Turns out we’ve all been completely wrong about the location of the Death Star’s trench in Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope where Luke managed to blow it up just like he did those womp rats in his T-16 back home.
If someone were to ask you to point out the Death Star’s infamous trench in which Luck Skywalker made his suicidal run in Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope, you’d probably point to the line that looks a lot like an equator. Well, it turns out that you’d be completely and utterly wrong. Industrial Light & Magic visual effects artist Todd Vaziri recently revealed in a blog post (via io9) that Galen Erso’s deliberate flaw was located in a completely different trench. The cheeky visual effects artist teased this story on Twitter almost a year ago, but he’s waited until now to finally reveal all.
Today, @vickschutz and I learned a detail about “Star Wars” (1977); it’s totally right there but we never grasped it.
— Todd Vaziri (@tvaziri) February 26, 2016
“The equatorial trench is where the major hangar bays are located on the Death Star,” Vaziri wrote. “The hangar bays are depicted in this sequence from [A New Hope], when the tractor beam locks onto the Millennium Falcon.” Vaziri goes on to explain that actual trench runs perpendicular to the equatorial one we all thought it was.
“In fact, this came up during ILM Rogue One dailies one day. Computer Graphics Supervisor Vick Schutz and Visual Effects Supervisor John Knoll were chatting about the details of our computer graphics version of the Death Star, and Knoll casually remarked that the trench run in Star Wars is a longitudinal line on the Death Star (meaning, a north-south trench),” wrote Vaziri. Say WHAT?! If you take the time to rewatch A New Hope, you’d realise this to be true, especially if you’d been paying close attention to General Jan Dodonna’s briefing to the Rebel pilots.
Very good website – bookmarked