Wednesday, 15 December 2021

AN 'EMPIRE' AT 40: IN RECOVERY...

 

Luke's physical injuries are healed, but what about his psychological scars from the conflict with Vader?

As the 2-1B medical droid attends to Luke's injuries and applies his replacement hand, the boy and Leia communicate with Lando and Chewie at the Millennium Falcon as they prepare to part company, bound for an eventual rendezvous at Tatooine...

The scene where Luke Skywalker flips the skin lid over the interior housing of his new hand was an age old filming trick captured by the second unit on 30th August, 1979, with an extra's hand poking out from a table, underneath the fake hand housing the robot servos. Irvin Kershner insisted on demonstrating that Luke has feeling in his artificial hand: "We were starting to make him a mechanical man, and he's not; I wanted to show that in the future when he makes love to a woman he'll have some feeling there -- that's what I was thinking.” Stand-in Chris Parsons was approached (and call sheet listed) to be Luke Skywalker’s hand model. Unfortunately, his habit of nail biting at that time precluded his taking the part.

A likely moment from the additional shooting that matches a revised November 1979 ILM storyboard.

Despite having a British police bodyguard escort start the week (which stays with her until she has completed her filming - due to kidnap threats intercepted by mother Debbie Reynolds in the US), Carrie Fisher is in high spirits for the Medical Frigate scenes captured on Stage 8 at Elstree Studios during July 12th/13th, 1979. In real-life science fact news, the 11th July saw the abandoned Skylab space station fall to Earth and disintegrate. For additional humour on set, Mark Hamill would be wearing a hat announcing, 'Skylab is falling'!

The finale sequence also shows Threepio fully repaired and polished up after his prior ordeals-the camera crew having to be very careful the way they photograph him so that they won’t be mirror-esque reflected on his gold casing. 

In the later released Donald F. Glut adaptation of the film, there is no mention by Luke of his meeting Lando and Chewie at the Tatooine rendezvous point. All we know is that Lando and Chewbacca are off to find Han and Boba Fett. Presumably this was Glut working from one of the pre-filming scripts, with that new part of the plotline scheduled for Revenge of the Jedi

Another stunning shot of Carrie Fisher as Leia.


Fisher confers with Kershner.

Having fun with Gary Kurtz.


A previous deleted look at the filming of the scene (including re-shoots):


Carrie clowns to the camera once more.


Polaroid shot (by Continuity Supervisor Pamela Mann?) of Carrie Fisher partying with the Medical Droid on set.


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