Early Chewbacca Concept Art Illustrates Concerns Of Studio Execs
It's no secret that George Lucas' early ideas for Star Wars were, to put it lightly, very, very different from the final product we got. His original drafts featured everything from Luke being a 65-year old man with a robot head to Han Solo as a weird alien, which would have been detrimental to the film, and the story beats were all over the place. It wouldn't have been the simple, well-paced, enjoyable film we got, and would have instead gone down in history as an odd experimental sci-fi movie from a promising young director. Heck, an early title considered for it was Adventures of the Starkiller as taken from the Journal of the Whills, Saga I: The Star Wars. Thankfully, we got the changes, and thus we have Star Wars.
If nothing else, though, seeing a lot of the old concept art is highly entertaining. We get to see an idea of what could have been, and easily imagine what it would look like in the finished product. Recently, early concept art of Chewbacca, the Wookiee co-pilot of the Millennium Falcon, has been discussed again, and they're quite something.
Let's look at a few of the early designs. Looking at the first option, it's hard to imagine the iconic Wookiee growl coming from it. I'd see more growls and hisses and snarls as fitting. It doesn't look like a very friendly alien, much less one that is kind of huggable like Chewie. This was actually the inspiration for Zeb from Star Wars Rebels. The second one is closer to the Chewie we know, but looks more like if the Lorax really let himself go, dyed his fur, and took up piracy. The third one looks more like what we ended up getting, except stockier, clothed, and sporting a Wilford Brimley mustache. (Brimley would actually go on to star in 1985's Ewoks: The Battle for Endor.)
One of the big factors in his early design was the addition of clothes. Luke Skywalker actor Mark Hamill recently recently reiterated that early production worried that it simply wouldn't do for Chewie to be, of all things, naked. The studio suits originally attempted to put him in lederhosen (because studio executives always have amazing ideas and never say anything that's stupid). It's an amusing anecdote, and there's nothing to really indicate that this was an ongoing battle that Lucas had to put his foot down on, but it's interesting nonetheless.
Like most things with Star Wars, some of the early designs... didn't work. Chewie's design is perfect in its simplicity, and the factor of him being clothed or not just isn't a big deal. Honestly, it would probably take away from the character a little bit, as just comparing and contrasting, clothing just looks out of place on him.
Of course, everything about Star Wars was a gamble, even when it got streamlined down to a movie that people would actually watch and enjoy. There had never been a movie like Star Wars before, and, frankly, hasn't been one since, regardless of how many imitators pop up. Certainly nobody thought that it would become a cultural milestone and arguably the most successful media franchise of all time. Lighter sci-fi stuff like this wasn't really a genre back in the mid-seventies, so Lucas and Co pretty much had to build everything that would come to define the genre as we know it from the ground up. These early looks at what Chewie could have been from Ralph McQuarrie (a man without whom there would be no Star Wars) just highlights that.
Looking back at production, it's a miracle that we got the movie that we have. Would the movie have been ruined if Chewbacca looked like one of the early concepts? Certainly not. But he might not have been as popular and lovable. We'll never know. We'll just be happy that everything worked out.
Source(s): Cinema Blend