Star Wars Day is almost like a global holiday for geeks as we celebrate all things Jedi and beyond. In case it’s not obvious, “May the Fourth be with you” is a popular pun on the iconic line: “May the force be with you”. Whether you’re a Star Wars superfan or not, these pieces of trivia on the original trilogy are interesting and amusing bits of movie history.
Darth Vader and Princess Leia / Image credit: COLLECTION CHRISTOPHEL / RnB © Lucasfilm / Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation / Alamy Stock Photo
George Lucas was certain that Star Wars would flop, so he didn’t even attend the premiere. Instead, he decided to go to Hawaii with Steven Spielberg and it was there the first plans for Raiders of the Lost Ark were born. Of course, this spark of inspiration came only after they discovered that Star Wars had been an unexpected success; unexpected to everyone except, apparently, Steven Spielberg who predicted that the movie would become “the biggest movie of all time”.
The famous lightsaber sound was created using a 35mm movie projector and feedback from a microphone cable being held near a television. There are some pretty cool sources for a lot of the iconic sounds in the trilogy in fact; for example, Chewbacca’s noises were from a variety of large mammals including grizzly bears, and Darth Vader's meditation chamber opening is allegedly the slamming of an entire block of cell doors in Alcatraz.
Mark Hamill burst a blood vessel in his face for holding his breath too long during the trash compactor scene so cinematographers had to be careful to film him from the opposite side for the rest of the movie. It wasn’t the only injury he suffered in the trilogy either; he got bitten by a snake in The Empire Strikes Back and broke his thumb in the scene where Luke’s snowspeeder gets crushed by the Imperial walker.
Peter Cushing who played Grand Moff Tarkin spent most of the movie wearing fuzzy slippers because the boots in his costume were far too small. He only wore the boots during scenes where his feet were visible. Cushing wasn’t the only one who took issue with their costume either; the Asian elephant who played the Bantha kept getting too hot during filming in Death Valley and more than once removed his fur costume and horns.
The actor who played Darth Vader had his voice dubbed over by James Earl Jones in the movies because, frankly, David Prowse did not have a menacing enough voice for a BBEG. When we say it wasn’t menacing enough, he had a strong Bristolian accent which earned him the nickname “Darth Farmer” from the cast and crew. Prowse was upset about the situation for a long time, but, honestly, after hearing his original dialogue, Lucas and his team definitely made the right decision.
It might be par for the course now for movies to present their credits at the end of the movie as opposed to the start as most movies did pre-Star Wars, but George Lucas lost his membership in the Writers' Guild, Directors' Guild, and the Motion Picture Association of America for insisting on having the credits at the end in the second movie. The organisations didn’t mind so much with the first because they didn’t think it would be such a hit, but they were completely against Lucas continuing the trend into the second movie. But for Lucas, he didn’t want anything to distract from the drama of the movies’ openings.
MORE: May the force be with you! Melissa Rivers confesses crush on Star Wars actor Mark Hamill
Everyone knows what an “Ewok” is; you don’t have to have seen the Star Wars movies to recognise an “Ewok”. And yet, the word “Ewok” was never mentioned in any dialogue in Return of the Jedi - nor are their names (Wicket, Paploo etc.). The word did appear in the credits, though, and apparently it was a term based on the Miwok Native American tribe that were native to the Redwood forest where the Endor scenes were shot.
