Welcome to the Classic Moments Archives. A feature of Star Wars. Com, no longer active. This is not a complete archive but have salvaged what I can. Please note: Not in order of publication.

Star Wars : Episode VI – Return of the Jedi

200 MPH

“The (Endor speeder bike) chase is about two and a half, three minutes long, and it’s a great chase. It’s with our heroes–who are usually up in ships flying through the air. This time it’s down on a level you can relate to–down on the ground in the forest, where we have all been before. And they are zooming through these giant trees at 200 miles per hour, careening around the trees, hitting them, and having a ball!”

• Howard Kazanjian
  Producer
  The Making of Return of the Jedi

Arete

When a guard moves to shove him, Luke jumps off by himself, flips back into the floating skiff, and catches his lightsaber, thrown by Artoo. This striking style of action marks Luke as having achieved another characteristic of the classical Greek hero: Arete — excellence.

Star Wars: The Magic of Myth

Art of Inspiration

“Ralph (McQuarrie) is better at inspiring people through his art than anyone I know. His paintings are more than just paintings, they tell a story, they illustrate his designs, they give everyone at Lucasfilm something to shoot for.”

– Joe Johnston
Special Effects Art Director
Bantha Tracks #14
November, 1981

Be the Ewok

“You set up mirrors wherever they go so that as they are walking along, they see that they are actually Ewoks; they are not people anymore. Each Ewok actor has to see himself as an Ewok or he will never come off as one.”

– Jedi Director Richard Marquand
Bantha Tracks #20, May 1983

Beginning of the Future

“In the time line of the film industry, Jedi would be the beginning of the future, not a giant leap. Because it was basically a wire-frame model, it wasn’t up there on the complexity scale, but it worked great as an effect.”

• Bill Reeves, founding member of Lucasfilm’s first Computer Division
  on the first computer generated imaging used in Star Wars: the rebel war room hologram in Jedi
  Star Wars Galaxy Magazine #8

Better Door Caricature

“Our first Jedi expedition was last September, when we recorded the sound for an enormous door that opens in an early scene. I remembered an ammunition dump with a large, old iron door that had been sitting, rusting since World War II. It opened with a squeaky kind of scrape. That’ll be my basic door sound, and once I add an earthquake rumble and some other things, it’ll seem like an even bigger and better door caricature.”

• Ben Burtt, Sound Designer
  Bantha Tracks #17, August 1982

Big Little People

“Over 120 little people responded to the original Ewok casting call in London. Some applicants were rejected, being told for the first time in their lives that they were too tall.”

– Classic Creatures: Return of the Jedi
1983

Blue Harvest Letdown

“When shooting (Jedi) in the United States we called the film Blue Harvest. Camera Slates, invoices, hotel reservations, call sheets, production reports, and crew hats and T-shirts all read Blue Harvest. So when a visitor would ask, ‘what are you shooting’ and we said ‘Blue Harvest,’ they went on their way. Can you imagine what would have happened if we had said, ‘We’re shooting the next film in the Star Wars trilogy’?”

– Howard Kazanjian
Producer
Return of the Jedi: The Illustrated Screenplay

Body Movement Synchrony

“I remember George saying one day (during editing of Return of the Jedi), ‘Threepio is out of synch.’ I said, ‘What do you mean Threepio is out of synch? He doesn’t even have a mouth!’ But you know, it was true, and it was very important to George that every little inflection, any kind of body movement coming from the robots and the different creatures, be put with the right syllables.”

• Duwayne Dunham
  Co-Editor
  Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays

Calamari Instruction

“Look right! Look left! Shout out the first command! Gesture at something you see out the left window! Now react as if a big explosion has just happened off to the right! Shield your eye on that side! Shout the next command!”

• Richard Marquand, Director, giving instructions to Admiral Ackbar on set
  Bantha Tracks #18, November 1982

Carbon Spoiler

“It doesn’t spoil anything for people to know I’m coming back. They know I’m gonna get out of that carbon stuff. But it’s not how I do it, not if — but when.”

