George Lucas Stole Chewbacca, But It's Okay | Hacker News Reader

George Lucas Stole Chewbacca, But It's Okay

binarybonsai.com

13 pointschip5 comments

I saw Star Wars on TV recently - god it looks awesome, especially the early desert scene with red sand and gold c3po. Of course, it's probably because they adjusted the colour in later releases (a few times), but still. The added stuff looks gimmicky and unnecessary.

Chewbacca is an awesome name. I happened to need to burp while reading the article, and you know how I made it sound.

Although I'm sure the article is right about the sequence of early artwork and so on, it seems that the final creature was determined entirely at the end, by the practical matter of the guy wearing it, and that it needed to be friendly looking. He does look like a dog. All that remains from earlier is 1. ape-like; 2. bandolier

But he's right about chewie being a non-character. He's great, but just colour. It's unfortunate that there's no real relationship with Han - they 'talk", but there's no sense of anything there. While "side-kicks" were common (eg. watson, tonto, robin), there was always some friendship or connection, or even just meaningful cooperation, which isn't present with Chewie.

I'm still waiting for an explanation why Lando was wearing Han's clothes at the end of Empire Strikes Back. I love the original movies, not the newer 'enhanced' versions. I thought the fact that they used miniature models gave it a more vivid textural look that the CGI can't match.

I also love burping the Chewbacca call. Chewie is just Han's sub-altern. Although, I thought they did have meaningful cooperation though, the way Han could understand him and you could sense their familiarity with one another.

TIL subaltern. It's true they were familiar, but it was just more colour (including funny lines like "fly casual"), and didn't have any effect (or did it? was there any point where they acted on info conveyed, and we saw the result, or it meant something to the plot? Even Han telling Chewie what to do? Maybe there was.)

Also, it's harder to show a relationship when only one side speaks - maybe if I thought of it more as a man-dog relation (a subaltern)? But it's still possible to influence the plot, eg lassie.

I guess I saw that one way conversation as an example that Han knew Chewie very, very well, even being able to understand his completely foreign language. But I guess it's still so nostalgic to me that I try to explain any faults. :(

Don't worry, nostalgia or not, the whole thing still looks and feels amazing (IMHO). It's very easy pick apart a movie, and there's very little point in doing so. I think I might try to interpret it in your way. :)

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