Spoilers Why was Luke so amazed of the size of Mos Eisley in ANH?

[Reverend]

From the 4th Draft: -

8 EXT. ANCHORHEAD SETTLEMENT - POWER STATION - DAY 8

Heat waves radiate from the dozen or so bleached white buildings.
Luke pilots his landspeeder through the dusty empty street of the
tiny settlement. An old WOMAN runs to get out of the way of the
speeding vehicle, shaking her fist at Luke as he flies past.

WOMAN
I've told you kids to slow down!

Luke pulls up behind a low concrete service station that is all
but covered by the shifting desert sands.

47 EXT. TATOOINE - BLUFF OVERLOOKING MOS EISLEY SPACEPORT - DAY 47

The speeder stops on a bluff overlooking the spaceport
at MOS EISLEY. It is a haphazard array of low gray concrete
structures and semidomes. A harsh gale blows across the
stark canyon floor. Luke adjusts his goggles and walks to
the edge of the craggy bluff where Ben is standing.

The thing to remember here is that a script is not some cast iron holy writ. It's a sketch to be further developed in the shooting process, and then again in the edit. And even a script can be compromised as a filmmaker anticipates what is and is not possible to put in front of a camera.

What people think of as a "tiny" settlement depends largely on one's own experience, but honestly though, in my mind if Luke is something of a self insert character for Lucas, then Anchorhead should be broadly like Modesto, and from what I can tell, that seems about right in terms of scale, just a little denser and way dustier.

I'm glad we finally got to see it, same as with Alderaan getting a lot of screentime. But i'm not sure if the way Anchorhead was depicted fits with Lucas intention, when we first saw Mos Eisley in ANH.

At least with what he intended for Mos Eisley to be like, before he thought about changing things for the SE.

According to Lucas, the version of Mos Eisley we saw in the special edition WAS the version he intended. What people saw in theatres in '77 was the highly compromised, scaled back version he could manage on the budget and time that he had.

 

[Unimatrix Q]

According to Lucas, the version of Mos Eisley we saw in the special edition WAS the version he intended. What people saw in theatres in '77 was the highly compromised, scaled back version he could manage on the budget and time that he had.

To be fair, it could be that George always had the Mos Eisley from the special edition in his mind.

But on the other side, he seems to be as honest about these things as Obi Wan was to Luke in ANH about Vader

 

[Reverend]

To be fair, it could be that George always had the Mos Eisley from the special edition in his mind.

But on the other side, he seems to be as honest about these things as Obi Wan was to Luke in ANH about Vader

I can't imagine why he'd lie. I mean, what would be the point? He's never been shy about saying when he's changed his mind on something.

 

[Unimatrix Q]

I can't imagine why he'd lie. I mean, what would be the point? He's never been shy about saying when he's changed his mind on something.

Remember when he said in an interview that he split the original script for Star Wars in three parts, because it was too long, to create the OT, for example.

And how he talked about his plans for the ST in the late eighties and early nineties, just to say around the time when he did the prequels that he never wanted to do sequels. Only to create a treatment for the ST, before he sold his company to Disney.

 

[Reverend]

Remember when he said in an interview that he split the original script for Star Wars in three parts, because it was too long, to create the OT, for example.

That's essentially true.
It's why they re-used the Death Star Battle Finale for RotJ, because they stole it for ANH in the first place (sans wookies) so it'd actually have an ending instead of just rolling credits once they escape the Death Star. He just put the wookies back in, cut them in half and called them Ewoks. It's also why RotJ starts like a Bond movie with a separate adventure that has nothing to do with the second half, because without it, they didn't have enough story left to fill out a whole movie. (See also literally everything on Hoth.)
People just take this WAY too literally, thinking it means he's saying the entirety of the other two screenplays were in the original script, where he's mostly just talking in terms of major plot movements and set pieces. For example "hero gets Jedi training from a Master" is totally a thing that was supposed to happen in the middle, so that's what tESB was built around. Only since they killed off the Master so Alec Guinness didn't just vanish into the scenery with nothing to do for the third act of ANH, they had to invent a new master.

And how he talked about his plans for the ST in the late eighties and early nineties, just to say around the time when he did the prequels that he never wanted to do sequels. Only to create a treatment for the ST, before he sold his company to Disney.

Those are indeed plans he had, and there are notes to prove it. Plans change. Priorities shift. Wives file divorces. Kids grow up and go off to university. That's life.

 

[Crewman6]

Yep. The Jawa confirmed it, when he talked with Ben.

No, the Jawa just said, he could "smell Obi Wan from Anchorhead."

Meaning the Jawa could smell Obi Wan from where he was, in Anchorhead.

That doesn't mean the town in question was actually Anchorhead. It was Mos Eisley.

 

[Unimatrix Q]

No, the Jawa just said, he could "smell Obi Wan from Anchorhead."

Meaning the Jawa could smell Obi Wan from where he was, in Anchorhead.

That doesn't mean the town in question was actually Anchorhead. It was Mos Eisley.

It wasn't Mos Eisley but Anchorhead.

https://www.cbr.com/obi-wan-kenobi-anchorhead-star-wars-locale-disney-plus/

If you don't believe the article, here's an FAQ with Doug Chiang:

https://www.eonline.com/news/133243...iang-answers-all-our-obi-wan-kenobi-questions

That's Mos Eisley:

https://s3.us-west-1.wasabisys.com/.../images-optimised/obi-wan-kenobi1x01_0370.jpg

 

[Crewman6]

If you don't believe the article, here's an FAQ with Doug Chiang:

https://www.eonline.com/news/133243...iang-answers-all-our-obi-wan-kenobi-questions

They need to do better PR then, because the vast majority of the internet has gotten it wrong.

