The Imperial captured Millennium Falcon is looked over by a detachment of Stormtroopers, in another one of Ralph McQuarrie's classic pieces of pre-production conceptual art-done later and nearer towards 1976 post production and filming- for the original STAR WARS.
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As with his famous Docking Bay 94 painting, this is another that Ralph painted over once the design of the pirate ship changed from what would become the blockade runner.
When we were putting together The Art of Ralph McQuarrie, we acquired a photo from Gary Kurtz' assistant, Bunny Alsup, which was of George in front of a wall with several reproductions of Ralph's on the wall behind him. In that photo, we saw for the first time this reverse shot of the original pirate ship. We immediately put in a call to our contacts at Lucasfilm to see if they had a slide or image of the original version in the archives, and were told they did not. Oh well, at least we had it in a photograph, so it was not completely lost to the ages under acrylic and gouache, right?
Needless to say, you can imagine my surprise when Rinzler's Making of Star Wars was released a few weeks after our book and there was that painting, in all it's original glory. Oh, well. At least we were able to work it into our Japanese exclusive McQuarrie Star Wars book.
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