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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."

11 of 493 comments (clear)

  1. Remember: by rune2 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Always let the wookie win....

  2. Who cares? by Paladeen · · Score: 5, Insightful

    At this point I am so disillusioned with the new Star Wars films that I couldn't care less who'll feature in Episode III.

    The last two films have been unspeakably bad and I'm extremely skeptical that the next will be any better.

  3. Total of people in the Star Wars Universe: 26 by Gary+Yogurt · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How does everyone keep running into eachother? This galaxy of Lucas' is pretty tiny. Is Wedge going to run around in Episode III and introduce himself to everyone?

    1. Re:Total of people in the Star Wars Universe: 26 by NanoGator · · Score: 5, Interesting

      "How does everyone keep running into eachother? This galaxy of Lucas' is pretty tiny. Is Wedge going to run around in Episode III and introduce himself to everyone? "

      The theory I came up with is that the galaxy in Star Wars is VERY tiny, as "The Galaxy is on Orion's Belt" tiny. Not only does this explain why going from system to system is like going down to the store for a beer, it also explains how the Millineum Falcon can travel around various star systems with it's light-speed drive down.

      The movies make a HELL of a lot more sense with this understanding.

      --
      "Derp de derp."
  4. What about... by fishrokka · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...the rest of Chewie's family? Here's hoping Maula, Itchy, and Lumpy will also be making return appearances.

  5. Lucas to Mayhew by ath0mic · · Score: 5, Funny

    Lucas points to casting room:

    "I don't care what you smell... get in there"

  6. Folks please by Kelz · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you didn't like the movies don't take this post as an invitation for you to bash it. It seems like every time someone mentions some key word like "star wars" in a NEWS article, the same old damn topics always come up. I myself hated Jar Jar, but overall 1 and 2 were good movies! Lucas's "vision" was to create a precurser to the original star wars series, and he performed the task well imho. Lets keep the talk to Wookies and not weather the movie was good.

    This is not a troll, as trolls are green.

  7. Re:My God, the spoilers! by DA-MAN · · Score: 5, Funny

    A great many bothans died to get this information across, and you dare to complain?!?!

    --
    Can I get an eye poke?
    Dog House Forum
  8. Re:from what I heard... by Blondie-Wan · · Score: 5, Informative
    What became the ground battle (the forest part) of the Battle of Endor in Return of the Jedi was part of the early versions of the original story, back when Lucas first began working on "The Star Wars back in the '70s. Though Lucas always wanted to climax his space opera with a multi-tiered ground/space battle between the Imperial forces and rebels who had allied themselves with a low-tech society of hirsute anthropomorphic aliens (originally Wookiees), he was unable to incorporate it into the (first) movie, for lack of various resources, but still wanted to have at least one of his beloved Wookiees, so created the Chewbacca character to be Han's sidekick.

    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).

  9. Re:My God, the spoilers! by descentr · · Score: 5, Informative

    There's a simple solution to your problem. Turn off the Star Wars Prequels topic in your preferences. The creators of this site put that there for a reason. The editiors can't help you if you won't help yourself.

  10. Re:My God, the spoilers! by letxa2000 · · Score: 5, Insightful
    It's the characters that made the first Star Wars movies a hit. The characters in general and, specifically, Harrison Ford. If you take out Harrison Ford from the original movies you get, in all honesty, a pretty dull 6 hours of movies. Try to imagine it--he's really the only one with any charisma or humor whatsoever.

    What's been lacking in Episode I and II isn't so much a really cool plot--the plots of the other 3 weren't that impressive, they were just fun to watch due to how the characters played it out. What's been lacking in the first two Episodes is someone(s) who is/are truly humorous and/or charismatic.