10 Things You Didn't Know About Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back
Calling all you sci-fi fans! We know you never really need a reason to celebrate and show some love for one of the best-loved and successful movies ever, right? But today marks a cool 42 years since this space opera was first released in the UK so we just had to give this some extra love!
As huge Star Wars fans who work tirelessly to bring you the coolest collection of Star Wars merchandise including official Star Wars T-Shirts, gifts, bags, accessories and so much more, we couldn't resist digging into some fun facts about this total movie classic.
Check out some fun, interesting and shocking things we discovered about this true movie icon!
Nobody but Mark Hamill knew about the Darth Vader twist until the filmâs premiere.
It turns out, THE big plot twist from this classic movie was kept such a big secret that even a lot of the cast and crew didn't know about it until the premiere!
*Spoiler alert* During the filming of this iconic scene with Darth Vader and Skywalker, the actors were fed the line âNo, Obi-Wan killed your father.â instead of the one we all know now. the scene was then simply voiced by James Earl Jones in post-production to be the 'real' line. Also, this is one of the most iconic movie lines ever... and one of the most misquoted too!
Han Soloâs classic âI knowâ response to Leia's profession of love was actually ad-libbed by Harrison Ford.
It turns out too, that George Lucas wasn't a big fan of this idea at all but after a lot of persuasion from Ford and it being well-received during screenings, it was kept in the final edit.
Sir Alec Guinness filmed all his scenes in just six hours.
Yep, the Obi-Wan Kenobi actor joined the cast for just one day on September 5th, 1979 where they filmed all his appearances in one go.
Jim Henson could have played Yoda.
After the film's creation, Lucas revealed that he really wanted Fraggle Rock, Muppets and Labyrinth legend Jim Henson to play the role of Yoda. Due to being too busy to take part, Jim offered the role to his colleague Frank Oz (who played Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, Animal, Cookie Monster, Bert, and Grover to name a few!) who took the performance.
Yoda's original name was Minch
In the early drafts of the script, Luke was meant to travel to the planet 'Bog' which we now know as Dagobah to meet and be trained by a frog-like Jedi master named 'Minch'.
The scenes in Hoth were filmed in Norway
Now, this sounds simple enough, right? Well, this also caused a lot of issues when filming was interrupted by the area's biggest snowstorm in 100 years (yep the showstorm was real!) which also resulted in cameras freezing solid. Sounds fun!
Some scenes in Dagobahâs âswampâ were actually Lucas' swimming pool.
Early in the film where Luke and R2-D2 crash land into a swamp were largely filmed in George Lucasâ back garden while other sets were still being completed. His pool had been dug out but not built and it turns out this worked as a great makeshift swamp!
George Lucas funded the whole thing himself.
When creating the first Star Wars movie, Lucas struck a deal where he would keep the rights to any Star Wars sequels and merchandise instead of a director's fee. After the roaring success of the first release, in order to keep control, Lucas funded the Empire Strikes back himself which ended up costing $30.5 million, $12.5 million more than expected!
It paid off though and this became one of the most successful independent movies ever made.
The line 'The first transport is away!' was voiced by Mark Hamill.
The P.A. voice that announces the successful evacuation of the first transport during the battle was performed by Luke Skywalker (Mark) himself. One to listen out for!
This was not the first appearance of Boba Fett!
One for all you super fans, technically Boba Fett's first appearance in Star Wars was in an animated segment of The Star Wars Holiday Special. We won't judge you for not seeing that though!
Some pretty wild things in there huh! We hope you enjoyed learning a little more about this absolute gem of a movie.
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