Sarlacc

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The Great Pit of Carkoon with the original sarlacc from Return of the Jedi (1983)

The sarlacc (plural sarlacci) is a fictional creature in George Lucas's science fiction saga Star Wars. It first appeared in the film Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi (1983) as a multi-tentacled alien beast whose immense, gaping mouth is lined with several rows of sharp teeth. The sarlacc in the film inhabits the Great Pit of Carkoon, a depression in the sand of the desert planet Tatooine. This creature is one of the largest of several sarlacci scattered across the Star Wars galaxy.[1]

In the original Return of the Jedi, the sarlacc is simply a barbed hole in the desert sand which characters fall into and are consumed; some are pulled into the sarlacc's mouth by its tentacles. Lucas changed the sarlacc's appearance in the 1997 Special Edition of the film by adding computer-generated tentacles and beak that emerge from the opened mouth. Besides Return of the Jedi, the creature and others like it are featured in Star Wars literature.

Like other aspects of Star Wars, the sarlacc became a part of popular culture. The creature was incorporated into the merchandising campaign that accompanied the release of Return of the Jedi. It is the subject of analysis and humor in works of literature unassociated with Star Wars.[2][3]

Description and characterization

According to the Star Wars Databank, the sarlacci are very dangerous and inhabit remote, inhospitable locations in the galaxy; few scientists have attempted to observe them. Those who do study the sarlacc argue over its taxonomic classification. While most strongly agree that the sarlacc is an arthropod (as stated in The Essential Guide to Alien Species and The Wildlife of Star Wars), others point to its anchored root system and spore-based method of reproduction as evidence of a plant origin.[1] A sarlacc reproduces by releasing spores that travel through outer space and eventually come to rest on a planet or asteroid's surface, forming a pit which is used for capturing prey.[4]

Steve Sansweet's Star Wars Encyclopedia describes the sarlacc as an "omnivorous, multi-tentacled creature with needle-sharp teeth and a large beak".[5] The sarlacc rests at the base of a giant pit where the entirety of its body is buried except for the gaping mouth. The creature's beak blindly gropes along the sloped walls of the pit when the sand is disturbed, searching for prey. The sarlacc's mouth can reach three meters (10 feet) in diameter; it is positioned on its giant, worm-like head.[6] Astrophysicist and science fiction author Jeanne Cavelos compares the sarlacc to the antlion, an insect that burrows a pit in the sand during its larval stage. Both creatures catch and consume prey that falls into the pit.[7]

Because most sarlacci inhabit isolated environments and rely on prey to stumble into their pit, they rarely feed. As a result, sarlacci have evolved an efficient digestive process. The stomach of a sarlacc slowly dissolves prey into nutrients in a painful process that can last for several thousands of years. Victims are kept alive in the acid-filled stomach throughout digestion and few ever escape.[6] This is one aspect of the sarlacc that makes it such a feared creature. As the droid C-3PO announces (translating for Jabba the Hutt) in Return of the Jedi, "In his belly, you will find a new definition of pain and suffering as you are slowly digested over a thousand years". If no living prey is available, a sarlacc relies on its root system to absorb nutrients. One sarlacc located on an airless moon feeds on cometary material rich in oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, and nitrogen that drifts into its mouth.[8]

The sarlacc's stomach is lined with a fibrous network of vessels that attach themselves to a swallowed victim and Darkmaws for quick digestion or breaking apart large prey, though the maws will close when exposed to bright lights, hence their name. According to the Star Wars Databank, the prey is incorporated into the sarlacc's biological system as it is digested. Besides digestive acids, the stomach also contains mind-altering neurotoxins which keep victims from struggling and escaping. The toxins induce hallucinations in prey which "suggest that the sarlacc somehow absorbs the intelligence of all its victims, who live on in disembodied torment".[1] A sarlacc can communicate with its victims through this stolen consciousness.[4] In one Star Wars short story, an old, unnamed Jedi woman who falls into the sarlacc on Tatooine explains that "sarlacci do interesting things with messenger RNA: over the course of millennia, they can attain a sort of group consciousness, built out of the remains of people they've digested. I talked to such a sarlacc, once a few decades ago". She too becomes part of the sarlacc's consciousness.[8]

Appearances in Star Wars stories

The sarlacc is a creature in Star Wars fiction that first appeared in the 1983 film Return of the Jedi. Crime lord Jabba the Hutt attempts to execute Jedi knight Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), smuggler Han Solo (Harrison Ford), and the Wookiee Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew)—dubbed "victims of the almighty sarlacc"—by dropping them into the creature's gaping maw. Luke frees himself and the others with the aid of Lando Calrissian (Billy Dee Williams) and droid R2-D2 (Kenny Baker). A skirmish ensues ending with Jabba's death at the hands of Princess Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher).

