Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and today we're going to take a look at the original guns of
Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope, the very first Star Wars movie.
And I just want to preface this by saying that today there's a tremendous amount of
canon and backstory that's been written for all things Star Wars,
it's a huge franchise obviously.
But when the original Star Wars was filmed it was
just another sci-fi fantasy sort of movie,
and most people didn't take it all that seriously during the production process.
And so the choices that went into some of the prop making decisions
were based on a little bit different rationales.
And what they ended up doing was using a whole bunch of actual historical firearms,
mostly World War Two firearms, as
the basis for lightly-modified prop weapons to use in the movie.
And, by the way, there was a fantastic callback to this choice
when the first season of "The Mandalorian" came out not that long ago,
where they chose to arm the Mandalorian with a prop gun
based on a fantastically cool, very early, Bergmann pistol.
So I have a whole separate video on that that I did back when it came out.
But with that out of the way, let's dive into the guns that were in Star Wars,
and what they were actually based on.
This is the BlasTech DH-17, aka the rebel trooper's pistol.
You see it in the very first scenes of the movie.
And by the way, I'm going to try to get all of the film nerd details right here
with the canon in the Star Wars universe names for all of these different firearms.
Now these are actually based on rubber moulds of Sterling [submachine guns].
And you can kind of see that from the trigger guard here - that is really very thick.
That's because it's a resin mould, not a real gun.
Also worth pointing out that they have mounted real, single point, OEG,
(occluded eye gun-sight) scopes on top of these ... resin moulds.
You can see that also here from the side.
... The idea here is they were taking real guns and adding greeblies,
basically various pieces of kit to them to make them look a little bit more sci-fi,
and less recognisable as ... the original guns that they really were.
Interestingly, I think this is like a continuity error, that you also see the same pistol
in the hands of some of the Death Star troopers right here.
Alright, next up we have the only thing here not made by BlasTech,
the Drearian Defence Conglomerate Defender, which is really a mouthful of a name.
This is Princess Leia's pistol and this is based on a Margolin,
which is a Russian .22 calibre target pistol.
And I actually have some previous footage of that which I'll splice in here.
There were a number of different versions of the Margolin,
basically kind of different trim levels. How much serious target stuff did you want?
Extra grips, the muzzle brake, all that sort of thing.
So, once again for the movie they dolled one of these up
with an extended thing on the end of the barrel.
And, frankly, it makes a good pistol for Princess Leia.
... Compared to all the other guns in the series, it's a much more feminine,
small profile, sort of an elegant style of pistol.
And by the way, as a .22 target pistol, a really good gun.
Now, the Jawa Ion Blaster I guess is the other gun in here not made by BlasTech.
This is a .303 SMLE Enfield cut down with a ... cup grenade launcher bolted onto the end of it.
Which is really, other than the fact that it's cut down,
this is a configuration that was used in World War One.
That grenade launcher was used to launch rifle grenades.
They've of course cut down the barrel and the stock here
to make it a more compact thing for the Jawas.
Not a whole lot else to say about this, honestly.
You can get a really good view of it here where he's holstering it.
You can see the Enfield magazine,
you can see how the front end of the stock has been cut down and rounded off.
But that's about it for that guy.
Next up, the most famous one of the whole movie probably,
and that's the BlasTech E-11, which is the Stormtrooper's blaster.
This is very ... clearly based on a Sterling L2A3 [submachine gun].
And part of the reason for that is that [the] Star Wars ... studio filming was done outside of London,
and the props were acquired from a company called Bapty & Co.
It's actually pretty cool, I had a chance to visit Bapty.
It's like a three generation company, or it was when I was there.
And ... when I was there the current owner
and his father were both firearms collectors themselves,
in addition to running a prop business.
So they had a really cool combination of a gun room
with some absolutely fantastic historical arms,
plus a bunch of live weapons
(or mostly live weapons or blank converted weapons) for the film industry,
plus rubber moulds or rubber copies of guns.
And the idea is when you have a scene that's filmed from a distance,
and you need to arm a whole ton of extras with guns,
(think one of the scenes from "Zulu", for example),
you ... give everyone rubber prop dummy guns.
And then you don't have any safety concerns,
you don't really care if they mistreat them
because they're just rubber casts, they're really cheap.
You don't have to worry about people maybe stealing them
if you're handing out hundreds to a bunch of extras.
But then for close-up shots you have much more realistic, or actual real guns.
So what they discovered with Star Wars is that by using original real firearms
with some bits globbed onto them to make them look a little more sci-fi,
they got some of the benefits of being able to use blank-firing guns for some of the scenes.
And for the shoot-outs in the Death Star they do that.
In fact right here, under this Stormtrooper's arm, you can see an empty shell casing.
And that came from one of the blank-firing versions of the Sterling.
Here you can see the bottom, that's very clearly
a Sterling submachine gun with the stock folded.
They used 10 round magazines in these
to kind of cut the submachine gun imagery down a little bit.
And then they bolted on some extra greeblies, some
bits of metal, and battery packs, and scopes, and that sort of thing,
just to give them a bit of a different look.
