"EVERY SAGA HAS A BEGINNING..."

Tuesday 25 April 2023

'JEDI' AT 40: TRAVELLING BUDDIES!

Our droid heroes walk the road to Jabba's palace, of which a classic glass painting was supervised on the location filming by Richard Edlund.


On December 11th, 1982, the scene of the droids walking to Jabba's palace was shot at Walkwing Parkway - at a place in Death Valley, California called Twenty Mule Team Canyon, with Anthony Daniels as Threepio for his final filming on Return of the Jedi and the robot controlled Artoo prop. It was directed by George Lucas, and camera photographed by Hiro Narita (who would later go on to do impressive cinematography for Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country). 

A wary Threepio walks with Artoo.

Working with Artoo, Daniels would recall to Star Wars Insider magazine: "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?" 

At one point during the location filming rehearsal, Lucas bends over next to Threepio pretending to be Artoo and beeps his lines– something which brings great amusement to Daniels. 


Directing the long walk.

Clapperboard image. Though Richard Marquand is credited as director, the sequence was ultimately handled by George Lucas.

Michael Pangrazio's unused landscape painting for the journey to Jabba's palace.


The originally planned matte exterior for Jabba's palace, seen top image in the Marvel Comics adaptation that was replaced- when the new location filming for the revised scene was underway, the art for the adaptation was likely already commenced.

More on the original unused sequence of the droid's arrival at the palace:




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