A Jawa with the spore of a sarlacc from "Fortune, Fate, and the Natural History of the sarlacc", Star Wars Tales 6 (2000)

Two short stories in the anthology Tales From Jabba's Palace (1995) edited by science fiction author Kevin J. Anderson focus on the sarlacc of Tatooine. Dan'l Danehy Oakes' story "Shaara and the sarlacc: The Skiff Guard's Tale" is told from the point-of-view of one of Jabba the Hutt's unnamed skiff guards. En route to the sarlacc's pit, the guard tells Boba Fett about his sister Shaara's miraculous escape from the sarlacc. Shaara and her Imperial stormtrooper captors are thrown into the pit when their landspeeder explodes. The sarlacc swallows the stormtroopers, but expels Shaara. The skiff guard cannot explain why the sarlacc rejected its prey, but he suspects the creature might possess some kind of primitive intelligence since "[n]obody really knows anything about the sarlacc".[9]

The skiff guard from Danehy Oakes's story tells Boba Fett, "Stay right here in the skiff and I can promise you a truly amazing view. You may even see what few have seen and lived: the sarlacc's belly."[10] The skiff guard's promise is kept in the short story "A Barve Like That: The Tale of Boba Fett." Written by Daniel Keys Moran under the pseudonym J. D. Montgomery, the story focuses on Boba Fett's struggle to free himself from the belly of the sarlacc. As Fett is digested, the creature taps into his mind and proceeds to have a conversation with the bounty hunter. The sarlacc informs Fett, "[Your] life and death belong to me now, not you; and they serve my purpose. Recognize and understand your place in things, Boba Fett, for you are not even a real thing; merely a collection of thoughts that has deluded itself into a belief in its own existence."[11] The voice belongs to an alien named Susejo who was eaten by the sarlacc four thousand years earlier. The sarlacc absorbed the alien's consciousness and communicates with Fett through him. Despite the hopeless nature of the situation, the bounty hunter manages to ignite his jet pack, causing it to explode; he then uses a concussion grenade to blast himself free from the sarlacc. Fett is the only person known to survive being swallowed by a sarlacc. Years later, Fett returns to Tatooine in a new ship. As he approaches the surface of the planet, he flies past the Pit of Carkoon as a voice in his mind sounds, "YOU!"[1]

The history of the sarlacc is featured in the non-canonical Dark Horse comic book "Fortune, Fate, and the Natural History of the Sarlacc" written by Mark Schultz and illustrated by Kellie Strom. The story is printed in Star Wars Tales 6 (2000). In this story, the sarlacc seen in Return of the Jedi is the offspring of an older sarlacc on Tatooine. Shortly after the execution of an unknown alien named Grubbat Fhilch, the sarlacc releases a spore that attaches to an Imperial stormtrooper's dewback. The stormtroopers hire a group of Jawa scavengers to clean the dewbacks and one of them discovers the spore. Not knowing what it had found, the Jawa places the spore into a jar of water. The spore grows into a young sarlacc and soon escapes from the jar only to be swallowed by a spider-like creature. The sarlacc, however, kills the creature and eats it from the inside out. The young sarlacc buries itself in the sand and forms the Great Pit of Carkoon.[12]

Sarlacci have made minor appearances in Star Wars video games such as Super Star Wars (1992),Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire (1996), Star Wars: Demolition (2000), Star Wars: Bounty Hunter (2002), Star Wars Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike (2003), and Star Wars: Battlefront (2004). The MMORPG Star Wars Galaxies (2003) shows one of the smaller sarlacci in the Star Wars galaxy located on the remote planet Dathomir, as well as the Great Pit of Carkoon. It has also made an appearance in Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy, Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga, Star Wars: Empire at War and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (2008), where a sarlacc much larger than the one on Tatooine is first an ally of a Jedi Knight, and later used as a base for the Empire (even building structures inside the creature itself). A duel is fought beside the sarlacc in this game between Darth Vader's apprentice Starkiller and Jedi Master Shaak Ti. The duel ends with Ti falling backwards into the massive sarlacc's open mouth.

