The Episode

We, at Totes Recall, force ourselves to awaken our memories of Star Wars (1977) Episode Four: The First One. We cover whether this is the one with ewoks, Princess Leia's snapchat, and the coolest Star Wars character, Chewbacca.

Listen

The Ratings

Data to Come

The Trailer

Totes Regrets

By Dan Linden

Live long and prosper, fellow Starskies and Hutts! Several decades in, the roots of Star Wars run deep in the pop culture landscape, so we had a LOT to say about it and a LOT of those things were said without 100% confidence that they were true. So it's time for everyone's favorite Totes Recall segment, Lucasfilm Properties Fact Check. Warp speed!

Alec Guinness did not like this movie

Did Sir Alec Guinness aka Obi-Wan Kenobi aka Ben Kenobi aka The Delightful Sand Kook not have the most positive attitude about Star Wars? He did not, at least not at the time of filming. In a correspondence to a friend, he called it "fairy-tale rubbish" and said that "new rubbish dialogue reaches me every other day on wadges of pink paper – and none of it makes my character clear or even bearable." Ouch. But he also got 2% of the earnings as part of his casting agreement. After all this time and the continued profitability of the movie, that's enough credits to make even a Ferengi say "Muad'Dib!"

George Lucas did not like the cantina music

Jaquette suggested that maybe George was not keen on the music that ended up being used for the famous (and delightfully muppet-filled) cantina scene. But according to this interview with frequent Totes Recall subject John "Thick" Williams, George Lucas actually wanted something along the lines of what we got:
And I said to George, "What do you think we should do?" And George said, "I don't know" and sort of scratched his head. He said, "Well I have an idea. What if these little creatures on this planet way out someplace, came upon a rock and they lifted up the rock and underneath was sheet music from Benny Goodman's great swing band of the 1930s on planet Earth? And they looked at this music and they kind of deciphered it, but they didn't know quite how it should go, but they tried. And, uh, why don't you try doing that? What would these space creatures, what would their imitation of Benny Goodman sound like?"

21. Star Wars