Banthas are fictional creatures in the Star Wars franchise. They are large, quadrupedal mammals with long, thick fur, and are first seen in the film Star Wars (1977), where they are used as beasts of burden by Tusken Raiders on the planet Tatooine. They have since been featured in several other Star Wars works, including the Special Edition version of Return of the Jedi (1983), the prequel films The Phantom Menace (1999) and Attack of the Clones (2002), and the television shows Star Wars: The Clone Wars, The Mandalorian, and The Book of Boba Fett, as well as video games and books.

One of the first creatures introduced in the Star Wars franchise, banthas were created by George Lucas, who was inspired in part by creatures called Banths in John Carter of Mars. Ralph McQuarrie designed the concept art for the banthas, with original sketches depicting them as horse-like creatures before they were changed to be elephant-sized. Art director Leon Erickson led the creation of the bantha costume for Star Wars, the base of which was an elephant saddle with palm fronds and yak hair to create a shaggy coat, as well as a head mask molded from chicken wire, curved horns made from ventilation tubing, and a tail crafted from wood covered with thick thistles.

The bantha's moan was created by sound designer Ben Burtt, who slowed down a bear sound originally collected to help create the voice of the Wookiee character Chewbacca. The banthas in Star Wars were portrayed by a female Asian elephant named Mardji, who was provided by the Marine World Africa USA amusement park. Her scenes were filmed in Death Valley National Park in California, and Mardji kept shrugging the heavy costume off her body during filming due to the intense heat.

The elephant's gait served as the model for the movement of AT-AT walkers in The Empire Strikes Back (1980), and banthas also inspired the creation of the luggabeast creature in Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) and the Corellian hounds in Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018). Banthas that have appeared in subsequent Star Wars films and shows were digital creations modeled after the creature from Star Wars. The bantha shares characteristics with several real-life animals, including bighorn sheep, muskoxen, woolly mammoths, and domestic yaks, and its use of fur to help insulate itself from excess heat is a trait shared by such animals as the antelope, camel, and jerboa. The bantha has been described as a favorite among fans, as well as the cast and crew of the films; Anthony Daniels, the actor who portrayed C-3PO, called it "one of the best things in the movie". which resemble those of the real-life bighorn sheep, Star Wars books and media have established biological details about the bantha that go beyond the creature's appearances in the films and television shows. About in height, banthas breathe oxygen, Banthas are extremely strong, capable of carrying up to 500 kilograms of cargo or an average of five passengers. ranging from deserts to tundra. This is a characteristic shared with several real-life desert animals, including the antelope, camel, and jerboa. The horns of male banthas could reach a width of up to 3 meters at the shoulders. holding and carrying items, and as a signifier for communications with other members of the species. Banthas also have extremely sharp incisors. each varying in size, social behavior, metabolic specifics, and coloration. The Kilian bantha, a type native to the planet Kilia IV, was another sub-species.

Behavior and culture

According to Star Wars works, banthas are herbivores, with a peaceful and docile manner, they can be found both in the wild and domesticated. Despite their gentle temperaments, the size and strength of banthas often lead them to be used as beasts of burden and animals of war, with riders spurring them to charge at foes and trample them. As the matriarch ages, she relinquishes control of the herd to the next qualified female bantha candidate. If a herd grows too large in size, it will occasionally split, with the second-oldest and strongest female becoming the matriarch of the new herd. with a deep spiritual and emotional connection developing between each bantha and its Tusken rider. When a Tusken Raider reaches age seven, a bantha of the same gender is ceremonially presented to the child as its partner in life. The young Tusken cares for and raises the bantha as it grows, and once it reaches maturity, the Tusken rides it and takes it into the desert for initiatory ceremonies and tasks. When a Tusken Raider dies, the bantha is sent into the desert to find another bonding partner; If the latter occurs, the Tusken is allowed to return to his or her tribe. No other cultures or species share such a bond with banthas. Bantha blue milk has reappeared in several Star Wars films, books, games, and other mediums, including the film Rogue One (2016), and is sold as a real-life beverage at the Star Wars Galaxy's Edge, the Star Wars themed area within Disneyland in Anaheim, California. Fictional bantha hides make an alcoholic drink when mixed with fermented grain. which is served to Obi-Wan Kenobi at a restaurant in a scene from Attack of the Clones (2002). Luke later uses binoculars to survey the area and spots two banthas and a Tusken Raider in the distance, before another Tusken surprise attacks him and renders him unconscious. Other works of Star Wars media have established that the specific bantha most prominently featured in the film was a male named R'rrr'ur'R, whose name is similar to the guttural sounds of the Tusken language. According to his backstory, R'rrr'ur'R had been the alpha male of his herd before he was raised by the Tusken Raider RR'uruurrr for the personal use of URoRRuR'R'R, the leader of the tribe. Later in the film, while Luke and Obi-Wan Kenobi are surveying the wreckage of a destroyed sandcrawler, Kenobi correctly assesses that the craft was attacked not by Tusken Raiders but by Imperial stormtroopers serving the Galactic Empire. He reaches this conclusion by noting that the footprints left by the attackers were side by side, whereas Tusken Raiders and their banthas travel in single file to hide their numbers.

