The Pre-Pro #1 v1 was the original canvas for the Kenner rocket firing figurine, but the Pre-Pro #2 was sent for the photo shoot and used one of the images on the packaging
Huh... From the Kenner photo shoot, I definitely recognized the PP2 helmet. I didn't realize the prior version was involved. He's already got the dent in the Holiday Special animated segment, which aired right around when the updated (eyes to ears) PP1 was in the San Anselmo parade. Nelvana would've needed enough lead time to
do the animation and get it to CBS to be incorporated into the final program well before Thanksgiving '78. So I just figured Kenner's involvement had
always involved a dented helmet...
I don't know if the Pre-Pro #3 was intended to be used in ESB, but it was one of the prototypes; maybe it was a back-up for the ESB hero
That makes sense, given how close they are to identical -- and, apparently, mistaken for each other in-house. Sandy's three are all painted with the same colors, but the weathering is quite distinctive between them -- much less effort made to make them look identical. I very much want to ask anyone involved back then if they remember which helmets were intended for what. If Joe was working on production assets and Sandy was working on promotional items, that'd all make sense.
As for the ROTJ changes, we know that they cast the ESB helmet to do at least 2 stunt helmets, but also cast some armors for the same reason. The helmet was already damaged post ESB or damaged during the stunt cast, because the stunt helmets have the left temple/dome crack. This might be the reason that they didn't used the ESB helmet and for some reason the Promo #1 was used, thus became the ROTJ helmet. Most of the ESB era armors were repainted to a new, unified color scheme (the ESB era was of a scavenged parts concept)
All the detail changes are fun to follow. I always preferred the brick red gauntlets though I also liked the yellow gauntlet since it is unique and never seen on screen. Definitely gave the suit more of a piecemeal look. The green ESB gauntlets were more uniform but also less interesting visually, imo. I also preferred the weathered, very 70s-ish retro color scheme of the red/blue/yellow jetback vs just the green.
Anyway, I had personally suspected the ESB helmet was damaged early on and it appears that was indeed the case. Could very well be why they didn't bother to use it on screen for RoTJ and just used one of the promo helmets.
That's the thing, though. Even if the ESB Hero was damaged, why not use the one that was practically its twin, instead of one of the others? For that matter, why the heck didn't they cast one of the Sandy helmets to make the stunts?
And I know some people have definite preferences. I personally love both versions of EE-3, but my distinct preferences are for the ESB helmet colors and weathering, and the green rocketpack. I prefer the green vambraces over red. If a contrasting color was used, I'd've rather they were both yellow -- to go with the shoulders and knees. And I very much prefer the physical build of the Supertrooper/PP1 flamer.
So I went to SW Identities in London back in 2016..
Anyone hazard a guess at which Fett this was it looks like ROTJ but are they OG or do they make copies for these exhibitions?
If it has earcaps with markings and the rear skirt is a different color than the rest of the helmet, it's the Pre-Prosuction 3 (the near-twin of the ESB Hero). If the earcaps are unmarked gunmetal and the whole helmet is the same green, it's the ROTJ Hero. As said, the ESB Hero was damaged, as was the third helmet Sandy painted. They never leave the Archives, along with the ROTJ Stunts. The Pre-Production 2 helmet was stolen while on publicity tour back in the late '70s, and recently showed up at auction along with the stolen rocketpack. The seller was acting in good faith, having bought them in good faith himself, without realizing they had been stolen decades ago. They were in Gary Kurtz's collection after that, IIRC, until he died. Where they are now, I don't know. And no one knows what became of the Pre-Production 1 helmet (the one with no dent and the painted on "ears").
So any helmet in those costume exhibit tours are one of those two, and usually the ROTJ Hero.
Correcto
mando.
It seems like they are making a play off the George's original concept for lightsabers. I think he talked about how regular people wouldn't be able to use them because they would be too heavy or something. That they would require the force to use, it's in an old interview somewhere.
I thought that exact thing. I seem to remember that at least in the OT, George wanted the lightsabers to be treated as if they had some heft to them and were more akin to claymores or other large medieval European blades. The PT seemed to poop on that, with the greater emphasis on faster, more flowery, Kendo-influenced dueling.
