro models with very thin-skinned urethane frames that were mostly air.”
- Paul Huston, Chief Model Maker
Star Wars Galaxy Magazine #6
Swashbuckling Boushh
“Only once did I get conflicting directions. When I came into Jabba’s throne room disguised as a man, Richard (Marquand, Director) told me to stand like an English sentry. Then George walked in and said, ‘Carrie, you’re standing like an English sentry. You want to be more swashbuckling.’”
– Carrie Fisher
May 1983
Termites
More than a year before the filming of Return of the Jedi, George Lucas was proposing ideas for the designers to work on. On one occasion, he sent over a print of a 16mm film showing a queen termite in her nest, tended by scores of smaller workers-she was a yellow quivering sack of slime. “This is what Jabba the Hutt should look like in Jedi.”
– ILM: The Art of Special Effects
Terra Firma
“I think while Star Wars was set purely out in space and Empire was often cold and wet and miserable, on Jedi, we were on terra firma, and it was just a nice film to work on. I suppose it’s the last one I worked on, and the memories are still there. Jedi was the nicest of the lot.”
– Peter Mayhew (Chewbacca)
Star Wars Insider #28
The Sarlacc Pit Puzzle
“The scene at the Sarlacc pit was very difficult to edit… There was a lot going on in the sequence; you had Han regaining his eyesight, you had Leia chained to Jabba… Then you also had to show what was going on with the droids, Luke, Lando, Chewie, and Boba Fett. A sequence like this has to be put together like a puzzle, and you have to make sure that you pay attention to each of the pieces but that you keep the momentum going. By the time we finished the sequence and sent it to the negative cutter, I remember we got a call from the lab saying that the reel had more cuts in it than most movies!”
- Duwayne Dunham
Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays
Throw Me a Line
“My difficulty was trying to make sense of the dialogue. I had to do it piece by piece. It often required a few takes because there was a lot of blue screen going on. There were times when I couldn’t get the technical lines together. I had to ask George, ‘Please, throw the lines to me,’ and I would repeat them. It can be exciting, but it can also be quite tedious.”
- Billy Dee Williams
Star Wars Galaxy Magazine #4
Toxicity
“The Death Star surface was urethane foam — a combination of two chemicals which are mixed and poured in as a liquid; the mixture froths up like shaving cream, fills all the voids and then hardens. Many of the materials at this stage of construction are extremely toxic, and precautions are taken every step of the way.”
– Lorne Peterson
Model Shop Supervisor
Bantha Tracks #22
November, 1983
Trash and Treasure
“I really get a kick out of using found objects. When we were constructing the parts for the shield generator on Endor, we used large plastic cups glued on top of each other, and little pill cups stacked on top. We put little rocket motors from a kit on top of that and painted the things orange and silver. If we can find what we need without starting from scratch, and it looks the way we want it to, that’s great. We have a certain way of looking at objects that someone else might throw away. It’s part of the fun of making things.”
– Steve Gawley
Model Shop Supervisor
Bantha Tracks #22
November, 1983
Turning Japanese
“It was like working out one of those wooden puzzles the Japanese make. If you don’t put the right piece in first, ten moves later you wish you had and you’ve got to go back to the beginning.”
– Anthony Daniels, on donning his famous, yet puzzling costume
Tribute Magazine
Spring 1983
Un- Fortuna-te Jedi
“The teeth were difficult to work with because they kept falling out; especially when I raised my voice. One day I hit Mark [Hamill] square between the eyes with my bottom set.”
Michael Carter (Bib Fortuna)
Bantha Tracks #24
Spring, 1984
Unbelievably Lovely
“It was all foam rubber and fur. Within five minutes you were boiling over with the heatvery uncomfortable. They were cute, great little characters. They were lovely, but to work in them, unbelievable.” – Kenny Baker (Paploo the Ewok)
Star Wars Insider #39
Unearthly Creatures
“George felt that a lot of the creatures in Star Wars looked like something out of an Egyptian hieroglyphic panel. We made a conscious effort on Return of the Jedi to make things look more alien. We were concerned that they be less animalistic and more unearthly.”
- Phil Tippett, Creature Design Supervisor
Return of the Jedi Official Collectors Edition
Vader Breath
“Vader’s breathing is fun to put in because each time I work on a character I become him briefly. So for a week I’m Darth Vader breathing asthmatically through every scene.”
- Ben Burtt
Sound Designer
Bantha Tracks #17
August, 1982
Very Vaderish
“You haven’t seen my new costume. It’s all black. I told George it’s very Vaderish, but he said, ‘It’s supposed to be.’”
- Mark Hamill
Bantha Tracks #18
November, 1982
Who has the Power?
“My sense of the relationship is that the Emperor is much more powerful than Vader and that Vader is very much intimidated by him. Vader has dignity, but the Emperor in Jedi really has all the power.”
- Lawrence Kasdan
Screenplay
Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays
Whoop-Whoop!
“(Whoop-whoops) are sounds with musical elements in them that add variety and interest to the basic bike sounds. We recorded one source of the whoop-whoops at El Centro Naval Station, where they have a mock-up aircraft carrier deck on which the pilots practice night take-offs and landings. As the pilots come in really low on their approach, they throttle the engines and make adjustments for landing which produce a whoop-whoop sound. It’s the sound the jet thrusters make as they engage and disengage. It has a musical aspect to it that Re-Recording Mixer Gary Summers and I liked. When matched with the action of distant bikers shifting gears, it proved the unique sound we were looking for.”
– Ben Burtt
Sound Designer
Bantha Tracks #17
August, 1982
