Star Wars Wednesday: A Tribute to Ralph McQuarrie

A tribute to Ralph McQuarrie

          While the man who created Star Wars is common knowledge, many of the men and women who helped his vision become a reality are lesser known. Today we’ll be looking at the legacy and art of Ralph McQuarrie, and how it shaped the now iconic look of the Original Trilogy.

          But who is Mr. McQuarrie? Most know him as the most prolific concept artist for the original Star Wars, but he’s also worked on other franchises, including E.T., Indiana Jones and Star Trek.

          What most don’t know is that his famous matte paintings were more than just concepts for the costume and prop departments to bounce ideas off of. His paintings and vision for what Star Wars should look like were instrumental in convincing 20th Century Fox that this is an idea worth investing money and time into. McQuarrie was also the source of many aspects of characters that have since become iconic, including Darth Vader’s breathing apparatus.

          I thought it’d be fun to look back at some of his pieces and see what changed, what stayed the same, and how he impacted the galaxy we know today.

          First of all, here’s the first ever image he completed for Star Wars. Odds are you’ve seen this one before, as it’s a favourite to be used in museum pieces and articles about the history of the franchise. Regardless, here’s the starting point for series-staples C-3PO and R2-D2. This alternate 3PO especially has quite a bit of history to him. He’s inspired by and strongly resembles the robot from the 1927 German sci-fi film Metropolis. He was also the deciding factor in determining Anthony Daniels’ choice in whether he would take the role or not. He was about to turn them down when he saw the painting, and was so enthralled with the character’s design that it alone compelled him to accept.

          Similarly, here we see the origins of Darth Vader. As I mentioned before it was McQuarrie who first suggested that Vader should wear a breathing apparatus, inspired by George Lucas who requested the character should have an “evil samurai” type of feel to him. Noting that the script called for Vader to have a space suit of some description so he could travel between planets and ships without dying in the vacuum of space, McQuarrie combined Lucas’ samurai idea with his own apparatus idea, creating Vader’s iconic helmet as a result.

          Last but not least for character origins, here we see the first art for Chewbacca. Lucas originally wanted Chewie to be more like a giant lemur than anything, and this art definitely bears some resemblance to the furry creatures of Madagascar. This old Chewie also bears resemblance to Zeb the Lasat from Star Wars Rebels, and with good reason. While making Rebels showrunner Dave Filoni wanted to convey the Original Trilogy setting as opposed to the Prequel Trilogy look his previous show, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, had. To do this he designed the show’s backgrounds and characters to resemble Ralph McQuarrie’s art, including repurposing old artwork that never saw the light of day, including lemur Chewie over here.

          There’s a lot of interesting stuff going on here. For one thing, the Stormtroopers on the far right in the back are equipped with shields. If only the poor guys had those in the movies, then maybe they would live a little longer. There’s also the central Stormtrooper with a lightsaber, which, let’s be honest, is totally awesome. Why haven’t we seen something like that in a real Star Wars story? Besides Finn, I mean.

          It’s also interesting to note the design of the Death Star here. It’s much less black and dark blue like it is in the final product and much more white and sterile. You get the impression that our heroes are out of their element here, and seeing a garden-variety enemy using the same weapon as the Jedi master in the back gives off a feel of hopelessness, like if every single opponent is just as skilled if not better than the old hero we’ve been following all this time. It’s a great concept.

          And last but not least, one of my personal favourites. Initially the climactic duel between Luke, Vader and the Emperor was going to take place in Vader’s castle on a lava planet. This idea was finally realized in Rogue One in the scene where Director Krennic visited the castle on Mustafar, but as most great Star Wars ideas are, it was originally envisioned by Mr. McQuarrie. While it’s an awesome concept to have Palpatine be waiting in a literal dragon’s den, it doesn’t exactly give room for Luke and Vader to battle. Still, I’m glad it was revisited eventually.

          This is just scratching the surface of what Ralph McQuarrie was able to contribute to Star Wars as a whole, and I wholeheartedly encourage you to seek out his other work if you enjoyed this brief look. His Jabba’s Palace art is especially beautiful. I think it’s very safe to say that without Ralph’s vision and eye for design, the galaxy of Star Wars would be a very different place.