George Lucas Changed Iconic Star Wars Group At The Last Minute
The immense success of the first Star Wars movie meant that nearly every detail of this galaxy far, far away was soon burned into our collective pop culture memory. This includes the name of Luke Skywalker’s Red Squadron, the group of X-Wings that dealt the Empire a major defeat by destroying the Death Star. What most people don’t know, however, is that Star Wars’ famous Red Squadron was originally named Blue Squadron, and it only received a name change thanks to production difficulties with the blue screen special effects.
Red Squadron Was Supposed To Be Blue Squadron
To understand why Star Wars creator George Lucas had to change the name of Red Squadron at the last minute, we need to review how Lucasfilm created the groundbreaking special effects in A New Hope. The main technique for space battles was to film models of the various X-Wings, TIE Fighters, and other ships against a blue screen. Later, composite editing would replace the blue background with other shots like starfields, creating very realistic (especially when the film came out in 1977) shots of space combat.
Special Effects Required The Change In Color
When George Lucas wrote the first screenplay for Star Wars, the X-Wing group that would eventually be known as Red Squadron was named Blue Squadron. Just as the later Red Squadron would have red markings on each X-Wing, Blue Squadron had blue markings. You don’t need the Force to predict what happened next: during editing, Lucas and his team discovered that the composite effect was replacing the blue markings on these ships with the same starfield meant to serve as the background.
The Star Wars creator was very practical in those days, and his fix to this problem was to replace the blue markings with red ones, and that’s how Red Squadron was born. This change was so last-minute, though, that not everyone got the memo. For example, the Alan Dean Foster novelization of the first movie still has Luke Skywalker as part of Blue Squadron, and Red Squadron was the designation given to the group of Y-Wings that were called Gold Squadron in the finished film.
Rogue One Addresses The Change
For many years, the fact that Star Wars’ Red Squadron was originally meant to be Blue Squadron was never addressed in any additional films. However, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story used its status as a prequel to A New Hope to both address the existence of Blue Squadron and explain their later absence. In short, the film shows that Blue Squadron leads the attack on Scarif that helps Jyn Erso secure the Death Star plans, and the fact that this Squadron is more or less destroyed by the end of the film implicitly explains why they weren’t around for the actual Death Star attack.
Blue Squadron In The Sequel Trilogy
Later, the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy included its own homage to the X-Wing group that eventually became Red Squadron. In The Force Awakens, Blue Squadron is the name of the X-Wing group that attacks Starkiller base. Poe Dameron joins the squad as part of that attack, effectively bringing the once-obscure Blue Squadron back in a big way.
Star Wars And CGI
While some Star Wars fans may see this Blue Squadron/Red Squadron story as little more than trivia, I see it as a charming reminder of the practical effects that helped bring the Original Trilogy to life. In a world without CGI, George Lucas and his team had to innovate one special effect after another that revolutionized the film industry. Sadly, CGI lured Lucas to the Dark Side for the prequels, and once he started down that dark path, it forever dominated his destiny as a filmmaker.
