It would never occur to me that Star Wars technology would need an explanation besides people inventing things over time. According to Lucas the story was originally going to be told by R2D2 when he was 2000 years old. It was going to be in our far future and our galaxy. “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away,” was going to mean in R2D2’s past, told at a time when he was far away from here. They decided to drop the narration, and all that remained was that opening line - which has led people to think the whole story happened in the distant past in a galaxy other than ours. But this clears up a few little things like saying womp rats are a couple meters long.
No, the narration would have been spoken. R2D2 originally had a human sounding voice with sarcastic or snarky dialog. Supposedly there’s an early script floating around that contains his lines. Random trivia: the name R2D2 is attributed to sound engineer Walter Murch’s notation for “Reel 2, Dialog track 2”. I love that one.
I think I read somewhere that during the filming for the original trilogy scenes they read Chewie’s lines in English so the actors would know what they were reacting to. Not sure if it was the same for R2
It would never occur to me that Star Wars technology would need an explanation besides people inventing things over time. According to Lucas the story was originally going to be told by R2D2 when he was 2000 years old. It was going to be in our far future and our galaxy. “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away,” was going to mean in R2D2’s past, told at a time when he was far away from here. They decided to drop the narration, and all that remained was that opening line - which has led people to think the whole story happened in the distant past in a galaxy other than ours. But this clears up a few little things like saying womp rats are a couple meters long.
Was R2D2’s narration intended to be subtitled…?
A: beepboop whistle.
12 parsecs?! Wow! And then what happened?
No, the narration would have been spoken. R2D2 originally had a human sounding voice with sarcastic or snarky dialog. Supposedly there’s an early script floating around that contains his lines. Random trivia: the name R2D2 is attributed to sound engineer Walter Murch’s notation for “Reel 2, Dialog track 2”. I love that one.
I think I read somewhere that during the filming for the original trilogy scenes they read Chewie’s lines in English so the actors would know what they were reacting to. Not sure if it was the same for R2
https://youtu.be/fUKxgg4yPxs