Sunday 10 September 2017

'STAR WARS' AT 40: A 'WEAKNESS' IS DISCOVERED...


Trusty, brave and resilient to the finish line, Artoo Detoo has been synced up to the Rebel battle computers and his information disc on the Death Star schematics transferred. Now, in the briefing room, thirty brave pilots and ancillary officers, a farmboy, and a pair of rogue smugglers, assemble to join Princess Leia in watching General Dodonna give out the information needed as to how to destroy the approaching battle station.

Leia and Dodonna together for a specially posed dramatic image.

Addressing the pilots and technicians of their ambitious plan.

Unused angle seen in one of the early edit assemblies for the film.

Filmed at Shepperton Studios in mid-May 1976, this scene introduces us to Angus MacInnes as Gold Leader and Colin Higgins, cast as the original Wedge Antilles, talking to Luke in the scene. There's no sign of Red Leader and the other pilots as they were still being cast- Drewe Henley would join the main filming at Shepperton in the fighter bay, for an ultimately deleted scene, in Hangar Bay footage shot the next month, whilst the other pilots (John Does!) wouldn't be needed for the fighter cockpit filming planned until July, 1976, at Elstree.

Threepio with Luke and Wedge (Colin Higgins).

Colin Higgins/pilots filming info at Shepperton Studios in 1976: https://starwarsaficionado.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/COLIN%20HIGGINS

The cast watched the majority of Larry Cuba's specially computer created graphic design footage for the Death Star schematics projected as live on set.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMeSw00n3Ac

In the Alan Dean Foster novelisation based on 1976 pre-filming drafts, Rebel senators were to have been a part of the gathering watching Jan Dodonna talk about the Death Star 'weakness'. This was an idea that was firmly incorporated into the later prequel ROGUE ONE.

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