Star Wars Special – Intermission Podcast

Summary: Red = Sith, Blue = Traditional Jedi Saber, and Luke had a Green Light Saber. Why did they pick the colors that they did? Was red to represent the Soviets and communism? Nah. Originally all the light sabers were white, but the special effects guys added the colors in post using a technique called "Rotoscoping." It was really up to the special effects team to color them. Example: Luke's light saber was green. Why? Because when he was on Tatooine blue blended in the with sky too well. Hence the SFX team made his saber green so it would be more noticeable. On the contrast, the blaster colors are reversed. Blue/Green signifies Imperial blasters, while the Rebel's blasters were red. We had to venture away from the movies to find an answer, but in the expanded universe they explain it has to do with the quality of gas in the blaster. The Imperial Troops had access to high quality gas, which get's them the perfect, blue/green blaster bolt. The Rebels on the other hand, were forced to use an inferior gas, which resulted in the red blaster bolt. Vader didn't even know he was Luke's father! That's right, the most misquoted quote in all of movie history was completely unknown to everyone on set. Vader, Luke, nobody. The only people that knew were George Lucas, and a single sound engineer. Mark Hamil first learned the twist at the premier of the film. On set, Luke was responding to Vaser saying "Obi-Wan killed your father," which pissed off the entire cast. Nobody wanted Obi Wan to be the bad guy. Wouldn't that have been terrible if they did reveal that Obi Wan killed Luke's father? Why are Storm Troopers such lousy shots? At the start of the series, the Storm Troopers destroy the Rebel, even in even numbers. Obi Wan even acknowledges that Imperial Troops are excellent marksmen. However, later in the series, they can't shoot anything! A group of them even retreated when attacked by Han Solo, who was alone! What made them so terrible? Here's the speculation, could the Storm Troopers have gotten orders to not kill the Millennium Falcon crew? The answer: It makes sense. They needed to track them to find the Rebel forces, and their plans. We will likely never know the truth, but I like to speculate that the Storm Troopers had orders to let them live. The E.T. - Star Wars Connection In E.T., when they are trick or treating, E.T. sees a kid dressed as Yoda, and gets excited. He proceeds to follow the kid, pointing and saying "home." This leads us to believe that either Star Wars happened close to the time as the movie ET, or ET was incredibly old. Then in episode one, in the senate we see a pod of ET's known as Grebleips. Which is Spielberg spelled backwards. Neat! Why didn't Chewbacca get the Medal of Bravery at the end of A New Hope? Ok, so first the medal of bravery was a Rebel medal, which was the highest honor that any individual could receive. Luke got a medal, Han got a medal, why not Chewbacca? Even in the novelized version of A New Hope, Chewbacca got a medal. So why not medal in the movie? The explanation is fairly simple. When filming A New Hope, Princess Leia wasn't tall enough to reach Chewey's neck. In the production process, they decided it didn't look right. Carrie Fisher's 5'1, just wasn't enough to reach Chewbacca's 8ft shoulders. Of course, this explanation wasn't enough for the fans. So later in an interview, George Lucas addressed the issue. Apparently Wookies don't like medals. So instead of offending the medal hating Wookie, they sent a group of alliance officers to Chewey's planet and throw him a party. There, medal problem solved. Sadly this still wasn't enough to appease the fans. So finally, in 1997 at the MTV Movie awards, Carrie Fisher presented him with his medal. Finally, peace in the Star Wars Universe. To be continued.... Probably.