You can usually tell if you’ve stumbled on the home of a Disney animation fan just by what’s sitting on the coffee table. For years, Disney’s The Art Of… book series has beautifully opened the archives of Disney and Pixar animated films, revealing concept art, character development, scenic design, and more in stunning odes to the artists who make these worlds real.
This summer, Abrams Books, Disney, and Lucasfilm have finally done the same for a very different kind of work of art. Written by Nerdist’s Amy Ratcliffe with a foreword by Walt Disney Imagineering’s Portfolio Creative Executive Scott Trowbridge (who lead the design of the land), The Art of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge is a dream come true for fans of both themed entertainment design and Star Wars. The 250-page book features over 300 pieces of artwork, delving into the design (and redesign) of every attraction, show, snack, shop, and secret spot on Batuu… including some that never made it into the parks at all…
Today, we’ll take a look at 6 of our favorite concepts that were cut or cancelled from Disney’s Star Wars lands, but referenced in Ratcliffe’s new book. As in any The Art Of book, what didn’t come to be isn’t meant to be an indictment on designers or executives. Rather, it’s a reflection of the deep and wide process that’s used to conceive of these massive projects, and then to pare them down to the restrictions of reality, where operations, marketing, and finance teams have to make difficult edits.
So don’t imagine this list as one of grievances, but of processes and possibilities. Which do you think would’ve made Galaxy’s Edge better? Which are best left on the cutting room floor? What else did you see in The Art of Galaxy’s Edge that left you daydreaming?
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Star Wars Land 1.0
After Disney acquired Lucasfilm in a blockbuster, $4 billion deal in 2012, Internet message boards lit up with “Blue Sky” ideas and “insider” hints about how, exactly Star Wars would make its way into Disney Parks. As the story goes, the first conceptual iteration of a Star Wars land was of a much less ambitious scale than Galaxy’s Edge ended up being.
Rumors persisted for years that in California, Disneyland’s troubled Tomorrowland would simply be “reskinned” as a Star Wars land, upgrading the Lost Legend: STAR TOURS, parking the Millennium Falcon atop the old Rocket Jets platform, permanently converting Space Mountain to its Hyperspace overlay, and giving Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters a “Clone Wars” redesign. (The art above represents 2015’s “Season of the Force” seasonal promotional event – in some ways, a small scale example of that possibility.)
Florida’s version of the land would’ve reportedly been built around its existing installation of STAR TOURS, overtaking Echo Lake and creating an “Immersive Lite” land apparently set to be stylized as the town of Mos Eisley on the desert planet Tatooine (above) – home of Luke Skywalker and the legendary Mos Eisley Cantina.
Ultimately, Disney and Lucasfilm executives allegedly agreed that Star Wars simply had too much on the horizon to root a land so firmly in the stories of yesteryear. With a highly-anticipated, Disney-produced sequel trilogy in the pipeline (introducting a whole new generation of heroes, villains, Droids, and planets), anchoring a future Star Wars land so firmly in the stories of the past seemed foolish.
No doubt another consideration: Disney’s $4 billion acquisition of Lucasfilm had equipped them with an IP that could finally match the pop culture coup of Universal’s licensing of Harry Potter; for the parks, a fitting competitor to the Wizarding World’s Hogsmeade. If there were any IP that could pull off a totally-immersive “Living Land” where dining and shopping were half the fun, Star Wars would be it, right? To fail to meet the Wizarding World’s high water mark would’ve been a major fumble.
With focus shifting to a land guests guests could “live their own Star Wars adventure,” the “1.0” concept of the land was scrapped from both Florida and California…
1. Speeder Bike attraction
In both iterations of “Star Wars Land 1.0″, it was long believed that one of the E-Ticket attractions Imagineers envisioned was a Speeder Bike roller coaster based on Luke & Leia’s escape through the forests of Endor in Return of the Jedi. (The expansive ride was often imagined to take over the site of the sprawling Autopia in California and the Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular in Florida).
