Over the years, I’ve blown up the Death Star countless times. I figured it was time I got some kind of reward for saving the Rebel Base from the evil Galactic Empire. When the opportunity came around to pick up a shiny Medal of Yavin, I jumped at it. The Medal of Yavin was presented to Luke Skywalker and Han Solo in a ceremony at the end of the first Star Wars movie. I’m kind of bummed Chewbacca didn’t get one, but maybe he can pick one up the same way I did. A sales thread came up on the RPF from a guy selling two versions, shiny and matte gold. I’m not going to link to it this time because as of this posting it seems there is some doubt as to the origin of the medals. Apparently they may be copies of a limited edition Master Replicas piece that was done a few years ago. The guy selling them didn’t know though, so it’s all a bit weird. Had I known it was recast, I’d have passed on it. Anyway, I have it now and I’m not sending it back.
It’s really heavy, gold-plated and the material part has a really nice texture to it. Currently it’s wrapped in tissue paper until I can figure out how I want to display it. I might try to make a little stand for it, like a photo frame. Here’s the medal-
My lightsabre came this morning. I mentioned in an earlier blog post that I wanted to get a metal lightsabre since I was little. I found a guy from Adelaide selling a decent looking one on E-Bay shortly after I wrote that blog entry and I bid on it. It was pretty cheap considering the fact it’s made out of turned metal and its damned heavy. It has a few minor scratches, and there’s no ‘power switch’ which is a little disappointing, but hell, it’s all mine. To buy a ‘perfect’ lightsabre I’d have to get one from Master Replicas, or a few other companies and those cost in excess of $600, provided I could even get one in Australia.
The particular lightsabre I bought is based on Luke Skywalker’s green lightsabre from Return of the Jedi. It’s a ‘Hero Version’ which means it’s a type used in close shots and when it needs to look pretty. There’s another Luke RotJ lightsabre which is a stunt version, used mostly in the fight scenes on Jabba the Hutt’s sail barge at the start of the movie. If you pause one of those scenes, and look at the lightsabre shown later, when Luke surrenders to Darth Vader, you’ll see they are totally different items. The one Vader examines is clean and shiny, and the one in the fights has rubbed off black paint and other damage.
According to stories from those who know, the stunt saber was an old model used by Obi-Wan Kenobi in the earlier film, remodeled to become Luke’s weapon.
Even though there are differences with those two versions, I’ve been researching the Luke Hero version I have, and even with that model there are a whole bunch of inconsistent images. The switches particularly are varied and so is the belt hook at the base of the hilt. Mine has a crappy round ‘d-ring’ that the guy who sold it to me was up front about. It looks pretty dodgy and I’ll replace it as soon as I’m able. Luke’s Hero version though, has a triangular clip, and the stunt version seems to have a round D shaped clip. If I ‘settle’ for a clip that will work ok, I can easily get a D ring. I’ve found a pretty good one on a dog chain in the supermarket that I can probably hook on to the hilt. I kind of want a proper triangular one though, and that seems to be hard to find.
I’m also disappointed mine doesn’t have any proper switches too. The guy who made it just has a kind of flat black panel, and the proper one has two rectangular buttons, I guess to turn it on and off. I have to look around and see if I can find the perfect little black buttons. I don’t care if they do anything, I just want it to look right.
Paying as little as I did, I can’t be too fussy, but I want it to look as good as I can get it. The thing that really annoys me is that after I bought the Luke RotJ from Ebay, a guy from the Replica Prop Forum contacted me after a delay in which I thought he’d forgotten about me, offering me a brilliant Darth Vader replica from $160. I can’t really justify buying two lightsabres.
Tonight I watched Star Wars again. Sure, I’ve seen it before. I’ve seen it many times before. I’ve seen it so many times I can’t remember exactly how many times I’ve seen it. Tonight I watched a version called a ‘fan edit’, which is the original movie, enhanced and corrected by a technically adept fan.