Anyway, back to the fact that this was all done through Bapty & Co.
It was a British company, and they had a lot of
World War Two firearms and British firearms on hand for filming war movies.
And so the Sterling was something that they had ready access to,
and it fit this film really well.
That's maybe not the best shot of the gun there, but you get the idea.
We have a bunch of different images,
this is probably one of the best depicted prop guns actually in the movie, so.
And it's also interesting that that DH-17 pistol at the very beginning
is based on the exact same Sterling, just with different things done to it.
And those rebel ones at the very beginning were only done on rubber moulds,
they didn't have any blank-firing versions of them.
Now the SE-14C.
This shows up for a very brief single scene here in the Mos Eisley cantina,
where ... a guy's arm is chopped off while holding it.
This is one of the most difficult to identify prop guns,
because this is actually based on a Swiss Rexim-Favor submachine gun.
It has a removable barrel and a removable stock,
and what they did for this particular prop is they took off the barrel, took off the stock,
... I think they actually took the magazine out completely as well,
or gave it a very short, stubby magazine.
... This scene was originally filmed with a ... different prop gun
that didn't look quite good enough they decided.
So it was changed later in the editing process, and they dropped in this thing instead.
And this ... harkens back to Bapty & Co.,
the fact that this was a prop house
run by legit gun people who were interested in unusual firearms.
And that's why they had something as unusual as a Rexim-Favor submachine gun.
The BlasTech DT-12, this is Greedo's pistol.
You can't really tell from the ... two available shots in the movie where you can see it,
but this is actually based on a Ruger Mark II pistol.
So they added a bunch of stuff to it.
And I almost hesitated to include it because it's a very brief scene,
and you really have to brighten it to be able to see what the gun is at all.
Now we have the Stormtrooper's heavy guns.
Again we go back to the fact that Bapty has a lot of British,
and a lot of World War Two, firearms on hand because they are a British prop gun company.
What we have here is a just barely modified Lewis light machine gun.
They took the magazine off, and they stuck some stuff on the back of the barrel shroud, and that's it.
Other than that, it's just a Lewis light machine gun.
And the Lewis, because of that giant barrel shroud,
looks like a big blaster cannon if you put it in that context.
Alright, and next up we have the RT-97, that is the gun on the right.
It is a German MG 15 aircraft machine gun.
Again, what was in stock at Bapty.
It's a German World War Two machine gun, it looks pretty cool, it certainly fills the part.
You can see it on the left hand side of the screen here, the double drum magazine.
Note that this scene was filmed in Tunisia, along with the Tatooine scenes,
and it appears that they just took the barrel out of the gun.
This was probably a live gun,
if it were rubber you wouldn't have been able to see through the barrel shroud.
But once again back to the front view here.
The one on the right now is based on a German MG 15 with a scope added to it.
The one on the left is a DLT-19 Heavy Blaster Rifle,
aka a German MG 34, again just very slightly modified from the original German production.
So they stuck a few bits on it here and there, but really not that much.
There's a rack of them here in the Death Star.
Note that those are all muzzle down, you can see the bipods sticking out on the bottom.
Here's a shot that gives you a really clear view of the front of the gun.
There's no barrel in it, that's why you can see clear through it,
which makes it a lot lighter and easier for the actors to carry around.
But there again, almost nothing at all changed on an MG 34
to turn it into a heavy blaster rifle, and it really fits the part pretty well.
Now clearly the most famous pop-culture gun
from Star Wars is Han Solo's BlasTech DL-44 Heavy Blaster Pistol.
And my apologies to Harrison Ford here, he doesn't look very cool in still frames
from the first Star Wars movie where he's shooting this thing.
He's kind of got a fencing grip to it here.
And it's also remarkable to me,
given how clearly everyone who's a fan of Star Wars seems to know this pistol,
in the first movie you get very few actually good, clear, shots of the gun.
Now this is a C96 Broomhandle Mauser.
It's had an MG 81 muzzle brake attached to the front of it,
and a scope bolted onto the side.
You can see a little bit of the scope mount here.
These guns are popular enough in pop-culture
that you will occasionally actually run across a real C96 Mauser
that has had holes drilled into the side of the magazine well
to bolt on a scope mount to replicate ... a Star Wars DL-44 Heavy Blaster Pistol.
It's remarkable that there are very few ... movie guns that are so popular in real life
that people actually start converting real guns, collectible, potentially valuable, real guns,
(please don't do this to a C96 today - if you are thinking about it, go get an Airsoft one or something),
but people will convert them into mock-ups of Han Solo's actual pistol from the movie.
So, once again the still frame here is pretty darn poor, it's very hard to make out detail.
But you just didn't really have any good shots of it in the first Star Wars movie.
Hopefully you guys enjoyed the video.
I guess if you've watched it all the way through to this point, you probably did.
If you'd like to see me do more of this sort of thing, let me know.
It's something I don't want to do too much of,
because after all this is movie props and not real history.
But it is fun to do, and I know it appeals to a lot of people who are curious about
those various guns and props that they see in the movies.
Thanks for watching.