After the very successful ANH radio drama, NPR decided to go for a repeat two years later with Empire Strikes Back. It's a largely similar affair, most of the writers, directors, etc. come back as well as the majority of the cast (the largest replacement being Wedge), sound effects, music, etc. Billy Dee Williams steps back in as Lando, which was a pleasant surprise.
It's all in all a less inspired affair, in my opinion. Despite Empire being a smidge longer, the production drops over an hour of length. In particular, Ken Hiller's narrator gets the short end of the stick, doing a lot less of the mythology building that's so charming in the original. Overall, it's harder to follow (I think you could keep a good picture of what's going on in ANH in your mind without seeing the movie. ESB is a little confusing at times even having seen the movie a bunch.) Daley continues to lean into his over-characterization of Han (who veers outright into an asshole to Luke and Leia a few times) and 3PO (consistently annoying). Again, a few extra scenes are inserted (primarily in the first few episodes) but they don't feel as useful (a random Rebel convoy getting shot up, and Han and Luke getting more "on air" time after the Wampa attack.) It's not bad, but after the tour-de-Force of the original, it's simply adequate. While I'd argue that the original radio drama is the best adaptation of A New Hope, Empire's much stronger novel edges out the radio production easily.
A few notable moments:
Merwin Goldsmith's General Rieekan really leans into the second syabble of ChewBACKa.
Luke's very determined to walk back from the Wampa's lair , despite explicitly noting his lack of supplies. Why he doesn't try to shelter in the cave is a mystery, and makes him look like an idiot.
In the same sequence, Solo comes back, checks in with the guard, gets waved past a sentry. It's an off combination, that seems to just be there to fill time. Either the Rebellion should have tight security (with Han getting double checked by the sentry) or they should just wave him through to start with (how many Imperials are riding around Hoth on tauntauns?) It's not really clear why the scene needs to be there at all.
As is the case in a lot of early EU stuff, no one (particularly the Empire) seems to know anybody. They spend a fair amount of time (presumably for the audience's benefit) talking about how they need to find a seemingly mysterious Princess Leia, and some weird ship called "The Millennium Falcon". It's really odd that the top terrorists in the galaxy are evidently unknown to most of the Imperial military.
The normally great John Lithgow slips into the "wrong" Frank Oz interpretation for Yoda, doing more of a Grover.
Vader can't seem to get out a line of dialogue to Luke without throwing his first name in. It makes him seem a lot more familiar and hurts the "is he or isn't it?" factor of the (misquoted) "I am your father!)
Next week, I round out the radio dramas with Jedi. (Which wasn't actually produced for radio.)
Splinter of the Mind's Eye Sweet Ralph Macquarie cover art, courtesy of Wookiepedia! Summary: Luke and Leia crash on a swamp planet. Leia has PTSD. Luke has a crush on her. They go looking for the Kaiburr Crystal with cranky Force grandma and replacement Chewie twins. Darth Vader shows up and mostly kicks their asses, but he falls in a hole. What it introduces: Naming things X of the Y : Which would hold for 4 of the 9 movies, 70ish novels, and numerous video games, comics, etc. The Kaiburr Crystal: Shards of which would become the most desirable lightsaber focusing crystals in the later EU. Kyber crystals would make an appearance in the new canon as both lightsaber crystals and part of the Death Star's superlaser. Commentary: Splinter of the Mind's Eye is widely considered the first book in the Expanded Universe. It was published in 1978, about half a year after the original release of Star Wars/A New Hope. Preceding it are a few of the Marvel Comics (which I'll be...
Return of the Jedi Radio Drama Best scene in the ROTJ drama, and possibly the whole trilogy. The Return of The Jedi adaptation has an interesting backstory. After Reagan cut NPR's funding, they weren't able to produce a Return of The Jedi adaptation in the 80s. Highbridge Audio, the company that did the home releases for the first two dramas, eventually got most of the cast (minus Mark Hamill and Billy Dee Williams) and crew signed back on in 1996 so they could sell my dad a Return of The Jedi cd to put in my Christmas stocking. They did still get an NPR premiere. I'm kind of surprised we didn't listen to them live. My dad was an PBS/NPR fan who loved radio dramas, and I obviously loved Star Wars. Seems like something we'd have gone for. It's the last thing Brian Daley worked on. He died a few hours after recording wrapped. Because it wasn't produced until the mid 90s, it contains a few references to the expanded universe. Mara Jade gets a cameo to narrat...
Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game This was the go Star Wars cover art for just about anything for 20 years or so If you read any of the interviews Timothy Zahn, he talks about how he (and it sounds like a lot of the other early EU authors) got a box of West End Games sourcebooks to look at when he wrote HttE. I never played it, but I'd heard passing references over the years to how it was important for establishing this or that. I figured I'd look through a couple, go "Oh, neat, that's where that specific random droid's name came from!" and that would be the end of it. It is literally impossible to overstate how big of an influence these books had on the original Expanded Universe. It sounds crazy, but if you created an alternate universe where George Lucas never made ESB or RotJ , but somehow still had West End Games make the RPG and Zahn write the novels, I think the books would've come out less like the ones in our world than if you k...
Comments
Post a Comment