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| | Fans of Star Wars are feeling something they have not sensed in a long time ... a new Star Wars movie. Even though Star Wars, Episode III: Revenge of the Sith doesn't open until May 19th, fans are already gearing up for the new flick, the latest Star Wars installment. Lucasfilms has added to the excitement by slowly releasing bits and pieces of information about the movie.
Notable Star Wars Facts:
1. The character Han Solo was copied by George Lucas from his director friend Francis Ford Coppola and Harrison Ford played the Han Solo character. Even though according to the initial plan of George Lucas, Han Solo should have been a green alien monster without a nose and with gills. Besides Harrison Ford, Kurt Russell, Nick Nolte and Christopher Walken were auditioned for the role of Han Solo.
2. Peter Mayhew, working in hospital as hospital attendant, got an offer to portray the role of Chewbacca, thanks to his enormous height - 2 m 18 cm. This representative of the Wookiee race was copied from George Lucas’s dog by the name “Indiana”, which is an Alaskan malamute breed. The language, in which Chewbacca speaks, was made by compiling sounds, uttered by a polar bear, badger, walrus and camel.
3. The most popular robots - R2-D2 and C-3PO - could have been called А2 and С3, but then George Lucas decided to give the droids “complete” names. According to the director, their names - a set of alphabets and numbers, which means nothing and cannot be deciphered in any way but are simply pleasant for hearing. C-3PO - is the gold droid, similar to a human being, - Lucas made an image of the robot from the fiction movie “Metropolis” 1927.
4. The film “The Hidden Fortress” (1958) by Japanese director Akira Kurosawa and mainly the protagonist of the movie General Rokurota Makabe inspired George Lucas to create the character Obi-Wan Kenobi. Particularly for this reason, the image of the Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi resembles a Samurai.
5. The character Luke Skywalker has undergone a lot of changes prior to returning back to his original appearance. At first George Lucas wanted a girl character. Then, Lucas came up with idea of Luke as a gnome. According to the following version of the director, Skywalker could become a 60 year-old general. Even the initial name of the hero was Luke Starkiller and only while shooting the first film of the film epopee “Star wars-IV: A New hope”, the character became Skywalker (Skywalker – in English “heavenly wanderer”).
6. George Lucas was very unhappy when US president Ronald Reagan declared the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) and named it “Star wars” in 1983. In revenge, the director has given viceroy of the Trading Federation - greedy, cowardly and malicious type - the name “Nute Gunray”. Nute is translated as “triton”. Gunray – is an anagram of the surname Reagan and also an anagram of the casuistry: ray gun which means “beam weapon” in English.
7. The name of the teacher and Jedi Yoda was taken by George Lucas from Sanskrit: Yoddha means “soldier”. In “star wars - IV, V, VI”, Yoda was a doll. George Lucas was very much impressed with the work of Frank Oz, who not only lent his voice but also worked as the puppeteer for Yoda. George Lucas spent thousand of dollars on an advertising campaign trying to get an “Oscar” nomination for Frank Oz in the “Best Supporting actor” category. But the film academy refused the director’s plea stating that a puppeteer is not an actor.
8. Actress Carrie Fisher (Princess Leia) was very much worried that her appearance in all three parts of the film saga, where ever she appears, was in long shapeless clothes and her figure is not visible in those long shapeless clothes. George Lucas conceded and in the latest film in a scene, when Leia was held captive by Jabba the Hutt, Lucas exposed the actress’s figure to the maximum (She wore a metal bikini).
9. The costumes, worn by Queen Padme Amidala in the film “Star wars-I: The Phantom Menace”, are designed according to Mongolian aristocracy. The costume designers required eight weeks to stitch costumes for Padme Amidala. It required the costumiers eight weeks to sew. Legendary reconnaissance aircraft SR-71 Blackbird served as the prototype for the spacecraft of Amidala. And the pseudonym of Amidala - Padme – was taken from Sanskrit and means “Lotus”.
10. Special effects specialists have thoroughly browsed through the archives of car race accidents of NASCAR and “Formula-1” series of races to recreate car races and accidents with acmaximum plausibility in the film “Star wars-I: The Phantom Menace”.
11. Michael Carter portrayed the role of Bib Fortuna, adviser to Jabba the Hutt. In the first couple of weeks of shooting, eight hours were required to transform the actor into this evil hero. After a month, the costume designers and make-up artists took just 58 min to complete the make-up. Make-up artists took just 25 minutes to remove the “make-up” of Bib Fortuna.
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