Mark Hamill’s Witty Response To Paleontologist's Newest Discovery
Ever the joker, Mark Hamill’s social media once again made a few of us laugh out loud. Recently, the Museum Archive posted a tweet about a 3,300-year-old claw of the now-extinct bird “Moa.” Honestly, this author thought it looked like an over-sized desiccated chicken foot.
On the other hand, our resident not-archeologist and not-paleontologist of Star Wars pointed out that it looked like something else.
Perhaps our hero Luke Skywalker was still having nightmares about this giant reptilian beast. Maybe this picture invoked Mark Hamil’s long buried memories. After all, the model version of the rancor still looked pretty gross and horrifying.
The rancor first appeared on screen in Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi. Luke had tracked down Han Solo (now frozen in carbonite) to the palace of Jabba the Hutt on Tatooine. During “negotiations” between our fledgling Jedi and the Hutt crime lord, Luke Force pulled a blaster to his hand. Before he could fire off a bolt, Jabba the Hutt hit a hidden button that opened the trap door in the floor, dropping Luke and an unfortunate Gamorrean guard (who just wanted to hang out peacefully in Jabba’s palace) into the rancor’s enclosure below. The rancor, lovingly named Pateesa, quickly fed on the Gamorrean to the chagrin of other Gamorrean guards above (We wonder if they would look for a different post tomorrow. Maybe somewhere far from the rancor pit?). One average-sized Gamorrean was not enough for the rancor Pateesa, however, and he headed for Luke next. Fortunately, even though he was unarmed (his lightsaber was hidden within R2-D2 at this time), Luke had the Force with him. In true David and Goliath fashion, he hefted a decent sized skull at the control panel on the wall right as Pateesa was situated beneath the heavy door. The heavy door pierced and crushed the monstrosity, killing him instantly. As Pateesa’s handler mourned the rancor’s death, Jabba the Hutt decreed that Luke and his friends be executed. They were to die a slow painful death slowly digesting in the Sarlaac’s stomach. We all knew what happened after that out at the Great Pit of Carkoon.
According to the documentary Empire of Dreams: The Story of the Star Wars Trilogy, which looked at the making of the original trilogy, the rancor was originally to be portrayed by an actor in a suit. However, this arrangement failed to create the terrifying effects everyone wanted to see on film. Instead, they constructed a new rancor from a rod-operated puppet, and used a high-speed camera to slow its movements, creating the illusion of a much much larger creature. As film technology progressed and CGI techniques were invented, the image of rancor would be improved upon in the Special Edition and in subsequent releases of Return of the Jedi. The end result was an even bigger, more menacing, more terrifying creature that would continue to haunt many today. Ben Burtt, sound designer for the Star Wars movies, explained that he created the growls of the rancor by tweaking the sound of his neighbor’s little dachshund. There were some “cute” elements to the rancor after all.
According to lore, rancors were native to the planet Dathomir, which Star Wars fans would recognize as the homeworld of the Nightsisters (also known as the Witches of Dathomir), and Darth Maul. They were inherently gentle creatures, and were even domesticated by the Nightsisters. However, their violent tendencies could be nurtured over time. Perhaps the human handler Malakili had seen the rancor’s better side, which would explain his extreme grief at its death.
The story of the rancor did not end with Return of the Jedi. We would see the rancor in Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Clone Force 99 mentioned fighting them in Star Wars: The Bad Batch. The recent references of the rancor probably reminded Mark Hamill of the creature. Creators of Return of the Jedi had previously described the concept of the rancor as “a cross between a bear and a potato.” Therefore, the rancor did not exist in our prehistoric time, right?
Source: Comic Book, Wookeepedia