– Harrison Ford
August, 1980

Carbon Thaw

Having Han Solo coming out of carbon freeze on-screen was not in the original draft of Return of the Jedi. In the second draft, Han fell out of the block looking quite dead. When Leia took off her helmet and kissed Han, he woke up suddenly.

– Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays

Conclusion

“The part of the film that has always moved me most is the throne room battle in which Luke Skywalker confronts and defeats Darth Vader and the Emperor. It combines high drama with a really beautiful set, on which is staged the conclusive confrontation between the light and the dark sides of the Force. In that sequence, the whole story of the trilogy — which ultimately is about Luke’s journey — is resolved.”

• Rick McCallum
  Producer, Star Wars Trilogy Special Edition
  The Art of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi

Dancing with a Princess

“I enjoyed working in Yuma, Arizona, on the big sail barge in the desert there. That was nice, and we stayed at a nice hotel, and I used to play the harmonica with the band at night when we came back to the hotel. I’d play the harmonica, and dance — we were dancing with Carrie Fisher!”

– Kenny Baker (Artoo-Detoo)
Star Wars Insider #39

Dancing with an Ewok

“Threepio always tries to look his best at the end of each movie — even (in) Return of the Jedi. Do you know how hard it is to look good whilst dancing with an Ewok?”

– Anthony Daniels
Star Wars Insider #42

Dare to be Cute

“We realized that (the Ewoks) were getting to be a very cute creature, a very teddy bear-like creature, which first we fought a great deal. But, eventually we dared to be cute.”

– George Lucas
Classic Creatures: Return of the Jedi
1983

Darth Dub

“We need so much looping because many of the actors don’t speak in their characters’ voices. Either they are wearing a mask or helmet where you can’t record them, or their voices, like Darth Vader’s, will be dubbed later by a different actor. We don’t even attempt to get those voices down during shooting, because they are thrown away. We concentrate on Luke and the others that can be used.”

• Ben Burtt
  Sound Designer
  Bantha Tracks #17
  August, 1982

Degrees of Confrontation

“There was a feeling I had that I would like the (Jedi lightsaber duel between Luke and Vader) to be bigger than the fight in Empire. And then George said that it doesn’t have to be bigger, because basically it can’t be. George is very blunt. He said, ‘It’s just a couple of guys banging sticks against each other. Don’t worry about that. It is bigger because of what is going on in their heads. That is what makes it bigger.’”

• Richard Marquand
  Director
  The Making of Return of the Jedi

Different Spaceships

“Creating new ships comes down to designing something you’ve never seen before. We’ve all seen spaceships in different movies, books, and TV shows. What haven’t we seen yet? It’s always a challenge. It has to do with taking the character of the ship and taking the character who is using it and trying to let the design tell a little bit of the story. Like Darth Vader’s Star Destroyer. It’s all about him; it’s menacing-looking, it’s long and lean, it looks evil.”-

Joe Johnston
Art Director/Visual Effects Creator
Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays

Disappearing Discipline

“One of the things that will never get explained in the films is how Ben was able to retain his identity, because it happened somewhere between the third and fourth movies. I set up that this is a discipline that he learned from Yoda; Yoda told him how to do that.”

• George Lucas
  1997
  Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays

Don’t Tell Me…

“It’s sometimes funny when we go out and buy (supplies). We go crazy in hardware stores. When we bought our tubing elbows from the building supply company, the guy said – ‘Don’t tell me, you’re from Lucasfilm, right?’”

– Steve Gawley
Model Shop Supervisor
Bantha Tracks #22
November, 1983

Down the Line

“When we were doing [Jedi], I remember I had done a series of sketches of Vader’s home, and there was a sea of lava that his house looked out on. I remember having trouble drawing it because everything was either orange or a shadow; it was very intense. But before we got too far, George said he would save this for somewhere down the line, and I stopped working on it.”

– Joe Johnston
Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays

Earthly Limitations

“In the first movie we were on sand–it was all kind of a brown color. In the second one, I put it in the snow, so it was all kind of white–and then I did the green, swampy kind of thing. In the third one, you know, what can you do? In terms of environments, you have to shoot it somewhere on this Earth. So, a forest was really about the only thing I had left.”