Chewbacca's son Lumpawaroo plays with a plush toy version of a bantha in the Star Wars Christmas Special (1978), and comedian Harvey Korman appears in the special as a four-armed alien chef and parody of Julia Child, who cooks a meal called "Bantha Surprise". Banthas have played a part in stories for the Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game first published in 1987, including a bantha stampede caused by Tusken Raiders as an attack against the players. The game also introduced the Dim-U, a cult-like sect of monks that worship banthas as deities, believing the creatures' far-reaching presence on multiple worlds was a sign of a message from a higher power.

thumb|right|A shot of digitally-created banthas traveling in a herd was added to the [[Changes in Star Wars re-releases|Special Edition version of Return of the Jedi released in 1997.]]

In the Special Edition version of Return of the Jedi (1983) released in 1997, a shot with a herd of banthas walking through the Tatooine desert was added to the film, just before the scene in which the sail barge vehicle of the character Jabba the Hutt passes. Banthas appear in two of the Star Wars prequel trilogy films. In the first film, The Phantom Menace (1999), a bantha can be seen in the background when the characters Qui-Gon Jinn, Padmé Amidala, and Jar Jar Binks enter the Tatooine city of Mos Espa. A bantha doll can be seen in the bedroom of Torra Doza in "The High Tower", the fifth episode of Resistance, which first aired on October 28, 2018. Obi-Wan Kenobi walks among a herd of banthas in the 20th issue of the Star Wars comic book series by Marvel Comics. In the issue, released on June 15, 2016, Kenobi speaks to the banthas as if they are friends, referring to two in particular by the names Dolo and Nara. The episode, entitled "Chapter 5: The Gunslinger", was first made available on December 6, 2019. In it, the title character and a bounty hunter named Toro Calican search Tatooine for a mercenary named Fennec Shand. During the search, Toro looks through a pair of binoculars and spots two banthas and their accompanying Tusken Raiders in the distance, a first-person camera angle that references a similar shot from the original Star Wars film when Luke Skywalker observes the banthas through binoculars. They also appear as a creature the player-controlled character can ride in Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy (2003), Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy (2006), Star Wars: The Old Republic (2008), Disney Infinity 3.0 (2015), and the upcoming Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga (2020). In Star Wars: Battlefront (2004), the player who is killed the most often in some games receives an award called "bantha fodder". The word "bantha" has been used throughout other Star Wars stories. The hovercraft that Jabba the Hutt used to transport the imprisoned Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and Chewbacca to the Sarlacc monster in Return of the Jedi was called a "Bantha-II cargo skiff". One alcoholic drink often consumed at the Jabba's palace was called a "Bantha Blaster", and one type of space vessel was named the Bantha-class assault shuttle. Additionally, in the television series Star Wars: A Clone Wars, Anakin Skywalker orders his starfighter squadron to use a single-file starfighter formation known as the "Bantha formation". They were one of the first creatures introduced in the Star Wars universe, with the first use of a variation of the word "bantha" appearing in an early Star Wars film draft from May 1974, in which an antagonist Sith character had the callsign "Banta Four". A second version of this draft, dated January 1978, featured a Rebel starfighter pilot with the callsign "Banta One" during the attack on the Death Star. Art director Leon Erickson created the bantha costume, leading a crew of six total crew members in the work. It took about one month to finish it. The costume ultimately weighed about 300 pounds. The bantha's moaning sound was created by sound designer Ben Burtt, who had collected a large number of bear sounds to create the voice of the Wookiee character Chewbacca. Burtt created the bantha's noise by slowing down one a specific bear recording that had been provided to him by documentary producer George Casey. The filmmakers had the option of creating the bantha through stop motion animation or by filming an elephant in a bantha costume, and Lucas decided on the latter because he wanted a Tusken Raider to jump onto the back of the bantha in the scene, which could not be realistically done using stop motion. The bantha appeared in scenes on the desert planet of Tatooine, most of which were filmed in Tunisia. However, the production team had an insufficient budget to transport an elephant to the North African country, and large storms there would have prevented them from doing so even if they could. Lucas thus elected to film the bantha scenes in the United States, with sound to be added later, so that the scenes could be edited into the Tunisia-filmed scenes in post-production. Death Valley National Park in California offered to provide the scenery for the footage, and arrangements were made for an elephant, The elephant used to portray the bantha was a female Asian elephant named Mardji, who was 22 years old when Star Wars was filmed, which marked the first time Mardji ventured out into the wild. Crew members were worried the weight of the head mask would cause Mardji problems; her trunk would also occasionally fall out of the costume and become visible during shooting. Nevertheless, Mardji was largely good-natured throughout the shoot, and the footage was captured without major incident. During one scene in Star Wars, Luke Skywalker looks through a pair of binoculars and sees two banthas. Only one was used in filming due to budget restraints, and the second bantha in the shot was created using optical compositing. In November 1995, aged 44, Mardji was euthanized at the University of California, Davis because of an untreatable and painful bone condition in her front legs. The bantha costume used in Star Wars was on display at Marine World Africa USA for a time after Mardji's death, but elements of it deteriorated because it was not sufficiently protected, and it was later destroyed. During the production of Empire, Berg and fellow special effects artists Phil Tippett and Dennis Muren visited Mardji at Marine World Africa USA and shot footage of her walking back and forth for use as a reference in creating the walker's movements. Rick McCallum, a producer with the Special Edition films, said the digital banthas allowed for greater flexibility and freedom of movement than the original version, which he described as "laboriously-made creatures that you couldn't sync up". An entirely new digital model for the bantha had to be created for its appearance in the animated television series Star Wars: The Clone Wars to match the show's unique visual style. Additionally, the use of a live elephant for the original bantha inspired the special effects team behind Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018) to use actual dogs to portray Corellian hounds, quadrupedal creatures featured in that film. Special effects artist Neal Scanlan said the bantha in Star Wars "set that whole thing up for me. It's our responsibility to carry that magic forward." Anthony Daniels, the actor who portrayed C-3PO, called the bantha "one of the best things in the movie". The bantha was included on HowStuffWorks list of "11 Wacky Star Wars Creatures We Love", calling it "a wacky combination of animal parts in a memorable form". Brian Linder of IGN praised banthas as a positive addition to the Star Wars universe, writing: "Banthas are the choice beast of burden of the Tusken frickin' Raiders. That alone makes them cool."