 

[Unimatrix Q]

They need to do better PR then, because the vast majority of the internet has gotten it wrong.

Must have been the usual suspects from YouTube, who got it wrong. Glad i don't watch their trash videos

By the way, wookieepedia confirms that it was Anchorhead too:

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Part_I

So i guess it's clear now.

 

[Tuskin38]

All cities on Tatooine look the same at that angle.

 

[Crewman6]

Must have been the usual suspects from YouTube, who got it wrong. Glad i don't watch their trash videos

By the way, wookieepedia confirms that it was Anchorhead too:

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Part_I

So i guess it's clear now.

Huh. I actually glanced at Wookieepedia myself. They say the city in the opening IS Mos Eisley, the rest Anchorhead (I didn't read that far!)

But, of course, it's not clear in the show that they're visiting two different locales unless you're very good at scrutinizing brief establishing shots.

 

[Unimatrix Q]

That's essentially true.
It's why they re-used the Death Star Battle Finale for RotJ, because they stole it for ANH in the first place (sans wookies) so it'd actually have an ending instead of just rolling credits once they escape the Death Star. He just put the wookies back in, cut them in half and called them Ewoks. It's also why RotJ starts like a Bond movie with a separate adventure that has nothing to do with the second half, because without it, they didn't have enough story left to fill out a whole movie. (See also literally everything on Hoth.)
People just take this WAY too literally, thinking it means he's saying the entirety of the other two screenplays were in the original script, where he's mostly just talking in terms of major plot movements and set pieces. For example "hero gets Jedi training from a Master" is totally a thing that was supposed to happen in the middle, so that's what tESB was built around. Only since they killed off the Master so Alec Guinness didn't just vanish into the scenery with nothing to do for the third act of ANH, they had to invent a new master.


Those are indeed plans he had, and there are notes to prove it. Plans change. Priorities shift. Wives file divorces. Kids grow up and go off to university. That's life.

That's true. But the problem with George isn't that he changed plans but that he was often dishonest about these things.

Like when he said that he never had any plans for a sequel trilogy, for example. Although earlier statements say something else...

 

[Reverend]

That's true. But the problem with George isn't that he changed plans but that he was often dishonest about these things.

Like when he said that he never had any plans for a sequel trilogy, for example. Although earlier statements say something else...

Read it however you like, nothing I've heard or read him say over the last 30-40 years reads as blatantly dishonest to me. I've seen him state an intention to do X or Y at various points, only to end up doing Z instead. That's not dishonesty, that's just called changing your mind.
Also when people talk about a sequel trilogy, they're not always thinking of the same thing George was when he spoke of episodes 7 and beyond. Prior to RotJ he had the idea that he'd do another 4 movies; but because of one thing and another he decided he'd rather be done with it and focus on raising his kids and taking a more supervisory role at the company, rather than taking on massive productions that just eat 4 years of his life at a time. At one point he thought about 4 or 5 prequel movies; one prologue/Episode Zero film that's basically what TPM ended up being (Anakin's backstory), followed by two clone wars movies, and a separate Fall of the Republic/Jedi movie that takes place years after. But then he changed his mind. People insist on reading interviews and taking what he says as absolute gospel instead of it being simply how he feels about something in that moment. So of course they don't all line up. Context matters.

 

[Unimatrix Q]

Read it however you like, nothing I've heard or read him say over the last 30-40 years reads as blatantly dishonest to me. I've seen him state an intention to do X or Y at various points, only to end up doing Z instead. That's not dishonesty, that's just called changing your mind.
Also when people talk about a sequel trilogy, they're not always thinking of the same thing George was when he spoke of episodes 7 and beyond. Prior to RotJ he had the idea that he'd do another 4 movies; but because of one thing and another he decided he'd rather be done with it and focus on raising his kids and taking a more supervisory role at the company, rather than taking on massive productions that just eat 4 years of his life at a time. At one point he thought about 4 or 5 prequel movies; one prologue/Episode Zero film that's basically what TPM ended up being (Anakin's backstory), followed by two clone wars movies, and a separate Fall of the Republic/Jedi movie that takes place years after. But then he changed his mind. People insist on reading interviews and taking what he says as absolute gospel instead of it being simply how he feels about something in that moment. So of course they don't all line up. Context matters.

So just like Obi Wan, he told the truth "from a certain point of view"

 

[Reverend]

So just like Obi Wan, he told the truth "from a certain point of view"

I wouldn't even go that far. Thoughts and ideas change, as do our memories of them. I challenge anyone to reliably remember precisely what they were thinking vs. what they said they were thinking upto and including several decades prior. Most people can't even manage that in the space of a day!

Show me solid proof that he knowingly lied, then I might concede the point. Otherwise it's just vague and unsubstantiated insinuations based on pre-conceived notions and bad faith arguments.

 

[DigificWriter]

Accusing George Lucas of outright lying about certain things is a surefire way to get me to stop paying attention to you and taking anything you have to say seriously.

 

[Unimatrix Q]

https://www.thegeektwins.com/2015/06/newly-found-star-wars-script-proves.html?m=1

 

[Tuskin38]

Accusing George Lucas of outright lying about certain things is a surefire way to get me to stop paying attention to you and taking anything you have to say seriously.

So you just ignore the evidence of his revisionism?

 

[DigificWriter]

So you just ignore the evidence of his revisionism?

No, because revisionism isn't the same thing as lying.

 

[Tuskin38]

No, because revisionism isn't the same thing as lying.

It most certianlly is.
Claiming something was that it isn't, is lyinf.