• George Lucas
  Return of the Jedi Special Edition, 1997 VHS release

Endor Costume Inspirations

“Han’s costume actually resulted from a discussion that came about when we were fitting Harrison Ford. He suggested a duster, and we did a mock-up of one immediately. It seemed like the right choice, and we went for it. The helmets Luke and Leia wear were modelled after World War II helmets that had fabric on them. I used to go to a surplus store, and I had seen a lot of helmets that were made out of cloth. So I bought some of them and adapted them to a new and original design.”

• Nilo Rodis-Jamero
  Costume Designer
  Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays

Ewok Individuality

“Once the direction of the design was established, I started doing weapons and different fur patterns so that we could distinguish the characters. If you look at cattle, you’ll notice that they all look different, their coats have different patterns. We were concentrating on giving the Ewoks different headdresses; some of them had armor, some of them had ritual kinds of beads, distinctive fur coloring, etc… It was an interesting design experience to basically take these teddy bears and come up with six or eight different ones.”

• Joe Johnston
  Art Director/Visual Effects Creator
  Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays

Ewooks

“The Wookiee planet that I created for Star Wars was eventually turned into the Ewok planet in Jedi. I basically cut the Wookiees in half and called them Ewoks! I didn’t make Endor a Wookiee planet because Chewbacca was sophisticated technologically and I wanted the characters involved in the battle to be primitive.”

• George Lucas
  Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays

Fallen Angel

“Father, please. Help me.” And at last Vader seizes his master in order to save his son. As the Emperor’s lethal electric charges rain back on Vader, he throws his master into the shaft at the core of the Death Star. Regeneration has occurred within the very walls of the tyrant’s kingdom. Vader has detached himself from his evil master and has been transformed through his son. Vader is, in a sense, a fallen angel who reveals his true essence at last.

– Star Wars: The Magic of Myth

Falling Up

“On the barge there’s a sequence where Boba Fett gets knocked over, and we didn’t really have the right shot to make the sequence work, so I reversed one shot of Boba Fett falling down and made it look like he was getting up.” –

George Lucas
Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays

Fast and Scary

“The X-wings look like they’re basically hot rods. The TIE fighters look frightening, especially the interceptors we used in Jedi. They not only look fast and deadly, they were intended to look scary.”

– Joe Johnston
Art Director/Visual Effects Creator
Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays

Functionality

“Dealing with the droids is sometimes easier than dealing with the human characters because in a sense, they’re more functional. They can actually do things. The fact that Threepio can speak a lot of different languages and Artoo can do mechanical things made it easier for me to incorporate them in the story.”

• George Lucas
  Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays

Funeral Pyre

” Vader’s costume burning at the end was not there originally. This was added at the last minute. I remember that we said, ‘What happened to Vader? Did Luke leave him on the Death Star?’ So the scene was shot up at Skywalker Ranch, and we used the same music from Star Wars in the scene where Luke is staring at the two suns on Tatooine.”

• Duwayne Dunham
  Editor
  Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays

Funky Rebels

“We take a different approach towards Rebel equipment, vehicles and transport equipment than we do for the forces of the Empire. Rebel equipment is not as sleek, it’s not as high-tech – it’s almost funky in comparison to the cold, hard-edged and menacing lines of the Empire fleet.”

– Ken Ralston, Visual Effects Supervisor
Return of the Jedi Official Collectors Edition, 1983

Furry Tibetans

“For the Ewoks, I was inspired by a recording on a BBC documentary of an elderly woman speaking Tibetan. It was very high-pitched and sounded like a good basis for Ewokese to me. Eventually then, what evolved was a pidgin, or double talk version of words from Tibetan, Nepali and other Mongolian languages. Huttese was created by the same process.”

– Ben Burtt
Sound Designer
Bantha Tracks #17
August, 1982

Gift to the Fans

“George literally decided that day to include Boba — he said it was his ‘gift to the fans.’ George directed me in the scene. I was supposed to stroke the cheek of one of the palace dancers, but the lady had a lot of grease paint on, so I came up with just chucking her under her chin.”

