The POP-EXPOSE ‘George Lucas’ by Mitchell Smith’!
George Lucas was master at creating characters. Fourty years ago Lucas was just moments away from finalizing a film that would change the world. All the blood, sweat, and tears were coming at least to a place where he would see if he had done something better than what a lot of critics considered sub par work. Lucas had fought and clawed to keep his project alive and when it finally released its first sneak peek audiences were instantly captivated by Star Wars. When it hit the big screen in May of 77 there were lines out the door to see the movie. As we know the franchise has now grown to epic proportion and there are no signs of slowing down. Lucas’s original characters have been a staple to the franchise and even the time put into some of the back ground characters and vehicles is a huge part of what separated Lucas from the rest. The original main characters were so well designed that they all are still popular today. Kenobi, Solo, Skywalker, C3PO, R2D2, Darth Vader are just a few that were so well constructed that they have bound the Star Wars universe together, and they have been the highlight of mass quantities of merchandise, such as bed sheets, toothbrushes, and my favorite action figures.
In the Mos Eisley Cantina scene and at Jabbas Palace there are so many background characters who didn’t really get the spot light on them, and some were hard to even see, but never the less, they got as much time put into creating and designing them as many of the main characters did. Characters like Ponda Boba, Dr. Evazan, Max Rebo, and Salacious Crumb were all characters in the forefront with limited screen time, but the detail and production of these characters was great. Lucas brought tons of Alien races alive and broadened the universe as we knew it. Hem Dazon is one of the first aliens we see in Mos Eisley Cantina scene. Other characters we saw up close for just an instant as the camera scanned over the cantina were Mufiak, Momaw Nadon, and Kardue’sai’Malloc, all characters with lots of detail and Lucas took the time to make sure they were fully designed and you really got the sense they were real creatures. There also were those background characters who were hard to see in the movies and some I know I got a lot better sense of the characters when there was an action figure release on them such as Kitik Keed’kak from the cantina, Hermi Odle from Jabba’s Palace, and Jabba’s head of Security, Ephant Mon, one of my favorite figures. The awesome characters were not limited to the cantina or Jabba’s Palace even though these were 2 great scenes which brought to life so many characters in one singe shot. So many great characters were created for ESB, RTOJ, the 3 prequels, animated series, video games, books, and comic books all which had awesome character creation.
When you look back characters like, Uncle Owen, a simple farmer, IG-88, Logray, Jar Jar, Barriss Offee, Commander Cody, Maris Brood and the many, many more characters created by Lucas and his teams, Lucas over looked most if not all of them. There was always room for tweeking and making a great character even better. From main characters to background props, Lucas went the extra mile to make sure every character was perfect, and in the 2000’s there were a ton of figures made, and a lot of the back ground characters we may have missed on the big screen, now were brought into our homes so we could get a close up look at what George Lucas had created. I was a bit sad when the franchise changed hands and the great character creation and figures that came along with them are now just a thing of the past.
Are you a fan of the characters of George Lucas? Let us know after the JUMP!
