Empire Strikes Back 40th Anniversary Special On Newsstands
It wasn’t just the Rebels who had trouble in the snow….
Are you a sucker for a newsstand? Yep. Me too.
There are stacks and stacks of magazines in my personal collection of ephemera. But publications about “Star Wars” are higher in count than anything else (and I covered hockey for the better part of two decades).
Moreover, I am not stopping that collection. If Lucasfilm publishes it, I am probably buying it (much to my wife’s chagrin).
For example, I just picked this up:
Nevertheless, Lucasfilm persists, and so do I.
Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back 40th Anniversary Special
On June 1, the StarWars.com team posted about a new magazine focused on a film considered by many the definitive Star Wars movie: The Empire Strikes Back.
The Mothership posted:
In StarWars.com’s exclusive excerpt from Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back 40th Anniversary Special, a rich celebration of Episode V from the makers of Star Wars Insider (and on sale now), we learn the genesis of Hoth, from George Lucas’ original ideas for the locale, to design, to shooting in Norway.
Much To Learn, You Still Have
In the excerpt, StarWars.com highlighted:
- Hoth was not originally called “Hoth.”
- George Lucas discusses the “Ice Planet” saying 1977: “We could start on the Ice Planet, which would be striking. We’ve never been there before, an underground installation in a giant snowbank. Very hostile, with wind blowing around and the cold.”
- Filming started on Monday, March 5, 1979, under quite unfortunate circumstances: a trench that had been dug a few days before by the construction crew was buried in snow, meaning that none of the planned scenes could be shot
- In order to reach the shooting location (Finse, Norway), Harrison Ford had to “take a train, two taxis and was eventually picked up by a snowplow twenty-three miles from Finse.”
- And, finally, Hoth has an elliptical orbit which takes 526 days to round its sun.
Flash Gordon, Here I Come
Never mind that reading just this excerpt gave me some Star Wars homework as the DotCom’ers added: “From the Ice Kingdom of Mongo featured in Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon comics series (March 12, 1939, to April 7, 1940) to Howard Hawks’s The Thing from Another World (1951), several influences shaped Hoth’s concept and development.”
Guess I am going on a deep dive – into the snow! #MTFBWY
Tell us: What is your favorite Star Wars film, and why? Answer down in the comments.
Feature Image: Lucasfilm