The Art of Galaxy’s Edge confirms the concept, with Imagineer Margaret Kerrison stating explicitly, “In the early days, we talked about a fast-action speeder bike chase.” With guests straddling Speeders (no doubt in the style of the Modern Marvel: TRON Lightcycle Power Run), guests would’ve “raced” through the crashed ruins of Star Destroyer (with old TIE Fighters hanging like bats), around alien landforms, and into the hairpin turns of a Tattooine marketplace, bobbing and weaving around crowded stalls as Stormtroopers give chase.
Like all of “Star Wars Land 1.0,” this concept likely went out the window when Lucasfilm executives prodded Disney to think bigger. Whether or not you agree with Disney’s decision to set their Star Wars land in the timeline of Rey, Finn, Poe, and Kylo Ren rather than that of Luke, Leia, Han, and Darth Vader, it’s fun to imagine what a racing “Speeder Bike” experience might’ve looked like, and thanks to The Art of Galaxy’s Edge, we have a much better idea.
Our chances of seeing this coaster come to life now seem very small, since even a well-disguised roller coaster would still look pretty out of place in the hyper-immersive Galaxy’s Edge. But frankly, we wouldn’t be surprised if this concept went on to influence Shanghai’s TRON ride, or if this idea appears somewhere else in a new context…
2. Bounty Hunter Attraction
Concepts for a “Bounty Hunter” attraction are barely mentioned in The Art of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, but the mere suggestion of the ride is interesting in that it was essentially entirely unknown until the book’s publication! According to the concept art shared, the attraction would’ve seen eight guests board a Mandalorian bounty hunter’s ship, each straddling a turret (four on each side). Riders would then become outlaws themselves, on the run from the authorities (and surely, getting into some trouble on the way).
Of course, very little is known about the attraction. It’s fun to imagine if the pods might’ve been suspended from above, with guests actually traveling through physical scenes interspersed with wraparound screens. Ultimately, we may never know. This attraction probably co-existed with the Speeder Bike race in “Star Wars Land 1.0,” and likely would’ve featured or at least been an homage to famed Mandalorian Boba Fett.
What’s particularly interesting about the Bounty Hunter attraction concept is how relevant it feels today… Despite Disney and Lucasfilm’s agreement that their Star Wars land should look forward and not back, the heyday of the “sequel trilogy” has already waned. Poor response to J. J. Abrams’ concluding Episode IX, The Rise of Skywalker, saw the sequel trilogy sputter out in a flurry of middling reviews, weirdly ending Star Wars’ nine-film, forty-year cinematic canon with cool reception from both fans and general moviegoers.
Ironically, the “future” of Star Wars turns out to be… in the past! The sleeper hit Disney+ Original Series The Mandalorian has essentially become the Star Wars product of the 2020s, arguably inspiring more enthusiasm within and outside of the fan community than the multi-billion dollar sequel trilogy positioned as the franchise’s future.
Of course, The Mandalorian is also set 20 years before Disney’s sequel trilogy, and thus 20 years before the rigidly-maintained timeline of Galaxy’s Edge. Technically, that precludes the series’ main characters from appearing in the land at all, which is why – despite being the biggest merchandising sensation since Furby – “The Child” plush was relegated to a somewhat sad mobile cart parked just outside the land…
Given The Mandalorian‘s immense pop culture presence, its titantic merchandising, and the half-dozen spin-off series anchored to it (and likewise set in the “original trilogy” timeline), it seems likely that we may see Galaxy’s Edge’s mythology become just a little less strict in the years to come… And since being a Mandalorian bounty hunter is suddenly the most sought-after Star Wars experience a Disney Park can offer, who knows if we may see this attraction revived… “Good ideas never die at Disney,” after all…
While these two attractions were part of a version of Star Wars land that hit the cutting room floor, our favorite concepts from the Galaxy’s Edge we know are on the next page… and frankly, any of them would still add a whole lot to the land today…