THE 'PHANTOM' AT TWENTY: OF BEAST AND BURDEN!

The hyperdrive has been delivered from a bankrupt, now debt ridden Watto, but there's still unfinished and important business to settle requiring Qui-Gon's immediate return to Mos Espa, as George Lucas directs Liam Neeson for his Eopie travelling scene on location in Tunisia.

A behind the scenes image also captured by Annie Leibovitz for Vanity Fair magazine's coverage of EPISODE I.

A closer look at the CGI design of one of the Eopies of Tatooine.

As seen in the finished movie.

"(Working with digital creatures added later.) You felt like a pillock sitting there in 150 degrees heat. You have to turn your body then they cut and the magicians do their stuff afterwards."

Liam Neeson - Film Review magazine - 1999

Further filming of Qui-Gon atop the beast was shot on Blue-screen at Leavesden upon the crew's return from Tunisia, literally Liam Neeson once more atop a stirrup and scaffold.

Scripted but excised was a moment where one of Darth Maul's Sith Probe Droids discovers the location of the Naboo Cruiser from a far hill, seeing Qui-Gon heading back to Mos Espa.

'STAR WARS' AT 40: AN ESCAPE INTO HYPERSPACE!

The calculations are done, now its time to escape the Imperial cruisers, as Han and Chewie send the Falcon into the realms of Hyperspace, on course for Alderaan, in the memorable first jump to that spacial region for STAR WARS.

This sequence has now been done many times across STAR WARS live action film and animated series, but one must never forget the impact this original "Jump into Hyperspace" scene had on first 70mm cinematic screenings back in 1977. Audiences literally rose from their seats to clap and cheer the updated 'slit-scan' graphic shot effect via Richard Edlund and ILM, whilst anyone high on LSD watching the film likely experienced the same kind of outer space "trip" that they hadn't had since the finale mind-bending scenes of Kubrick's 2001 in the late sixties.

There is a continuity blunder present in this shot: Chewbacca is wearing his bandolier but in the early cockpit shots before the jump he isn't. Presumably, all this starfield /blue screen cockpit facing material was shot together at Elstree at a later date and the error slipped through in the post production phase.

BEHIND THE SCENES IMAGE: NO HYPERDIVE!

An interesting EPISODE ONE on-set image of the interior of the Naboo Royal Cruiser, specifically the section containing the damaged Hyperdrive generator. You never quite get to see the device in all its visual glory in the finished movie. A much larger version of a Hyperdrive can be seen within the immense engine area of General Grievous's Ion Cannon berthed cruiser, the Malevolence, in THE CLONE WARS Season One episode Destroy Malevolence.