Cultural references

The first name of the original newsletter of the Official Star Wars Fan Club was Bantha Tracks, inspired by the creature. Originally entitled simply Official Star Wars Fan Club when first published in 1978, the newsletter was renamed after a contest in the second issue invited readers to submit new names. Preston Postole of Avon, Ohio, submitted the winning title of Bantha Tracks. An Australian punk band called Bantha Fodder takes its name from the line. In Phineas and Ferb: Star Wars, a 2014 Star Wars-themed episode of the animated series Phineas and Ferb, villain character Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz sings a song that ends with the line "Darth Vader can kiss my bantha!" A September 18, 2014 episode of the educational children's television series Sesame Street featured a Star Wars-inspired segment in which Mr. Snuffleupagus, a woolly mammoth-like Muppet character, appeared as a bantha.

Merchandise

A bantha action figure was planned for the Star Wars: The Power of the Force toy line by Kenner Products in 1985, and concept artwork was prepared for the toy, but it was never produced before Kenner ended the toy line. A bantha figure would not be created until Hasbro revived the Power of the Force line in 1995. Several miniature bantha figures have since been released for use in Star Wars role-playing games, including one by West End Games, and a five-inch figurine through the Star Wars Miniatures toyline by Wizards of the Coast. Original t-shirts for official members of the Star Wars fan club featured a photo of a bantha. In 2014, Hallmark released a miniature bantha plush toys through its Itty Bittys toy line, sold in a two-pack along with a Tusken Raider. A bantha ride had been planned for Star Wars Galaxy's Edge at Disneyland, but it was ultimately not created. The planned attraction would have allowed visitors to ride on platforms atop large animatronic banthas, which would then embark on a tour of the area.

References

Bibliography

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