• Don Bies, (Boba Fett – Return of the Jedi Special Edition)
  Star Wars: Boba Fett magazine

Go Fish

“In Star Wars, Princess Leia leads only a small part of the Rebel Alliance. The Commander of the entire Rebel Fleet is Admiral Ackbar — a member of the Mon Calamari race of highly intelligent master chess players from the planet Dac.”

• Maureen Garrett
  Director, The Official Star Wars Fan Club
  Bantha Tracks #17
  August, 1982

Guardian of the Labyrinth

The Emperor is now the monster at the heart of the Death Star’s labyrinth. In the Greek story of Theseus and the Minotaur, the maze is guarded by a creature who is half man and half animal. Here the guardian is Vader, who is half man and half machine.

– Star Wars: The Magic of Myth

Hand-To-Hand

In myth, one of the ways in which the hero proves himself is through hand-to-hand combat. In the best heroic style, Luke is able to vanquish the horrific rancor without the use of his lightsaber. But this sense of triumph is short-lived, as Jabba decides that Luke, Han, and Chewie will walk the plank, pirate-style.

– Star Wars: The Magic of Myth

Honky-Tonk Woman

“I went in to see the first mock-up of her (Sy Snootles), and she had these little teeny lips. And it just occurred to me — Wouldn’t it just be great if at the end of this long snout there were these giant, red lips. Mick Jagger lips.” –

George Lucas
Classic Creatures: Return of the Jedi
1983

Hot Heads

“You even have to take the creatures’ heads off so the actors don’t faint from the heat. When we first started shooting, we had a lot of trouble with the creatures fainting. I almost passed out myself. The work can be a bit trying, but it’s a lot of fun to do. It’s a great crew; we’re a family.”

– Carrie Fisher
Bantha Tracks #16
May, 1982

I Love You Déjà Vu

” ‘I love you,’ ‘I know’ was very popular in The Empire Strikes Back, so when we got to this scene in Jedi, we though it would be fun to use it again.”

– Lawrence Kasdan
Co-Writer, Screenplay
Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays
Image thanks to (Star Wars Behind the Magic)

Internal Grand Canyon

“This leads to the reactor chamber of the Death Star, which is quite spectacular. It is a sort of internal Grand Canyon, built of cardboard tubes, light sticks, sprinkler pipe, fluorescent lights, and mirrors.”

– Steve Gawley, Model Shop Supervisor
Return of the Jedi Official Collectors Edition, 1983

Juggling George

“By the time we got to the third film, we had so many different characters that it got a little more difficult to deal with all of them. Juggling with all the different characters and keeping them all in the air without ever dropping them was a challenge.”

– George Lucas
Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays

Kindred Spirits

“I don’t think Bib Fortuna was particularly evil. I felt he was someone who knew that he could never be number one, but was very attracted to the idea of power. He obeyed Jabba the Hutt and felt a kindred spirit with the great slug.”

– Michael Carter (Bib Fortuna)
Bantha Tracks #24
Spring, 1984

Lava Caves

“The Emperor was going to be in a cave surrounded by lava. The throne room was down in the lower levels of what turns out to be the Empire’s headquarters planet. I imagined it to be dark and spooky with enormous buildings and a metal surface and, down below, huge avenues like on Wall Street in Manhattan. George stated that he wanted a planet that was a city with endless built-up areas. In my mind it was built a thousand years ago, layer after layer. The Emperor’s office would be at the bottom of it, so far down that you would have lava.”

• Ralph McQuarrie
  Concept Artist
  Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays

Like a Woman

“Leia’s character undergoes quite a change in Jedi. They found a way for her to be very nice while remaining strong and committed. Leia is quite feminine, her character is as clearly defined as ‘the boys’ are, and she even dresses ‘like a woman’. At least I’m not always telling Harrison what to do.”

• Carrie Fisher (Princess Leia)
  Bantha Tracks #16, May 1982

Little Black Belt

“Since most of the Ewoks live in trees, we had to find a good number of little people who could do stunts. One even had a black belt in karate.”

