Recently this YouTube clip about some British guys going to Tunisia to fix up Luke Skywalker's house made the Internet rounds, which raised the question -- what the heck was Luke Skywalker's house doing still standing? Didn't they take down all the Star Wars sets they built in Tunisia after they were done filming? The answer is no. Basically all the Tatooine sets were just built out in the middle of the desert, so hey, what the f--k, once they were done filming they just left them.
Not only are most of the sets still standing, but people have moved into many of them. The set for Mos Espa, Anakin Skywalker's hometown from Episode I now has several residents, and the "underground" portion of Luke Skywalker's house from Episode IV is now a hotel.
Hit the jump to check out a couple videos of a guy wandering these now-inhabited Star Wars sets...
I love that this Star Wars set is now home to a guy who owns a weird little furry creature straight out of one of the movies. Also, an eagle in a mini-fridge sized box. Perfect.
I bet Luke would have been a lot less whiny about wanting to leave Tatooine if he had had his own Nestle Drumstick freezer.
Hit the last page for a few more interesting pictures from the Tunisian Star Wars sets...
Everything on Tatooine is made of a special futuristic material known as "wood".
Not only did this donkey have his scene where he kicks Qui-Gon in the balls cut, but they just left the poor bastard on set.
Rumor has it this is where Episode I was conceived, written and directed.
Nothing brightens up a moisture farm like a nice layer of white and yellow.
Space cat!
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My dad worked with the owner of land in Borrego Springs where they built the Air Force base set in the crappy movie “Damnation Alley”. The agreement was the landowner would tear down the sets, so I got to visit the set before he did it. I remember being astonished that it wasn’t a concrete hanger but just wood with textured paint. Anywho, makes wonder if a lot of sets are left for landowners to tear down. “Damnation Alley” was supposed to be the big SF movie for Fox instead of “Star Wars” in ’77… so, yeah.
Okay, grandpa is done telling pointless stories for the day and will go back to monitoring his yard to make sure the neighborhood kids stay the hell off it…
But Uncle Owen, I was going into Tosche Station to pick up some power converters!
A few thousand years from now, this is seriously going to confuse the fuck out of some archeologist
“a weird little furry creature straight out of one of the movies”
Pretty sure that’s a fennec fox.
This reminded me of something really funny I once saw that Ewan McGregor did on “Long Way Down” one of the 2 (kick-ass) documentaries he made riding his motorbike around the world.
While filming, he rode through Tunisia… and visited the site. No one there had a clue who he was, and I thought it was really funny. Scroll to around the 3:00 mark: [www.youtube.com]
I’m depressed you are considering the first 3 movies part of “Star Wars.”