Star Wars in Death Valley
My sister Christine did an excellent job of stitching the scenes from Star Wars and Return of the Jedi together with the photos we took (the majority of them below from the awesome SLR camera she and her husband own, her husband Graeme photographed us). On the left are captured shots from the movie, on the right are me and Christine in exactly the same spot. We had no control over the weather so the shadows sometimes don't match. Also, I discovered that the Jabba's Palace scene from Return of the Jedi was filmed at sunset not sunrise (which was when we took our pictures) but without knowing which way the hills were facing until we actually found them we had a 50-50 shot at getting the light correct.
R2 and the Jawas
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These pictures were taken at Artist's Palette. The majority of visitors were looking at the amazing rock formations above and to the right of this picture. But not us, we were re-enacting R2 rolling along the canyons of Tatooine. My ever-patient wife Dee is holding up my original action figure of R2 in the spot where he originally travelled.
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Once we managed to descend into the wash of the arroyo we could see exactly where R2 originally rolled and my original action figure retraced his steps.
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The Jawas get nearer
In the film, the first rock we see Jawa eyes peering out from lay higher against the wall of Golden Canyon, it has since settled a bit so, no, I was not going to climb underneath.
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We took pictures in Golden Canyon of where stones fall next to R2 but in the interests of brevity I have not included them (can provide them if requested). Next R2 is peered at from behind a distinctive rock by a Jawa.
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Then the scene cuts back to R2.
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Then R2 is spied upon from a distance. Getting up into this spot was fairly easy, however I was relieved when what I suspected was a rattlesnake sitting there turned out to merely be a rock. Too bad the shadows don't match but this is definitely the spot.
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Ironically the reverse angle is not from this spot, it is actually from where the falling rocks are filmed a few feet away.
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The rest of the sequence had been filmed in Tunisia (R2 being shot by the Jawas) so next it fell to us to travel out of Golden Canyon and back to Artist's Palette to locate the Jawa Sandcrawler scene.
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The following day, we drove all the way up to Dante's View to see Mos Eisley Spaceport (a wretched hive of scum and villainy ... and yes both Christine and I said the line). I cheated slightly and had my classic action figures look out at the view even though the scene of Mark Hamill and Alec Guiness was filmed in Tunisia.
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The road to Jabba's Palace
As mentioned above, I mistakenly thought this scene filmed at 20 Mule Team Canyon was at sunrise so we got out there not long after dawn. Turns out it should have been done at sunset. Still, we got the pictures and even the action figures got in on the act.
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Christine had a heck of a time getting C-3PO to stay standing up.
Finally, we had just enough time to take one last picture. Ironically this was the last picture we took and yet it appears chronologically before any of these other pictures in Star Wars. Before R2 encounters the Jawas, there is a scene showing him and 3PO parting company in the desert. Although the majority of the scenes were filmed in Tunisia, Gerge Lucas felt the need for a pickup shot showing R2 rolling toward rocky mountains in the diastance. This shot was filmed several miles north at the Mesquite Sand Dunes. It took a bit of a hike to find an area with few bushes but we did manage and we made sure to line up all the mountains on the horizon.
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A big thanks goes out to Panamintcity.com for their efforts in location these shots. We wouldn't have been able to do this without their hard work. They have updated their site with even more locations (I think they were there a week before we were because their site mentions their March 2012 trip).