The Original Plan For Star Wars' Wampa Was Foiled By Stilts, Snow, And Luke Skywalker
It's not easy being a wampa. You're furry and pretty cute, and all you want is a nice frozen treat after a long, hard day hunting tauntauns on Hoth. You get yourself a snack and stick him to the ceiling for later, and what happens? He escapes! You did that work for nothing, and now you're dead. As it turns out, it wasn't exactly easy for the people playing the wampa in "Star Wars: Episode V — The Empire Strikes Back," both the original and the shots added for the special edition release of the film. (Des Webb played him in the original and ILM computer graphics modeler Howie Weed — who has the nickname "wampa sir" — in the special edition.)
According to "Star Wars Insider" issue #33 from 1997, the original plan for the wampa shots had to be abandoned because of the physical difficulties, the stilts, the snow, and even Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) himself. Here's what the production had planned to do and why it just didn't work.
Poor guy just wanted a Luke Skywalker-shaped popsicle
When filming the wampa scenes for "Empire" in 1979, the idea was to have a person in a full wampa suit on stilts. However, there was ice and snow, and you can't really get traction in that when you're on stilts. According to the article, Webb had to use a ladder to get in the suit. It was a cool suit, too, made by creature artist Stuart Freeborn. It was just impossible to do any "wampa-ing," which is what they all called it. The scene in question is the one where the wampa drags an unconscious Luke Skywalker home by his leg. Of course, the only part of the wampa you see is the side of his leg and his paw. Webb kept losing his balance as he tried to do this. It was just impossible. The same thing happened to Weed during the special edition shoot. He said:
"If you've ever tried to drag a real human being behind yourself without stilts on down a smooth hallway, it's really impossible ... I felt so sorry for the guy because he was trying so hard, but there was just no way, given his proportion and what they were asking him to do, that it was going to work. It looks like they spent maybe a day trying to get that concept on film, when they finally gave up."
If the film were done now, we'd probably have a CGI wampa that would end up feeling like it had no weight or took up no real space. Done practically, we could clearly see that this was a physical creature. That's a much better option.
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