This year is the 40th anniversary of The Empire Strikes Back, and like last year’s celebration of The Phantom Menace, Fantha Tracks will be covering this movie with a couple of articles. From behind the scenes to source and merchandise, we go in-depth to hopefully show you the movie in ways you have never seen it before.
Last time we delved into the creation of the bounty hunters Boba Fett, Bossk and Dengar and their journey from concept to screen. In this week’s Part 2, we look at the remaining, and equally interesting, bounty hunters: IG-88, 4-LOM and Zuckuss.
IG-88
When dealing with the entire line-up of bounty hunters, Ralph McQuarrie quickly decided that one of them should be a war robot of some kind. While the original droid that he had designed was a lot more bulkier, that design ended up being used in ‘Rebels’ as the IG-RM, with the RM in its name standing for Ralph McQuarrie. In fact many of the early designs, before they were really assigned and refined into any of the bounty hunters of these articles, became new alien species and characters in that show.
Despite the sketch of McQuarrie, the movie prop was mostly done from the imagination of Bill Hargreaves, who was the supervising prop maker. Hargreaves, with the help of Steve Short, assembled the droid out of various scrap that was lying around. This was something of a tradition/directive set by A New Hope’s set designer Roger Christian, who had travelled the country to buy lots of airplane scrap and junk that he used for the various props and sets he had to dress. For A New Hope, Roger Christian had used multiple Rolls-Royce Derwent turbo engines as space fantasy decanters for the cantina. It was Hargreaves who reused one of them for the headpiece of IG-88.
There was however one problem with the droid as build by Hargreaves and Short; they had build the droid too high as its head often popped out of the camera frame. For these shots they actually lowered the droid so that he still could have his close-up in the camera alongside the other bounty hunters.
IG-88’s weapon of choice was a DLT-20A rifle, which was built using parts of a StG44 and a Browning M1919, while the stock was custom-made.
Hunting IG-88: Those who played the classic ‘Shadows of the Empire’ game back in the day on their pc’s or Nintendo 64’s probably remember the nightmare of IG-11 stalking you in an epic boss fight on Ord Mantell. Despite being a very popular character with many stories in Legends and with many droids based on his model like IG-11 in ‘The Mandalorian’, IG-88 has not been used that often in the current canon. He did star in his own short comic story ‘The Long Game’, as part of the ‘Age of Rebellion Special’ and in the ‘Forces of Destiny’ episodes ‘Triplecross’ and ‘Bounty of Trouble’.
4-LOM
4-LOM was based on the protocol droid costume and was handled by the art department. They basically repainted an existing C-3PO suit and added a new, more insect-like, chest plate. Considering that actor Chris Parsons did not had to move at all, the helmet featured eyes from which he could not see out of. This was due to the eye pieces being made out of a mosaic of broken glass by pattern maker Brian Archer. Considering that the droid has a bug-eyed mask not unlike Zuckuss, confusion of the characters happened a lot in later published works with the infamous Kenner package name swap being the most well-known. There are a couple more connections to C-3PO besides the repaint: Chris Parsons, who was hired originally for K-3PO on Hoth, was also the body double for Anthony Daniels. And he even performed as C-3PO at the official premiere of The Empire Strikes Back.
4-LOM can be seen with a BlasTech Industries DLT-19x targeting blaster, which was a modified WWII-era German MG 34 machine gun.
Zuckuss
The Fourth Draft (Dated: October 24th, 1978) of The Empire Strikes Back screenplay mentioned Zuckuss as, the rather unfortunate, Tuckess and described him as a battle-scarred many human type. Like Bossk and Dengar, Zuckuss was also budgeted for 500 pounds or 1027 dollars and the third of the costumes that John Mollo had to design.
Most of that budget went into creating a new helmet. This insect-like helmet was sculpted by Patti Rodgers and was one of the few new pieces in general for any of the bounty hunters. For the eyes of the mask bubble wrap was used, but at that time it was not the common shipping solution as it is today. The rest of the otherworldly look was created by a large shimmering robe equipped with various pouches, canisters and hoses leading to cylinders filled with colored water. One of these led back into the mask in which actress Cathy Munro could blow air through to make the water bubble.
Zuckuss armed himself with a GRS-1 snare rifle, and it seems to have been made from scratch with leftover items.
Hunting 4-LOM & Zuckuss: These two are partners in crime and can always be seen in the same stories. The best two stories with them were in the Legends continuity with the comic series ‘Underworld: The Yavin Vassilika’ and their own stories in the ‘Tales of the Bounty Hunters’ novel. Their stand-out appearance in the canon continuity is ‘Powered Down’, a comic that ran in ‘Star Wars Adventures’ #10 and #11, which had a prelude story called ‘Hunter vs Hunted’ that was published as a one-shot during the Free Comic Book Day 2018. This story is also noteworthy as it is the one story with them that did not featured any of the other bounty hunters from The Empire Strikes Back.
Join us next time for another article to celebrate The Empire Strikes Backs 40th Anniversary!