Mos Eisley Cantina
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The Mos Eisley Cantina is a fictional bar (cantina) of the Star Wars universe located in the "pirate city" of Mos Eisley on the planet Tatooine. It is the haunt of freight pilots and other dangerous characters of various alien races and contains booths, a bar counter, and some free-standing tables, and sometimes a band of musicians named Figrin D'an and the Modal Nodes.
Droids are not allowed in the establishment. A droid detector near the front door alerts the management of any entering droid.
It is here that an Aqualish by the name of Ponda Baba attempted to pick a fight with Luke Skywalker, only to have his arm sliced off by Obi-Wan Kenobi’s lightsaber. It is also here that Skywalker and Kenobi hired Han Solo and Chewbacca to transport them off Tatooine.
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[edit] Tales from Mos Eisley Cantina
The cantina is first introduced in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope where Skywalker and Kenobi first meet Solo and Chewbacca.
The anthology of intertwined short stories Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina, edited by Kevin J. Anderson, explores the cantina and its clientele further. The book also explores why exactly it is that droids are not allowed. Due to the personal animus towards droids felt by the proprietor, the Wookiee Chalmun, and the bartender Wuher, droids are also not allowed inside. However, the reasons for their bigotry towards droids are quite different. Wuher claims to dislike everyone, but lashes out at droids because they are the only thing that will not try to fight back, whereas Chalmun will not tolerate droids in his cantina because they do not drink and therefore occupy unnecessary space.
Apparently, patrons are not allowed to use blasters inside the premises; this is probably something that is largely ignored, given that Solo, Greedo, and Ponda Baba carried blasters.
There is a definite vibe of the Blue Parrot, Rick's competitors cafe from Casablanca.[citation needed]
[edit] Legacy: popular culture and politics
The Mos Eisley Cantina scene was one of the most impressive and memorable scenes of A New Hope to moviegoers; it represented the state of the art in special effects and costume design and had a perfect combination of disrepute, oddity, darkness, and humor. As such it is one of the scenes from the Star Wars saga with which casual fans are most likely to identify. This identity has continued as a political and cultural metaphor in American life. A reference to the "Star Wars bar scene" is generally a slightly derogatory, humorous reference to a meeting of odd personalities; additionally, it is used by right-leaning political commentators as a tongue-in-cheek, mildly xenophobic reference to a meeting of wide-ranging races, cultures and nationalities.[citation needed]
The cantina scene is referenced in the movie Team America: World Police where the protagonists are at a bar in Cairo, Egypt. The music played in this scene is a blend of stereotypically Middle Eastern music and the music played during the original cantina scene in A New Hope.
Kevin Smith, well known for Star Wars references in his films, refers to the cantina in the movie Dogma. When Jay and Silent Bob discuss joining forces with Bethany, Jay chimes in: "I feel like I'm Han Solo, and you're Chewie, and she's Ben Kenobi, and we're in that f***'d up bar!"
The Country Teasers', 2006 album, The Empire Strikes Back features a song titled Mos Eisley. The opening lyrics satire those critical of the growing multicuturalism in Europe: "The world is much more like Star Wars than it used to be. But the world is no more like Star Wars than it should be. There is nothing wrong with a world a bit like Star Wars. I like Star Wars. London is a lot like Mos Eisley. It's a lot more like Mos Eisley than it used to be. For instance in the Fifties and the Seventies it was like the f***'ing Death Star."
[edit] Legacy: other cantinas
The cantina sequence from A New Hope has often been said to be the very incarnation of the spirit of Star Wars, and has thus been the source of inspiration for several other cantinas found all over the galaxy in the Star Wars universe. These cantinas house the same type of clientele and typically play the same type of music in an attempt to induce into them the same atmosphere known from the original cantina sequence. This applies especially to a large range of computer games, some of which are:
- Star Wars: Yoda Stories, where every level except Dagobah has a cantina.
- Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight, which starts out in a cantina in the space port of Nar Shaddaa.
- Jedi Knight: Mysteries of the Sith, where in one level, Mara Jade has to work her way through several cantinas in order to complete the game.
- Jedi Outcast, in which Kyle Katarn is ambushed in a cantina and must fight his way out in yet another mission in Nar Shaddaa.
- Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy, where Jaden Korr has to fight his way through several cantina-like bars in one of the missions.
- Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, which has a cantina in every world apart from Dantooine, Kashyyyk, the unknown world of the Rakata, and the Star Forge. Taris even has two - populated by shady patrons, swinging Bith and dancing Twi'leks.
- Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II, where cantinas are found on Telos, Onderon, and Nar Shaddaa.
- Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy, The cantina is the "hub" of the game.
- A terrorist den in the marionette movie Team America: World Police is a parody of the Mos Eisley Cantina.
- Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided, Cantinas are structures build able by architects in-game and are popular in many player ran communities. The Cantinas also appear in some major towns.
[edit] Parody song
Mark Jonathan Davis, later of Richard Cheese and Lounge Against the Machine, made a parody song of Barry Manilow's Copacabana, called "Star Wars Cantina".[1] Davis used the melody of that song; his lyrics are a rough outline of Star Wars Episodes 4 thru 6. The song received significant radio airplay, along with "Weird Al" Yankovic's Yoda, in the run-up to the 1997 release of the Star Wars Special Edition VHS box set and the 1999 release of The Phantom Menace.
