(WYTV) – Do you believe in Bigfoot? He’s also known as Sasquatch and is believed to be roaming the forest, especially the Pacific Northwest.
Bigfoot was a problem at one time for George Lucas, the man behind the earlier Star Wars films.
He started filming the “Return of the Jedi” in early 1982 and the scenes that take place on the forest moon of Endor were filmed at Redwood National Park in California.
The late Peter Mayhew, he died this past April, played Chewbacca. Think about that: Mayhew is an actor in a suit that looks like a Sasquatch walking around the forests of the Pacific Northwest and those woods at the time were filled with Bigfoot hunters and still are.
Mayhew was warned not to walk off set in costume – ever. And, just to be on the safe side, two stagehands wearing brightly colored vests would always walk beside him before filming began so no one off in the distance with a rifle might be tempted to take a shot and claim “I got a Bigfoot!”
Chewbacca managed to make it through Return of the Jedi without getting shot by either an Imperial Storm Trooper or a Northern California hunter.
Oddly enough, an official Star Wars comic appeared in 2004 titled “Into the Great Unknown.” The Millennium Falcon crash-lands on Earth in the Pacific Northwest before the area was colonized. Han Solo dies but Chewbacca survives, becoming the mythical Bigfoot.
A century-plus later, an archeologist tracking Bigfoot finds Han Solo’s skeletal remains. The archeologist is Indiana Jones in the movies, Harrison Ford played Jones and Han Solo, Chewie’s friend.