– Stuart Freeborn
Make-Up And Creature Design
May 1983

Little Furry Guys

“I did hundreds of drawings of little furry guys in the woods. A lot of them were troll-like, gnomes. Some of them had cute little puppy-dog faces. George said, ‘Make them cute.’ So I did more drawings. Then I did one with a little bonnet with his ears poking out the top. George came in and said ‘That’s it.’ So that’s how the Ewoks were designed.”

• Joe Johnston
  Conceptual Artist
  ILM: The Art of Special Effects

Man in Black

“I remember George telling me that in samurai movies costumes say a lot about the characters; the way the costume is folded, the way it’s tucked in is very important. So I thought, Luke has become a Jedi; he is more distant, more serious. I thought, What do gunslingers wear when they mean business? They wear black.”

• Nilo Rodis-Jamero
  Costume Designer
  Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays

Maternal Memories

“The part that I never really developed is the death of Luke and Leia’s mother. I had developed a backstory for her in earlier drafts, but it basically didn’t survive. When I got to Jedi, I wanted one of the kids to have some kind of memory of her because she will be a key figure in the new episodes I’m writing. But I really debated on whether or not Leia should remember her.”

• George Lucas
  Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays

Monster Menu

“We were essentially building these costume figures around our own bodies because we really didn’t have any idea who the performers in England would be. To compensate, we made a number of generic monsters — small, medium and large.”

– Phil Tippett
Creature Designer
Spring 1983

More Tentacles

“Before, there was just a couple of tentacles, and there was kind of a funny mouth with a few spikes sticking out of it. There wasn’t anything alive about the whole thing. And so what we’ve managed to do is create a kind of a beak that comes out and attacks them. And, more tentacles–and, it just looks more realistic and much more threatening.”

• George Lucas
  Return of the Jedi Special Edition, VHS release

New Heroes

Throughout this final phase of the trilogy, new heroes are made as the crisis demands it; Luke, Han and Leia have become mature leaders who inspire others. Thus, it is Chewie who saves the day at the shield bunker, Lando and Wedge who will blow up the Death Star, and ultimately, Vader himself who will destroy the Emperor.

– Star Wars: The Magic of Myth

Nine-To-Five

“It’s Neverland. It’s Oz. It’s a galaxy far, far away — a great place to go and live out the fantasies you can’t get in the nine-to-five world.”

– Mark Hamill
Spring 1983

Not Easy Being Cute

“It certainly wasn’t much fun being an Ewok, either at Elstree or in the forest while we were shooting. Every so often, on the set, we had to peel them out of their suits and take off their specially designed sets of underwear, because they would be soaking wet, and send them (the underwear, not the Ewoks!) off to the laundry while they put on a spare set. I have a lot of respect for their endurance.”

• Howard Kazanjian, Producer
  Return of the Jedi Official Collectors Edition, 1983

On His Own

“I felt that one of the major issues in the third film is that Luke is finally on his own and has to fight Vader and the Emperor by himself. If you get a sense that Yoda or Ben is there to help him or to somehow influence him, it diminishes the power of the scene.”

• George Lucas
  Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays

Organized Disorganization

“We were going for a feeling of the whole sky being filled with battling ships, but without the chaos — sort of organized disorganization.”

– Dennis Muren
Visual Effects Supervisor
Bantha Tracks #21
August, 1983

Perpetual Princess

“As far as most people are concerned, I’ll go to my grave as Princess Leia. In the street they call out, ‘Hi, Princess,’ which makes me feel like a poodle. See, my grandmother had a dog named Princess.”

• Carrie Fisher
  The Official Star Wars 20th Anniversary Commemorative Magazine

Personas

” Frank Oz is the persona of the most nubile, the most sensuous, the most well rounded performer ever to grace the silver screen. Frank Oz is — Miss Piggy.”

• Billy Dee Williams
  Classic Creatures: Return of the Jedi
  1983

Preservation

“Someone had the idea to take a publicity shot of George Lucas amid a sea of models and miniatures used to make the trilogy. ILM then added a starfield with the ominous Death Star under construction hovering overhead. It wasn’t until that day on the gigantic ILM soundstage that we had seen all these pieces in one place. We were stunned by the volume of it. George turned to me and said, ‘You know, we need to save all this stuff. We need to start an archive. You’re in charge of it.’”

