'JEDI' AT 40: DEATH STAR HANGAR ARRIVAL!

Cleared through the security shield protecting the Death Star, the lone Imperial Shuttle carrying its ominous passenger heads into one of the station's busy hangar bays...

The sequence would be an opening tour de force for the matte department, whose talents were put to the fullest (and beyond!) with their work across the many environments seen in Return of the Jedi.

A foreground miniature placed in front of the matte painting.

Shot on the ILM blue screen stage, two Space Stormtroopers at work welding. A last-minute filming addition, they would be blended into the final matte painting approach but were ultimately barely visible on screen only in the film's 1983 theatrical version.

Hangar arrival- again Shuttle model, ILM extras and matte painting combined. Note the painted TIE Bomber bottom middle.

The full matte painting which the model would be inserted onto.

Another matte painting used- showing the suspended TIE Bomber and a space for the Elstree Studios filming of hangar-arriving Imperial delegation.

As seen in the filming

Matte painting genius Frank Ordaz working on the first version of the above painting, one without the TIE Bomber and overhanging droid.

Full length revised version.

AN 'EMPIRE' AT 40: INTRODUCING THE TIE BOMBER!

Joe Johnston conceptual art of the TIE Bomber, with TIE Fighter escort, unused from the original Star Wars. 

Determined to flush out the hidden Millennium Falcon, Imperial TIE Bombers start unleashing their payloads on the largest asteroids in the field. The debut of the bomber was an intriguing addition to the Imperial fighter fleet, alongside the standard TIE and Vader's personal craft previously seen in the original Star Wars.

Two bombers start strafing the largest asteroid in an effects sequence moved to a later part of the film's story than was originally scripted.

Storyboard for an additional shot added to the film by ILM later in post production.

Ken Ralston takes some kind of cinecam footage of the model on one of the ILM stages, perhaps part of an animatic prior to filming of the bombardment sequence?

Despite only a few fleeting appearances in the final film, the TIE Bomber nonetheless made for a key visual selling point in signifying the onscreen might of the Empire, prominently used in Tom Jung's exciting original release poster for Empire in May 1980, where a legion of bombers fly upwards from within Vader's outstretched cloak.

ILM CLASSIC IMAGE: READY FOR DEPARTURE!

They sadly weren't seen in action in the Classic Trilogy after their debut in THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, but we nonetheless managed to get a glimpse of those intriguing TIE Bombers here and there in RETURN OF THE JEDI, notably in matte paintings linked to the Death Star II hangar arrival of Darth Vader. This image was painted by Frank Ordaz.

ILM CLASSIC IMAGE: PILOT FISH!

A TIE fighter and TIE Bomber swarm around an Imperial Star Destroyer like pilot fish about a whale in this great 1979 storyboard by Joe Johnston from THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK.

CLASSIC ART: DARK SIDE RISING...

Darth Vader makes his formidable presence felt, backed up by shockwaves of Stormtroopers and TIE bombers, in Tom Jung's cleverly constructed, and now iconic, poster work for THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK in 1980.

In his The Making of The Empire Strikes Back book, author J.W. Rinzler, states that it would be several months before this poster mades its debut in cinemas, after the Gone with the Wind style poster handled by Roger Kastel. That is actually incorrect in relation to the UK. At its London Royal Premiere in May,  the Jung poster art was used as the focal image atop the ODEON Leicester Square cinema building (I saw the film there in its opening week), and the poster could also be found in select London Underground stations (I also recall varying versions of Kastel's poster appearing at Leicester Square and Tottenham Court Road, in particular).

With thanks to Steve McGarrigle: The Empire Strikes Back Premier - Odeon Leicester Sq 1980 | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

CLASSIC ART: "AMAZING STORIES" - "RUNNING THE BELT"

Here's a terrific spaceship art cover for a very hard to get hold of issue of the US published AMAZING STORIES sci-fi anthology tales magazine, issue no 597 (Summer 1999), which featured a special one-off STAR WARS story- RUNNING THE BELT- from EPISODE II adaptor/NEW JEDI ORDER devised writer R.A. Salvatore (who is also interviewed in its pages), and concerning the Solo children in a coming of age story. As well as STAR WARS being a major selling point, its probably even harder to get hold of because of the also unique BABYLON 5 after-series tale specially written for the magazine by it's creator, J. Michael Straczynski.

If anyone has the cover art as a better quality scan could they please send it through so I can update the Blog.