Star Wars: 10 Things You Didn't Know About The Imperial TIE Fighter
There’s much to learn about the iconic Twin Ion Engine Fighter.
Today, Star Wars' venerable TIE Fighter is everywhere, from billboards to adverts to cutting-edge video games. The exposure is so great that in a sense, the ‘iconic’ starfighter just... fades into the background.
With that in mind, it can be difficult to appreciate just how odd a thing the TIE Fighter was when it first made its on-screen debut over thirty years ago.
Here was this strange round ball mated to two parallel... wings? Shields? The guns had no barrels. It sounded less like a spacecraft and more a metallic dragon. There were no visible control surfaces.
You wondered how the crazy thing could even fly.
And yet, it worked, as so many bizarre designs that came from that furtive period in Star Wars history did. Even today it is still being theorized and written about.
With that kind of longevity you had better believe that the TIE Fighter has some interesting stories to tell. So, here are some of the best, from bizarre trivia to fascinating technical details, to a long-standing myth that can finally be set straight.
Time to get to know the humble TIE Fighter a little better.
10. The Ju 87 Stuka & Elephants Combine For Its Iconic Bellow
As a symbol of the Empire's might and the film’s bad-guy craft the TIE Fighter needed to sound suitably menacing, and when it comes to menacing you need look no further than the Stuka’s infamous “Jericho Trumpet.”
As Joe Johnston, working on storyboards at the time, recalls:
“In World War 2, the super dive-bombers had an artificially created siren wail created by air ducts. They didn’t serve any purpose except to create this noise, which would terrify people. It was intended that the TIE should achieve the same effect.”
Sound designer Ben Burtt found its analogue in an animal not normally known for being frightening – the African Elephant.
Burtt was a fan of the early
Fox Studios films’ sound design and among them was The Roots Of
Heaven, a story about a team trying to save elephants from
extinction. Burtt sampled the film’s elephant screeches and slowed
them down, producing the TIE Fighter’s signature sound. The slight
hiss you hear came from a more mundane source – the sound of tyres
moving through water.
Burtt did not think the sound would be used but the Star Wars brains trust loved it and the rest, as they say, is history.