In Super Star Wars, the "Sarlacc Pit Monster" acts as a boss early into the game. It is depicted as a large, worm-like creature with tentacles, and shoots rocks at Luke.

Concept and creation

The design of the sarlacc creature—originally called the "Sloth Pit"[13]—seen in Return of the Jedi evolved during the concept, creation, and filming processes. Early concept sketches portrayed a sarlacc creature with several moving tentacles and a pronounced beak. The sarlacc was designed to be very animated. Star Wars creator George Lucas, however, did not have the technology or financial resources to realize this concept in the 1983 film.[14]

Concept art for the sarlacc by Industrial Light & Magic

The creature seen in Return of the Jedi is very inanimate. Special effects artists Stuart Freeborn, Phil Tippett, and the crew of Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) constructed a pit in the desert sands of Yuma, Arizona, that contained a gaping mouth and tentacles. At the time, the pit (along with Jabba the Hutt's sail barge) constituted one of the largest motion picture sets ever constructed.[15] A hydraulic system was designed to animate the creature, but the blowing sand clogged the mechanism. The film crew instead used poles and wires to move the creature's tentacles.[14] Lucas was not satisfied with the effect, complaining, "There was nothing alive about the whole thing."[16]

Working on the giant set was an arduous task, according to the crew members involved. Tippett told Starlog magazine, "We were working the creature at the bottom of a gorge, so we got no breeze. Sand constantly fell down upon us". In addition to operating the sarlacc, many technicians were standing in as skiff guards in full wardrobe. Tippett remarks, "[We] were covered with [sand and] glue from the costumes. I almost cracked on that one. I think I cried, it was so terrible."[17] Actress Carrie Fisher recalled that many of the crew and stunt men who fell into the creature during filming suffered broken legs and sprained ankles.[18] ILM crew members received some satisfaction when they dismantled the set at the conclusion of filming and sold it to Mexico as scrap. The one condition of the sale was that the materials were not to be resold as souvenirs.[19]

The Special Edition version of the sarlacc with CGI beak and tentacles

The sarlacc design underwent a series of changes when Lucas released the Special Edition of Return of the Jedi in 1997. Employing the new technology of computer-generated imagery (CGI), ILM enhanced the creature's appearance with the addition of CGI tentacles and a beak inside the sarlacc's mouth.[20] According to Lucas, it "just looks much more realistic and more threatening ... it helps the scene considerably."[16] Subsequent depictions of the sarlacc in Star Wars fiction are based on this revised design.

Lucas did retain some of the special effects from the 1983 film in the Special Edition. The tentacle that captures the skiff guard Kithaba and pulls him into the sarlacc mouth is from the original film, as well as the tentacle that attaches to Lando Calrissian's leg.[20]

Popular culture

Aside from Star Wars fiction and merchandising, the creature has appeared in critiques of the Star Wars films as a sexual metaphor. One popular fiction author uses the sarlacc as a descriptive term for slowness, a reference to the sarlacc's extended digestive process.[3]

The sarlacc became part of Return of the Jedi's merchandising campaign that accompanied the theatrical release of the film. Parker Brothers produced a board game in 1983 called Battle at Sarlacc's Pit that was sold in the United States and Canada. Players collect points for battling their way through Gamorrean Guards, Boba Fett, and a Nikto on Jabba the Hutt's sail barge, pushing them overboard into a cardboard sarlacc.[21] The game, which sold for only a few years, is a collector's item.[22]

Hollywood journalist and humor writer Peter Biskind muses that George Lucas went to great extremes to remove aspects of sex and sexuality from the plot of the Star Wars films. Biskind, however, asserts that Lucas created a "nightmarishly explicit image of threatening female sexuality" in the form of the sarlacc: "The Jabba episode culminates in an explicit vagina dentata fantasy, as Luke and his pals have to walk a phallic gangplank into the pullulating maw—festooned with long, curved teeth—of the giant sarlacc in its 'nesting place'."[2] Premiere magazine reviewer Tim Bissell complained, "Lucas sent his trilogy’s most arresting character Boba Fett to a "death" so inglorious—falling headlong into the vagina dentata of Tatooine’s sarlacc—that its only payoff was a burp gag."[23]

