From bar patron to bounty hunter "Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back" [Mizumaru Kawahara's CINEMONOLOGUE Vol.48]

robot and insect head

I can't forget the droid IG-88 either. First of all, it's amazing that he's a bounty hunter even though he's a droid. Until then, I had always thought that robots always had a living owner and were only their servants, but when I learned about IG-88, that common sense shattered. It was later determined that this type of droid was originally created as an assassin droid or a hunter droid, and the same type of droid, IG-11, appears in The Mandalorian . It has a cylindrical head and stick-like limbs, and in the movie it was literally just standing on a stick, which stirred the imagination of how it would fight, and in the drama it became a reality.

This cylindrical head also appears in the bar in the previous game. Inside the U-shaped counter, along with tubes and tanks, several IG head parts are lined up, almost intact. Although the part's purpose is unknown in the movie, it is actually one of the parts for a jet engine manufactured by Rolls-Royce, so it is likely that they were able to obtain a lot of this part. This extremely industrial-looking part now looks like nothing more than the face of an assassin droid, establishing it as a unique character.

There's another droid bounty hunter. 4-LOM is interesting because it has a droid body like C-3PO with a creepy insect-shaped head, and like 3PO, it has slender arms and carries a dangerous rifle, which makes it look unbalanced. The insect-headed droid is a Death Star droid (so-called because it's stationed in an evil space fortress) that appeared in the previous film, but with a slightly different look. Although you can hardly see it on screen, there is an insect-headed Alien that looks exactly like the Fly Man from `` Fear of the Fly Man '' among the patrons of the bar, and this head is closer to 4-LOM.

4-LOM's living sidekick, Zacchus, also has an insect face, but the two characters' faces are so similar that a famous mistake occurred when Kenner's action figure packaging was given the wrong name. (The figure's name was important information at a time when there was still little documentation for fans, and it was widely assumed that the droid was Zuckus and the Alien was 4-LOM until Lucasfilm corrected it in 1989).

Zuckus was designed by Ralph McQuarrie, who was the overall concept artist for the film, and costume designer John Moro, who did many of the sketches of the bar's patrons. Moro's sketches of the bar patrons are very simple line drawings, but the prototypes for the costumes and costumes that were created later can be seen, and there is also a figure that seems to be the aforementioned ``Fly Man'' Tizizvit, a stocky figure. The roots of Zacchus can be felt, such as the figure wearing a long robe. Insectoid droids and Alien often appear in SW, in part because insectoid aliens (often as savage and vicious creatures) are iconic to classic space operas and pulp science fiction. Dew.

Dengar, the only human other than Boba, has no connection to the bar's patrons, but he wears Imperial Stormtrooper and Snowtrooper armor, and the rifle he holds in his hand. It belongs to the Imperial Army (IG-88 and 4-LOM also have trooper rifles). You can call it reuse, but you can feel the details of the worldview, such as the supply and release of equipment.

Moreover, these processes that created such attractive characters as Bossk and IG-88 cannot be dismissed as mere reuse. One of the charms of the SW original trilogy is its handmade feel, but the ingenuity of making good use of what already exists to create something new also supports SW Galaxy, which is full of novelty, fine detail, and a sense of life. think. The concepts of the bar and the bounty hunter are both based on the Western worldview, and the other characters, motifs, special effects, and cinematography have been upgraded from the previous work. In The Empire Strikes Back, the galaxy's rogues also evolve from bar patrons to bounty hunters.

Illustrations and text: Mizumaru Kawahara

Born in 1991. Illustrator. In addition to illustrations and covers for magazines and books, there are also illustration columns for movies and books. New movie reviews are currently being serialized in "SPUR" (Shueisha).

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