The particular movie I’m talking about is the first one, which people call now “A New Hope” but real fans simply call Star Wars. The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi make up the trilogy, and the other three movies, or the prequels, only sort-of-count.
This particular fan edit was by a chap who calls himself Adywan, and you can find him at a site called http://originaltrilogy.com. His skill with the computer is obvious and his edits are technically really good. His choice of edits is open to debate, but over-all he’s done a great job.
You see, Star Wars was made in a time before computerised special effects were popular, or even possible, and George Lucas’ crew had to create a lot of the techniques and tools themselves to create the multi award-winning movie we all know. Partly because of the technical constraints, partly because of the budget and partly because of the sheer scope of the movie, Star Wars suffers from a lot of minor glitches that fans have nit-picked over the last thirty-odd years.
For example, there is a well-known scene during the escape from the Death Star, when one of the actors playing a Storm Trooper bangs his head on a low doorway. This particular mishap was so famous among fans that when the prequel movie, “Attack of the Clones” was released, there was a scene where Jango Fett, whom the Storm Troopers were cloned from, also bangs his head on the door of his ship. The Fan Edit removes the unfortunate accident of the Storm Trooper and makes the galaxy’s most feared soldiers seem a little less clumsy.
Another revision, seen in the re-released “Special Edition” versions of the movie, is the encounter between Han Solo and the Rodian Bounty Hunter named Greedo in the Tatooine cantina. For some inexplicable reason, George Lucas re-edited the scene so that instead of Han Solo calmly blasting Greedo under the table, Greedo shoots first and Han Solo responds, killing him. Perhaps Han Solo wasn’t seen to be heroic enough and the scene was changed to make him less of a bad-ass. Reasons aside, fans hated the change and Adywan has restored the original Han-Shot-First scene.
The main change made to the fan edit is to the special effects. Shots have been re-coloured, lighting changed and minor buttons and gauges re-adjusted to have a more updated look. One change I didn’t like was in the final battle against the Death Star, there are a few shots of the space battle that seem quite over done. I understand that there were 30 Rebel ships in the attack, and you see only a few of those, but the sky in the re-edit looks too crowded. There’s a shot of Tie Fighters flying toward the camera and it just doesn’t look right for some reason. They look too copy/pasted to be convincing. I can live with that though.
Episode IV Revisited hasn’t yet convinced me to check out the other fan edits, but it has tempted me. It’s an interesting and yet vast undertaking to modify an entire movie, especially one as scrutinized as the Star Wars film has been.
Now, if we can just convince George Lucas to scrap the first two prequels and try again, maybe we’d all be happy. Jar-Jar Who?
For an extensive list of Adywan’s changes, check under the cut.
Since being displaced from my usual Internet Haunts, I’ve come across a magical place called the Replica Prop Forum, or the RPF. I heard about it from Mythbuster’s Adam Savage, who spent quite a lot of time and effort in making the perfect Prop Replica of the Maltese Falcon, from the Bogart film of the same name. I think he may have mentioned the forum in one of his tweets from his donttrythis Twitter account, but it was a while ago, so I’m not sure. It doesn’t really matter.
The RPF is a place for people who make, collect and trade movie props and costumes in extreme detail. Adam Savage and Grant Imahara both worked on the Star Wars prequels, making various pieces for those films, including work on R2-D2. Movie props and serious collectibles have been something that has always fascinated me, even since I was little. Unfortunately I’ve never had enough spare cash or space to get anything really good, plus a lot of the best stuff is in the States and ridiculously expensive and/or illegal to import to Australia without a wallet filled with permits.
My own collection is pathetic in comparison to the items that turn up on the RPF. The two of mine I really like are my Indiana Jones Golden Fertility Idol, and my Wolf-Man Cane from the original Wolf-Man movie. Neither would be up to the insane standard of the RPF, but they suit me. I’m really after a Lightsaber, but there are many varieties, and they are really expensive. One day though, I’ll own one. Hell, it’s almost Christmas.