References

  1. ^ a b c d Sarlacc, Expanded Universe, in the Star Wars Databank; last accessed July 10, 2006.
  2. ^ a b Peter Biskind, Gods And Monsters: Movers, Shakers, and Other Casualties of the Hollywood Machine (New York: Nation Books, 2004), p. 129, ISBN 1-56025-545-5.
  3. ^ a b Stefan Demetriou, How to Disappear Completely (Oxford, Eng.: Reverb, 2005), p. 166, ISBN 1-905315-06-6.
  4. ^ a b "Sarlacci spores", Stephen J. Sansweet, Star Wars Encyclopedia (New York: Del Rey, 1998), p. 258, ISBN 0-345-40227-8.
  5. ^ "Sarlacc", Star Wars Encyclopedia, p. 258.
  6. ^ a b Sarlacc, The Movies, in the Star Wars Databank; last accessed July 10, 2006. Cite error: The named reference "SarlaccMovies" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  7. ^ Jeanne Cavelos, The Science of Star Wars: An Astrophysicist's Independent Examination of Space Travel, Aliens, Planets, and Robots as Portrayed in the Star Wars Films and Books(New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999), p. 71, ISBN 0-312-20958-4.
  8. ^ a b J. D. Montgomery, "A Barve Like That: The Tale of Boba Fett", in Tales from Jabba's Palace, ed. Kevin J. Anderson (paperback; New York: Bantam Spectra, 1996), p. 364, ISBN 0-553-56815-9.
  9. ^ Dan'l Danehy-Oakes, "Shaara and the Sarlacc: The Skiff Guard's Tale," Tales from Jabba's Palace, p. 345.
  10. ^ Danehy-Oakes, "Shaara and the Sarlacc," p. 345.
  11. ^ Montgomery, "A Barve Like That," pp. 355-356, italics in the original.
  12. ^ Mark Schultz, "Fortune, Fate, and the Natural History of the Sarlacc," illustrated by Kellie Strom, in Star Wars Tales 6 (Dark Horse Comics, 2000).
  13. ^ Laurent Bouzereau, Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays (New York: Del Rey, 1997), p. 253, ISBN 0-345-40981-7
  14. ^ a b Sarlacc, Behind the Scenes, in the Star Wars Databank; last accessed July 10, 2006. Cite error: The named reference "SarlaccBTS" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  15. ^ From Star Wars to Jedi: The Making of a Saga, narrated by Mark Hamill (1985; VHS, CBS Fox Video, 1992).
  16. ^ a b George Lucas, commentary, Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi Special Edition (VHS, 20th Century Fox, 1997).
  17. ^ Phil Tippett, interview with Starlog, quoted in Lee Pfeiffer and Michael Lewis, The Films of Harrison Ford (3rd ed.;New York: Citadel Press, 2002), p. 132, ISBN 0-8065-2364-6.
  18. ^ Carrie Fisher, commentary, Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi, Special Edition (DVD, 20th Century Fox, 2004).
  19. ^ Pfeiffer and Lewis, Films of Harrison Ford, p. 132.
  20. ^ a b "Return of the Jedi Special Edition: What has Changed?," January 15, 1997, at StarWars.com; last accessed July 10, 2006.
  21. ^ Description of Battle at Sarlacc's Pit at Board Game Geek; last accessed July 10, 2006; instructions available from Hasbro.
  22. ^ Geoffrey T Carlton, Star Wars Super Collector's Wish Book: Identification & Values (Paducah, Ky.: Collector Books, 2003), p. 273, ISBN 1-57432-334-2.
  23. ^ Tim Bissell, "The Importance of Being Fett: A brief history of one of the most popular characters in the Star Wars universe," at Premiere Magazine; last accessed July 10, 2006.

Further reading

  • Carrau, Bob. The Wildlife of Star Wars: A Field Guide. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2001. ISBN 0-8118-2869-7.
  • Lewis, Ann Margaret. The Essential Guide to Alien Species. New York: Del Rey, 2001. ISBN 0-345-44220-2.
  • Slavicsek, Bill. A Guide to the Star Wars Universe 3rd ed.; New York: Del Rey, 2000. ISBN 0-345-42066-7.

External links

Template:Episode VI

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