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The Return of Chewbacca
BrunoC writes "It's official! Peter Mayhew is going to play everyone's favorite wookie once again: Chewbacca is returning in Episode III, currently in pre-production phase. Peter says (quoted from StarWars.com) "I'm delighted to return as Chewbacca, I think his re-appearance in this film is a fitting way to tie the whole saga together, especially for Wookiee fans." Woa! Just for the records: Artoo and C-3PO will be there too! You can read the official annoucement here, at StarWars.com."
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After the original film was a colossal success and he was able to make sequels and spend more money on them he was finally able to do the forest battle he'd originally wanted, or at least something like it; however, having established (through Chewie) that Wookiees were a technologically adept people comfortable with spaceships and the like, he couldn't use Wookiees for the ground battle - part of the battle's whole reason for being was to have a technologically unsophisticated group of "primitives" overwhelm a technically superior force, and Lucas thought he'd established Wookiees as sufficiently technological that they no longer suited their original purpose. He therefore created Ewoks, who were smaller, but really amounted to the same thing as Wookiees in their original conception. Ewoks became smaller than humans (instead of larger, like Wookiees) mainly for practical considerations - not only would making them larger make them too much like Wookiees, they would also be harder to realize on screen (it's easier to find a lot of performers and stunt people the size of Kenny Baker and Warwick Davis than it is to find ones the size of Peter Mayhew, aside from which dozens or hundreds of small costumes could be made more quickly and cheaply than large ones - yes, it's that simple ;-) ).
Another take on the idea can be found in the early post-Star Wars novel Splinter of the Mind's Eye, by Alan Dean Foster. Foster had ghostwritten the original Star Wars novelization from Lucas's script, and the novelization was published under Lucas's name; Lucas had discussed some of his then-as-yet unused story concepts for SW with Foster, including the idea of a ground battle between Imperials and an alliance of Rebels with a low-tech alien society. Shortly after the movie opened, when it was clear it was going to be successful but not clear just how successful (that is, not yet certain there would be additional movies), Foster began writing Splinter, incorporating some of Lucas's original ideas (including that one), and it was published in early '78, although by that time preproduction had begun on The Empire Strikes Back (when Foster began the novel, apparently it was intended to be the "official" continuation of the Star Wars storyline. The novel's plot-central Force-amplifying crystal was another idea Lucas had in his early work on the saga, but unlike the battle it hasn't yet made it into a film, at least not in anything like its original form, though the "midi-chlorians" of Episode I may have roots in the same ideas).
Recall that in Ep 4, Chewbacca is identified as being over 200 years old. 20 years earlier means over 180 years old. I think Meyhew being 30 years older isn't going to make much of a difference. It does not bring him appreciably closer to either age for Chewbacca
-Rusty
You never know...
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