– Deborah Fine
Director of Research and Archives 1978 – 1996
From Star Wars to Indiana Jones: The Best of the Lucasfilm Archives

Primates and Potatoes

“(The rancor was) described by its designer as a cross between a gorilla and a potato.”

– Classic Creatures: Return of the Jedi
1983

Pull the Chain

“She (Carrie Fisher) loved Jabba. She just adored him. I was just worried for her because the chain that goes around her neck and that he holds is very tight. The guys inside Jabba couldn’t pull the chain properly because they couldn’t grasp with the three-fingered hand very well. So I told them ‘Well, just hold the chain and try to keep it taut.’ They didn’t have any feeling, so they choked her. She said ‘Hey, pull the chain, pull the chain. I want to feel that I’m really being captured.’ So she encouraged them to do that.”

• Richard Marquand
  Director
  The Making of Return of the Jedi

Repositories of Exposition

“During the post-production on a Star Wars episode, Darth Vader and C-3PO’s lines get re-written because they don’t have any moving mouth parts to lip-sync new dialog with. If you find out at the preview the movie still misses some important concept, there’s no problem having C-3PO say something about it. Threepio and Vader are great repositories of exposition because they can say anything, even long after the film is edited together.”

• Ben Burtt, Sound Designer
  Bantha Tracks #17, August 1982

Salacious Stardom

“We never knew he would be the star that he turned out to be. What happened was, when we weren’t even shooting with him, the puppeteer under the floor would be playing with Salacious and would have him do something unexpected, such as peck at somebody’s ear, or some other impromptu action, and we couldn’t help but fall in love with him. So, gradually, we enlarged his part.”

• Howard Kazanjian
  Producer
  The Making of Return of the Jedi

Sandy-Browny-Greeny

“Artoo doesn’t do sand and they had earlier found he didn’t do rocks. Years later they would find that he didn’t do forest floors either. In each case they would carefully lay plywood sheets on the tricky terrain and paint them the appropriate colour; sandy-yellow, browny-grey or greeny-brown. Cunning! Well, you never noticed, did you?”

– Anthony Daniels
Star Wars Insider #32

Size Matters

“We had to coordinate a lot of our model construction with what was being done in England and how their sets related to what we were going to do. Scale was very important. Based on what lens the cameraman was gong to use, what the size of the set in England was, and the size of the human beings in relation to the set; we could figure out mathematically exactly what size the model should be.”

– Lorne Peterson
Model Shop Supervisor
Bantha Tracks #22
November, 1983

Skiff Design

“On one level, the barge and the skiffs are very archaic. They had to look almost as if they were pleasure craft with decorative elements, yet they had to be high-tech vehicles that could float over land. The barge was designed before the skiffs, and the skiffs are almost like lifeboats from the barge. I wanted both vehicles to look alike, to have similar designs They had to look like they had been built by the same culture.”

• Joe Johnston
  Art Director – Visual Effects
  Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays

Skulls and Forests

It is no accident that the concluding sequences of the trilogy contrast the lush green environment of the Ewoks with the cold unfinished technological tomb of the Death Star. The Imperial weapon floats like a skull above the Endor forest, just as death is constantly hovering over life.

– Star Wars: The Magic of Myth

Slave Girl in Style

“George always talked about a slave girl outfit. I kept thinking, how am I going to do this in style? I mean, this is Leia. I actually struggled with that for a long time, and all I kept coming up with was clunky, Ben Hur kind of stuff.”

• Nilo Rodis-Jamero
  Costume Designer
  Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays

Special Edition Performance

“The scene in Jabba’s palace was supposed to have a big musical number, but unfortunately, we ended up with only a couple of shots. Now, thanks to digital technology, we’re able to turn this scene into the real musical number that it was supposed to be in the first place.”

• George Lucas
  Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays

Stunt Ewok

“Kenny (Baker) really tried, but I was worried for his safety. When you’ve got quite small hands, you can’t even grip the handlebars. So I finally asked a stunt person (to fill in) for the sequence where the Ewok first steals the bike, and he takes off so fast that he is just holding on with his hands, and his legs are flying out behind him, sort of flapping in the wind. To do this, we stood the bike up on its rear end and had the stuntman in the (Paploo) costume hold on; then he is hanging there and sort of kicking his legs. The effect (was) wonderful.”