With this latest episode, I wondered if that original concept was what they had in mind. Only thing is, Gideon and others prior didn't seem to have much difficulty handling it, so I'm not sure how they reconcile that. Personally, I liked seeing Mando struggling with it a bit rather than magically being a master of it.
One thing that really bugs me about the darksaber is how the blade is literally shaped like a material, curved katana blade, not to mention that little stepdown near the emitter. How does that work? Now, I know lightsabers could never exist but I have a harder time understanding how an energy beam could look like the darksabers blade. It almost looks more like a retractable, solid blade than some sort of energy beam. The hilt also being shaped like a real world katana hilt also seems a little on the nose but it certainly gets credit for being sleek and unique looking.
IIRC, back in the day George mentioned that light sabers ("laser swords" as he called them) had a gyroscopic effect and were therefore difficult to control, unless you had dedicated training. One of the reasons George felt that light sabers should always be wielded with two hands.
I'm not convinced there is anything genuinely alive/mystical about the saber---it could all just be the cultural beliefs surrounding it.
I don't remember George specifically mentioning the gyroscopic effects, but definitely directed the actors to make like they were "heavy and cumbersome". I'll attribute that to the same clumsiness with words that saw him describe the repeated thematic beats as "It's like a poem -- it rhymes".
People with even more time to deep-delve into these things than I worked out years ago how a lightsaber, as we saw them in the OT, would behave, what physical properties they'd have, and about the only possible way they could work and exhibit all the characteristics shown. We actually
could build one today, but the blade would be very tenuous, the emitter would be the size of a small car, and it would take a few daisy-chained power plants to run it.
Given that, and the plausibility of the science, I am both annoyed at the PT's lightsaber choreography (I won't call it combat -- all that twirling and spinning and flourishing, it was more like a dance routine than combat) and at the darksaber. Part of the conjectural model of the OT lightsaber blade is that it is a near-one-dimensional plasma window, collimated from having any significant width, that gets handed off from one set of arc nodes to the next at superconducting speeds, so no matter which way you swing it, it'll be an edge that impacts the target. But, the blade effectively "spinning" so fast, even if it's nearly massless, it'd still generate tremendous angular momentum. So yeah -- gyroscopic effects. The blade won't want to start moving. If you force it, it won't necessarily want to go the direction you want it to. And, once you've got it moving, it won't want to stop again. A layman can use one to, say, slit open a tauntaun's belly. But to use one effectively, you need the strength buff and precognizance from facility with the Force.
I was hopeful that the darksaber would be what I first thought from the early reports -- a deliberately primitive lightsaber with only one set of arc nodes, so the blade was in a fixed plane. Less difficult to wield, but you'd have to make sure it struck edge-on. And if it was tuned up into the ultraviolet, I could see that doing weird things to the blade's core, while the edge would still be very bright. But it would just be a standing arc. It couldn't take that complex shape
or have markings.
That particular lightsaber
can't exist -- not without some
stupid-exotic energy-manipulation tech that we've seen no other evidence of in the GFFA.
As for alive... The old EU really borked things with lightsabers. West End Games was looking for anything in print prior to 1987 about how lightsabers worked that they could put in their sourcebooks, and misinterpreted Alan Dean Foster's description of the concept-art design for the hilt in the novelization. Prior to the camera flash handles, the working notion was "a short handgrip, surmounted by a disc 'barely larger than [Luke's] spread palm', one side of which was polished to mirror brightness, while the reverse was dull and studded with jewel-like controls". Readong comprehension fail. Since the lightsaber we saw in Star Wars was shiny, that must mean those jewels are on the inside. And thus, over the course of a decade, jewels became crystals and we got all the junk that came along with that.
Mechanically speaking, it
does make sense for there to be jewels inside -- same as with fine Swiss watches, to regulate electrical pulses for precise timing purposes. It's been an element of electronics for decades. But I
hate the image of a big rough crystal just kinda stuck in the middle of the thing to do...
something. With the development of kyber crystals, I wouldn't mind if a more shaped one of those was mounted down where the power supply plugs in, to "tune" the energy coming into the rest of the unit. And, given their connection to the Force, in addition to amplifying energy, they should help Force-sensitives connect to their weapon better. But not independent, "alive" things...
www.nytimes.com
