ROGUE ONE: REBEL ARRIVAL!

High above the tropical realms of Scarif, Admiral Raddus' newly arrived Mon Calamari cruiser, the Profundity, and his small fleet, stands defiant against the Empire and the prior Rebel council's unwillingness to help Jyn Erso's penetration of the Imperial data centre, in this great image from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

AN 'EMPIRE' AT 40: INTO THE STARS!

Flanked by escort fighters. the Medical Frigate and the rest of the small Rebel fleet heads off into the stars, as new destinies await our heroes for the May 1980 title announced Episode VI: Revenge of the Jedi...

The long shot of the cast looking out into space as the Frigate turns away from camera was filmed at Elstree Studios and rear projected onto a window of the ILM built model ship in post production. UK effects director Brian Johnson would do similar shots with the pilots housed in their Eagle craft for the hit TV series, Space:1999.

Joe Johnston storyboard for an ILM revised effects shot from March 1980, handled all too close to the film's release.

AN 'EMPIRE' AT 40: BEYOND 'A NEW HOPE'...

"If you think about the focus of this part of the Star Wars saga, it's on survival, not triumph. The theme of Empire is that for some people, for some part of their lives, just surviving is enough of a triumph for that moment. And because of that, because of Luke's feeling that he was ready to challenge Vader and then his realisation that he wasn't, and was also unable to save his friend - all these things are important to the emotional state at the end of the story. This episode, the middle act, has to be slower and more sombre in a way. It spends the time to delineate the characters a little better, it explains some of the motivation and so on. It wouldn't work if you had three films that are exactly the same."

Gary Kurtz, responding to criticisms of the time concerning Empire's downbeat cliffhanger finale, to Starburst magazine Issue 23, 1980.

AN 'EMPIRE' AT 40: PREPARING FOR DEPARTURE...

 

Images: StarWarsScreencaps.com.

Attached to the Medical Frigate by a technological umbilical cord, the Millennium Falcon and its crew get ready to begin an all-new mission alongside their Rebel comrades...

The 70mm version of the film on its original May 1980 release would include additional model filming shots for this sequence, so as to better establish the Falcon under the Frigate, tasked to ILM by George Lucas at the very last minute.

Read more here:

https://thedigitalbits.com/columns/history-legacy-showmanship/empire-at-40-remembering-the-early-70mm-cut