Ralph McQuarrie

So, during the server downtime yesterday, I did the only thing I could do - read about Star Wars. Plunging head-first down the internet rabbit hole, I ended up spending about an hour looking through the amazing concept art of Ralph McQuarrie.

I'm sure many of you are already familiar with McQuarrie's work, but for anyone who isn't - he's pretty much the guy who invented the visual esthetic of the Star Wars universe. If you pick any single visually cool thing from the original Star Wars movies - C3P0 and R2D2 wandering across an endless desert waste; Darth Vader's helmet and breathing apparatus; a shadowy, wretched hive of scum and villainy populated by a variety of species; the Millennium Falcon being drawn slowly in to the Death Star; X-wings rocketing down the trench run into a hail of fire - pretty much all of these visual moments were at one point the brainchild of McQuarrie. In fact, his early concept art purportedly played an important role in getting the first Star Wars movie made, convincing a room of studio execs that George Lucas's vision was worth pursuing.

Check it out if you have a few minutes - whether you've seen it before or not, his work is a fascinating piece of the history of Star Wars, and is really inspiring to boot:

http://www.starwars.com/news/ralph_mcqua...bered.html

http://galactic-voyage.com/Ralph%20McQua...20Hope.htm

I think the biggest failing of the prequels for me was that they did not fit visually with the older movies. I could deal with the wooden acting and the lousy dialogue (let's face it, the first three were no paragons of screenwriting and acting perfection), but it just didn't fit right visually. Its a shame McQuarrie wasn't the lead storyboard artist on the second three as well.