But is it too sappy for Napoleon Solo?
Better get yourself ready, because this episode covers what is probably the biggest trilogy of them all: the Star Wars original trilogy. Join Kiyan and Dylan as they set themselves right into the action and explore just how Star Wars was made. Then be thrilled as they discuss it’s two sequels, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Back to the Future may be Dylan’s favorite movie, but Star Wars is at least second for Kiyan. And remember to keep reading this description, because below you will find links to the original source of most of the information that Kiyan and Dylan talk about in this episode!
The genesis of the Star Wars series can be read about at this archive link here. The four versions of the script and the original plot summary mentioned can be read on this website too.
Information on Lucas’ intention with droids and more information on the beginning of Star Wars and the creation of Episodes V and VI can be seen in an interview conducted in Rolling Stone a few months after the release of Episode IV, which you can read at this archive link.
In May of 2015 io9 compiled together links to all of the audition tapes that they could find on youtube, which is what Dylan eventually stumbled upon while researching this trilogy. You can view this collection over here on io9’s website.
While investigating J.W. Rinzler’s books on amazon (see below), Dylan discovered that you can actually still buy the radio play versions of Star Wars. If you’d like a taste of them first (and don’t want to engage in anything illicit…) you can listen to part 6 of the 13 part Episode IV adaptation on npr’s website. For a comprehensive history of the radio dramas, you can read this article on a fan site, the logbook. If this has captured your interest, here are links to the radio plays on amazon: Episode IV, Episode V, and Episode VI.
The wikipedia page on ILM has a list of all of their movies. It would be terribly impressive if you’ve not seen at least one of the films on that list.
Quite a bit more additional behind the scenes information for both the original and the prequel trilogy can be found on Empire’s website, where each tidbit of information is also linked with some fascinating behind the scenes images. The information on the Yoda radio incident came from here.
Empire also featured an article in its magazine in 2002 on the making of Empire Strikes Back, which is where we gathered most of the information on that film, including information on how Darth Vader became Luke’s father, the improvised “I love you” ,”I know” and on the massive time crunch on filming. You can read this article on their website.
Who came up with the idea of killing Obi-Wan is a bit up in the air still. In the Rolling Stone interview above, George Lucas claims that it was his wife’s idea, but in this interview from 1999, Alec Guiness claims that it was his, because he couldn’t stand reading “mumbo-jumob” anymore.
J.W. Rinzler’s books would have been a fantastic resource for this podcast, but on the other hand, a key point of this podcast is that we only bring forward anything we can find in one evening. Luckily for us, multiple websites featured short tidbits of information and fun facts that can be found in the books. Here are links to io9’s compilation of tidbits from the Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi books. In addition, here is a link to a page on the official Star Wars website featuring tidbits from the Return of the Jedi book.
The famous 2001: A Space Odyssey song is Also Sprach Zarathustra, by Richard Strauss. It is in the public domain, or at least it should be, since Strauss has been dead for well over 70 years.
A list of changes made in the Star Wars rereleases can be seen on wikipedia here. Also Weta was founded in the late 80’s. For once, Dylan was right before correcting himself.
Star Wars Holiday Special. That’s all I’m saying.
This is the Clone Wars series Kiyan was talking about, if anyone is curious.
Comic Book Resources actually has a pretty useful article on the levels of Star Wars canon and their relation to each other, and their current standing given the upcoming Episode 7. You can find that here.
Weird Al’s song, while spoiling episode 1, actually didn’t release until after the film came out. Read about it on wikipedia.
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