• Richard Marquand
  Director
  The Making of Return of the Jedi

Sultan Slug

“He’s based on all those sort of evil sultan-like characters — Marlon Brando would be a good example, in The Godfather. There’s always been this sort of rotund, evil sultan who sat on his bed while people were being tortured.” –

George Lucas
Classic Creatures: Return of the Jedi
1983

Super-Weak Explosion

“One of the things we discovered was that a model has to be made of super-weak materials to blow up convincingly on film. In creating an explosion big enough to blow up a really strong model, it happens so quickly that it just vaporizes the model and you barely get anything on film. We got to where we’d make the pyro models with very thin-skinned urethane frames that were mostly air.”

• Paul Huston, Chief Model Maker
  Star Wars Galaxy Magazine #6

Swashbuckling Boushh

“Only once did I get conflicting directions. When I came into Jabba’s throne room disguised as a man, Richard (Marquand, Director) told me to stand like an English sentry. Then George walked in and said, ‘Carrie, you’re standing like an English sentry. You want to be more swashbuckling.’”

– Carrie Fisher
May 1983

Termites

More than a year before the filming of Return of the Jedi, George Lucas was proposing ideas for the designers to work on. On one occasion, he sent over a print of a 16mm film showing a queen termite in her nest, tended by scores of smaller workers-she was a yellow quivering sack of slime. “This is what Jabba the Hutt should look like in Jedi.”

– ILM: The Art of Special Effects

Terra Firma

“I think while Star Wars was set purely out in space and Empire was often cold and wet and miserable, on Jedi, we were on terra firma, and it was just a nice film to work on. I suppose it’s the last one I worked on, and the memories are still there. Jedi was the nicest of the lot.”

– Peter Mayhew (Chewbacca)
Star Wars Insider #28

The Sarlacc Pit Puzzle

“The scene at the Sarlacc pit was very difficult to edit… There was a lot going on in the sequence; you had Han regaining his eyesight, you had Leia chained to Jabba… Then you also had to show what was going on with the droids, Luke, Lando, Chewie, and Boba Fett. A sequence like this has to be put together like a puzzle, and you have to make sure that you pay attention to each of the pieces but that you keep the momentum going. By the time we finished the sequence and sent it to the negative cutter, I remember we got a call from the lab saying that the reel had more cuts in it than most movies!”

• Duwayne Dunham
  Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays

Throw Me a Line

“My difficulty was trying to make sense of the dialogue. I had to do it piece by piece. It often required a few takes because there was a lot of blue screen going on. There were times when I couldn’t get the technical lines together. I had to ask George, ‘Please, throw the lines to me,’ and I would repeat them. It can be exciting, but it can also be quite tedious.”

• Billy Dee Williams
  Star Wars Galaxy Magazine #4

Toxicity

“The Death Star surface was urethane foam — a combination of two chemicals which are mixed and poured in as a liquid; the mixture froths up like shaving cream, fills all the voids and then hardens. Many of the materials at this stage of construction are extremely toxic, and precautions are taken every step of the way.”

– Lorne Peterson
Model Shop Supervisor
Bantha Tracks #22
November, 1983

Trash and Treasure

“I really get a kick out of using found objects. When we were constructing the parts for the shield generator on Endor, we used large plastic cups glued on top of each other, and little pill cups stacked on top. We put little rocket motors from a kit on top of that and painted the things orange and silver. If we can find what we need without starting from scratch, and it looks the way we want it to, that’s great. We have a certain way of looking at objects that someone else might throw away. It’s part of the fun of making things.”

– Steve Gawley
Model Shop Supervisor
Bantha Tracks #22
November, 1983

Turning Japanese

“It was like working out one of those wooden puzzles the Japanese make. If you don’t put the right piece in first, ten moves later you wish you had and you’ve got to go back to the beginning.”

