Via The Telegraph:
The ground-breaking Star Wars trilogy may have taken place in a galaxy far, far away, but a new book has revealed that the origins of famous characters such as R2D2 and Chewbacca were very much of this world.
Written by Chris Taylor, the book discloses how characters got their names and reveals that Harrison Ford came close to missing out on the part of Han Solo.
It also suggests that director George Lucas originally intended Star Wars to be the third of a trilogy of films which would secretly protest against the Vietnam War.
Referring to the origins of some of the films’ most memorable characters, the book – called How Star Wars Conquered the Universe – reveals that the names of the Wookiees and the robot R2D2 date back to notes made by Lucas years before filming began.
While making his first film, the 1971 science fiction feature THX 1138, Lucas was working with voice actor DJ Terry McGovern, who brought his friend and fellow Army reservist Bill Wookey along to the studio.
At one point, McGovern, who had been smoking marijuana, ad-libbed the line “I think I just ran over a Wookey back there,” which did not make it into the film but which Lucas thought was hilarious and wrote down, changing the spelling slightly.
The most famous Wookiee in the franchise was Chewbacca, a 200-year-old incarnation of the hirsute, bear-like species.
R2D2’s name came from the rolls of film used during the sound edit on American Graffiti, which were labelled either R for Radio or D for Dialogue, and numbered. When Walter Murch, the film’s sound editor shouted out: “I need R2D2,” Lucas stored it up for later.
Commenting on the subversive origins of the director’s blockbuster space trilogy, Mr Taylor claims that American Graffiti, the director’s 1973 coming of age movie set in 1962, was evocative of the peace and happiness enjoyed by the Vietnamese before the war.
In contrast Star Wars, released in 1977 but conceived well before the end of the conflict in 1975, was designed to show a fascistic aftermath ruled by an inflexible empire.
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Photo from The Telegraph