RPF is a pretty exclusive site, it seems, with intakes of new forum members occurring very infrequently. I haven’t had a chance to sign up, but I lurk quite a lot. One guy is building a ‘studio scale’ replica of a Star Destroyer. It’s incredible. Another guy is making the Galactica, another the Death Star. Another thread is full of containers used in the various Star Trek shows, with both the on-screen versions and the original source bags, satchels and other items used by the prop masters to make the originals for the show.
You’re probably thinking, ‘so what?’ Let me explain what Studio Scale is. The Star Destroyer mentioned above is eight feet long. The Death Star I don’t have measurements for but it looks to have a radius of at least a couple of feet. The detail on these things is also astounding.
When the movie guys make the original ships to be filmed, they come up with the concepts and because no kit model exists, they take various and sundry parts from a vast range of commercial models. I’d have to assume they cast their own parts as well. Some of the lightsabers, for example, use parts from an old hand grenade. Another uses a handle from a faucet as the base. It’s complicated, it’s extreme, it’s very, very cool.
Due to what seems to be a severe case of collective O.C.D. the prop replica makers, especially these studio scale guys, match every single piece to the original screen used version. If you browse the forum you’ll see people ask questions about a particular screw, rivet or greeblie from a certain film creation. Sooner or later, someone says, “Oh that’s part number 314 from the Panzer Tank kit released from AMT in 1974″. I made that one up, but I swear it’s like that. Go there, you’ll see.
A part of me wishes I had even a fraction of the skill of these guys. Hell, a part of me wishes I just had the spare cash to buy some of the stuff they put out. It’s the attention to detail that gets me more than anything. Check out some of the samples floating around the forum as we speak. All work is credited to the various owners and builders. I claim no rights.
Remember, these aren’t kit models. They are built from scratch.
Each ‘dot’ done by hand.
Star Destroyer 'Neck'. Each part is a different model piece.
We don’t really celebrate Halloween here in Australia. A few people do, but it’s not really a very common thing and only a few parties. It’s a shame really because it seems to be one of the most fun holidays and one that you can really nerd-up and get into. It also doesn’t have the whole religious aspect of Christmas or Easter, which is a bonus. It’s all about the costumes and the scares. I realise there’s the whole pagan thing going on, but that’s not what Halloween is really about. It’s about costumes and scares!
One of the things I think I’d personally go for, rather than the costume side of things, is the pumpkin carving. I’d love all that ‘negative space’ thinking and would love to give it a good try one of these days. I suppose I could get one just to try it out, but that’s not really the point.
The fine people at TopTenz have produced a list of Star Wars Pumpkin carving, all of which are absolutely brilliant.
If someone had told me a few years ago that Lego and Star Wars were releasing a game, I’d have called them an idiot. Well, they did and the game is 100% awesome. I’m a full-grown (well, more than full) adult and this game is the most addictive and fun game I’ve ever played. It takes the story of Star Wars and adds the fun and charm of the cartoonish Lego characters and makes something new and fabulous. The game is intersected with cut scenes which show the heroes in various scenes from the movies, but with no voice acting other than the odd grunt or groan. The way they act is hilarious though.
In the game you are tasked with collecting various colours of studs, or tiny round Lego pieces. The studs explode from the objects you destroy and with enough studs you can buy unlocks at the cantina in Mos Eisley. You can unlock characters from the movie, better weapons, movie clips or just some fun and amusing effects like silly moustaches.
There have been two releases of Lego Star Wars, the first covering the prequel films and the second covering the original trilogy. The latest version of the game is the Complete Saga, which combines the two previously released games into one game and adds some extra content to boot. Lego has also teamed with other franchines to release Batman, Rock Band and Indiana Jones. Soon, there will be a sequel to the Indiana Jones game which includes a map editor for the first time.
The games look like they’re for kids, but there’s plenty there to get you addicted to finding those little silver and gold studs. One thing’s for sure, when Indiana Jones II comes out, I’ll be getting it.
