Star Wars Behind-The-Scenes Images Dissect The Mos Eisley Cantina Sequence

By David Wharton | Published

This article is more than 2 years old

Cantina1The original Star Wars is filled with unforgettable scenes, but if you had to pick one that, purely from a visual standpoint, most captured the imagination of those of us who grew up enraptured by George Lucas’ galaxy far, far away, I think the Mos Eisley cantina sequence would have to be near the top of the list. It introduced Han Solo as an epic badass who shoots first (latter-day revisionism be damned), but it also gave us a sense of the sheer crazy diversity of Luke Skywalker’s universe, something we hadn’t much up to that point in the film. The inhabitants of that cantina made the Star Wars universe feel huge and strange and wonderfully real, and this amazing batch of behind-the-scenes photos give you a look at what went into populating that wretched hive of scum and villainy.

The pictures were collected by Raiders of the Lost Tumblr, and they include quite a few shots I’ve never run across before. You’ve got everything from views of the makeup work in process…

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…to models and blueprints laying out the geography of the cantina itself…

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…to this array of familiar faces.

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I also have to give kudos to DangerousMinds for steering us toward the pics, and for reminding us that the legendary Ron Cobb also helped design many of the cantina critters, which in turn gives us an excuse to run these.

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Let’s hope Episode VII, and all the Star Wars material to follow, continues to spin dreams as crazy as those that populated Mos Eisley.