Approved by the Imperial Tourism Board

Proving that tourism boosters will find a way to appeal to just about any niche or hobby group, here’s a poster promoting Tunisia, the North African desert country that, as any good fanboy or ‘girl should know, was the real-world stand-in for the planet Tatooine in the Star Wars films (not to mention several key scenes in Raiders of the Lost Ark):

According to this, these posters were being distributed at the Star Wars Celebration Europe convention last week. I’d love to have one for the Archives, and I wouldn’t mind watching a sunset from the Hotel Sidi Driss, either. Guess those boosters know what they’re doing after all…

[Update: Actually, a little bit of googling has turned up some trivia I didn’t know, as shocking as that seems. The “double-sunset scene” in which Luke stands on the rim of the pit he and the Larses called home was actually shot at a place called Chott el Jerid, some distance away from the hotel that served as the interior locations of the Lars homestead.]

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6 comments on “Approved by the Imperial Tourism Board

  1. steph

    Just make sure if you book the trip, you do it through me!

  2. Cranky Robert

    Are there clouds above Tattoine?
    That would wipe out the moisture farming economy! Not to mention that demand for blue milk would drop overnight. It’s an economic nightmare.

  3. jason

    I’m sure those are just CG clouds added after the fact to try and make the picture prettier, rather than the way the photographer remembers it being.

  4. chenopup

    maybe it’s a sign of global cooling in that neck of the woods, perhaps Lake Tatooine in the making? Pretty soon the Stormtroopers will need jetskis to get around and harass the locals. Not only that Luke can now hunt Womp Fish from his T-16

  5. Cranky Robert

    They’re not much bigger than two meters.

  6. jason

    That’s a big damn fish…
    Big damn rat, too…