She's a bit rough
Yet again: I can’t claim all the credit. This time it’s when Leia spits on Vader. It’s… in the blasted novel.
Crap, crap, crap. It even sizzles when it lands on him.
Having said that, the princess in the 10 year old version is grubbier than in Lucas’ text. This is a princess and senator of the Royal House of Alderann – or Antilles or something (Look, I haven’t been a SW nerd for over 30 years ok?).
I could have done so much more with it though. Oh the missed opportunities. Did she do a big nose-honk first? If we look closely, is she wearing a chunky sovereign ring? Is the Pocahontas hairdo actually a council-estate-facelift gone wrong? See the strip at Star Wars age 9 >
What a strange and bizarre parallel universe this is! My 9 -year-old is going through a big Yoda phase at the mo. He thinks Yoda is the funniest thing ever – especially with the alternative dialogue we’ve been ad libbing – e.g. stressing his senility, “Yoda forget name… oh wait, is Yoda!” and his inevitable bitterness about living in a muddy swamp while Luke goes gadabout. ” Why Yoda’s wife drive in car away? Shake fist at Yoda?” or “Luke so cool, with fancy haircut and Millenium Falcon, he think?. Not so hot, he is!”. etc., and stuff.
Thanks for the entertaining comment PJ!
Be careful now… don’t let your 9 year old watch it every night. My 4 year-old’s SW viewing is being rationed; so we don’t get a repeat of the Pixar’s CARS exprience. Last Christmas I was raving about CARS to other parents, and slightly mystified by their often blank – even traumatised – facial expressions. 4 months later I understood: I can barely look at CARS anymore having seen it at LEAST once a day for 4 months.
John – having read the Marvel adaptation and Del Rey novelization more times than I care to count, I can certainly identify with your youthful passion at age 9 (I was 10 at the time). I even recognized where Leia’s spitting on Vader came from without reading your background
I don’t know if this has been pointed out already, but the novelization was not, in fact, written by Lucas. It was ghost-written from the shooting script by Alan Dean Foster, who was allowed to write the unofficial sequel “Splinter of the Mind’s Eye” as part of the deal (based off of some of Lucas’ notes).
Hi Rick,
Oh, my friends and I were obsessed! the novel is weird. In one paragraph it’s poetic, in the next it reads like a shooting script! So I wasn’t sure if it was written by more than one person – or just due to inconsistent writing!
Thanks for the info. You know, Alan Dean Foster was instructed to write ‘Splinter’ as a sequel set mostly in a jungle setting – narrow scope and cheap to shoot. I can’t imagine why Lucas could possibly have wanted to make the sequel on the cheap. Was it because that was his plan before the first film was completed – a film he’d not expected to be a huge financial success?
John – yes, that was exactly the reasoning. Nobody expected “Star Wars” to be a success, so Lucas was hoping that “Splinter” would be useable for a cheap sequel if “Star Wars” was mildly successful at the box office. Of course, that didn’t turn out to be a problem.
It’s amazing how ravenous we were back then for any piece of new information, and how much that was driven by the inability to watch the movie whenever we wanted. Any new photograph would get pored over for the most minor details; the Topps cards were an endless source of new information – I prided myself on being able to identify the cards that were production stills, the shots where the negative had been flipped, and the cards with horrible retouching.
I like how your 9-year-old self tried so hard to “lock in” what he had seen on screen by integrating the comics and novelization with memories of the movie. My version of that was probably taking whatever series of Topps cards were available and rearranging them in movie order, mixing the colors together. Your method was much more creative!
Of course, there was also the time I snuck a tape recorder into one of the 1979 showings of “Star Wars” to get an audio version of the full movie (vs. the massively-edited “Story of Star Wars” that was available on LP at the time). I actually had to do it twice, since the microphone I used the first time basically didn’t work for any sound that was too far away from it, no matter how loud. I almost wore that tape out over the following few years.
Hi Rick,
Loved reading of your tape recordings. Yes, we were absolutely desperate for any morsel. I held the tape recorder up to the telly during some programme – dunno what – and got a few seconds of Star Wars, To listen to that over and over was thrilling indeed. A few seconds! Believe me i know exactly how you felt.
You needn’t feel too nerdy though! It was the experience of God knows how many tens of thousands – millions? – of kids. Ever read Peter Jackson’s Introduction to the ‘Making of Star Wars’ book? It really struck a chord with me!