We are unhappy to report that Marc Thorpe, who labored on props and visible results for The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, has died at 77.
Thorpe’s daughter, Megan Feffer, introduced her father’s passing on social media this previous Friday. She mentioned his long-term wrestle with Parkinson’s illness and harassed the significance of remembering his many inventive achievements as a manner of honoring him.
“This morning my dad, Marc Thorpe, handed away. This was his thirtieth 12 months with Parkinson’s Disease. Although I’m positive it’s totally different for each affected person, for him early-onset Parkinson’s Disease began out with comparatively delicate tremors, after which over time progressed towards much less and fewer bodily autonomy – one thing significantly torturous for a fiercely impartial artist like my dad whose pleasure in life was to create issues along with his fingers…
“But if there’s one factor I do know for positive it’s that my dad would wish to be remembered – and never for his Parkinson’s Disease. He would wish to be remembered for his artwork. So, listed below are some images of his work all through the years. From being a mannequin maker at ILM on Star Wars and Indiana Jones to his creation of Robot Wars, he made many, many stunning, bizarre, detailed and unusual issues.”
Marc Thorpe’s profession within the movie business started when he was employed by Industrial Light and Magic in 1979 as a mannequin maker and animatronic designer. Thorpe labored within the optical results unit on The Empire Strikes Back and later contributed his skills to Return of the Jedi as properly.
Thorpe’s results work wasn’t restricted to Star Wars, nonetheless. He additionally labored on all three of the unique Indiana Jones motion pictures in addition to different main movies from the Nineteen Eighties and Nineteen Nineties like Dragonslayer, Poltergeist, Explorers, Howard the Duck, and The Hunt for Red October.
Still, many individuals could keep in mind Thorpe much more for what he did after his time at ILM. In the early Nineteen Nineties, Thorpe was a senior designer at LucasToys, which was a division of Lucasfilm. During that point, he obtained the thought of internet hosting occasions through which contestants would remote-control their very own robots in preventing matches towards one another. Thorpe named this new enterprise Robot Wars, and the primary occasion occurred in 1994.
Sadly, Thorpe wasn’t concerned along with his creation for very lengthy. In 1997, Profile Records assumed artistic management of the enterprise, and Thorpe took a step again from the robot-fighting group that started to develop from the success of Robot Wars. Even so, Thorpe proved that the viewers for that sort of leisure existed, and Robot Wars itself would proceed for a number of extra years. Additionally, different robot-fighting reveals have been later produced, a few of which, like BattleBots and its spinoffs, proceed to today.
BattleBots was fast to submit a tribute to Thorpe on social media, acknowledging him because the founding father of robotic preventing sports activities:
Today we honor and say goodbye to Marc Thorpe, the creator of robotic preventing sports activities. Without this outstanding human being, artistic genius, and pioneer, there could be no BattleBots, Robot Wars, RoboGames, NHRL, Robot Ruckus, Extreme Robots and so forth and so forth.
Marc touched all… pic.twitter.com/namqLNkeHf
— BattleBots (@BattleBots) November 24, 2023
Lastly, it’s price noting that quite a lot of inventors and engineers who would later go on to grow to be well-known in their very own proper participated within the early Robot Wars competitions. Those occasions featured robotic warriors created by the likes of Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman (the long run hosts of MythBusters), Caleb Chung (one of many inventors of the Furby toy), and plenty of others.
If you wish to study extra about Marc Thorpe and his profession in movie and robotic sports activities, you possibly can try his web site.
We right here at Star Wars News Net want to lengthen our condolences to Marc Thorpe’s household and pals of their time of loss.
May the Force be with him.
Sources: The Hollywood Reporter, Gizmodo, Marc Thorpe’s web site
Eric has been a fan of Star Wars ever for the reason that age of 5 (or so) when his dad and mom sat him down in entrance of a TV with pizza and a Sprite and confirmed him the unique trilogy. He retains making an attempt to persuade extra followers to learn the wonderful Nineteen Eighties Star Wars newspaper comics by Archie Goodwin and Al Williamson. When he is not studying, watching or enjoying Star Wars media, he is usually having fun with different nice fantasy and science fiction sagas or enjoying roleplaying video games along with his pals.