– Anthony Daniels, on donning his famous, yet puzzling costume
Tribute Magazine
Spring 1983

Un- Fortuna-te Jedi

“The teeth were difficult to work with because they kept falling out; especially when I raised my voice. One day I hit Mark [Hamill] square between the eyes with my bottom set.”

Michael Carter (Bib Fortuna)
Bantha Tracks #24
Spring, 1984

Unbelievably Lovely

“It was all foam rubber and fur. Within five minutes you were boiling over with the heatvery uncomfortable. They were cute, great little characters. They were lovely, but to work in them, unbelievable.” – Kenny Baker (Paploo the Ewok)
Star Wars Insider #39

Unearthly Creatures

“George felt that a lot of the creatures in Star Wars looked like something out of an Egyptian hieroglyphic panel. We made a conscious effort on Return of the Jedi to make things look more alien. We were concerned that they be less animalistic and more unearthly.”

• Phil Tippett, Creature Design Supervisor
  Return of the Jedi Official Collectors Edition

Vader Breath

“Vader’s breathing is fun to put in because each time I work on a character I become him briefly. So for a week I’m Darth Vader breathing asthmatically through every scene.”

• Ben Burtt
  Sound Designer
  Bantha Tracks #17
  August, 1982

Very Vaderish

“You haven’t seen my new costume. It’s all black. I told George it’s very Vaderish, but he said, ‘It’s supposed to be.’”

• Mark Hamill
  Bantha Tracks #18
  November, 1982

Who has the Power?

“My sense of the relationship is that the Emperor is much more powerful than Vader and that Vader is very much intimidated by him. Vader has dignity, but the Emperor in Jedi really has all the power.”

• Lawrence Kasdan
  Screenplay
  Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays

Whoop-Whoop!

“(Whoop-whoops) are sounds with musical elements in them that add variety and interest to the basic bike sounds. We recorded one source of the whoop-whoops at El Centro Naval Station, where they have a mock-up aircraft carrier deck on which the pilots practice night take-offs and landings. As the pilots come in really low on their approach, they throttle the engines and make adjustments for landing which produce a whoop-whoop sound. It’s the sound the jet thrusters make as they engage and disengage. It has a musical aspect to it that Re-Recording Mixer Gary Summers and I liked. When matched with the action of distant bikers shifting gears, it proved the unique sound we were looking for.”

– Ben Burtt
Sound Designer
Bantha Tracks #17
August, 1982

Welcome to the Classic Moments Archives. A feature of Star Wars. Com, no longer active. This is not a complete archive but have salvaged what I can. Please note: Not in order of publication.

Zen and Now

Some elements of the Force are reminiscent of Zen Buddhism, with its emphasis on enlightenment by means of direct, intuitive insightsWarriors did not live in the future or the past, but in the present. Yoda echoes this concept when he complains to Ben about Luke, ‘All his life he has looked awayto the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was, what he was doing. Adventure! Excitement! A Jedi craves not these things.’ And then he chastises Luke: ‘You are reckless!’

– Star Wars: The Magic of Myth

You Know, For Kids

“I feel the characters were all strong, archetypal characters and they are now part of the cultural mythology, at least with the mass media of our times. Certainly, the characters are loved by kids and I kept my eye on the kids all the time. I wanted them to like it, to enjoy it, to understand it.”

• Irvin Kershner, Director
  The Empire Strikes Back Official Collectors Edition, 1980

White Room

“I remember the floor of Lando’s world was absolutely white, and no one was able to walk on it without cushions on. It was constantly being polished and mopped.”

• John Hollis (Lobot)
  Star Wars Insider #33

Wherefore Art Thou, Rebel Base?

“The unintelligible alarm signal from the Probot in Empire was the voice of a well-known Shakespearean actor — totally changed electronically. I generally don’t use sounds from other sources, but on occasion I like to throw fun things in. I don’t think anybody could figure out who they were originally.”

• Ben Burtt
  Sound Designer and Supervising Sound Effects Editor
  Bantha Tracks #17
  August, 1982

Wax and Fur and Everything

“The wampa snow creature in The Empire Strikes Back was another one of our knock-together things. Phil (Tippett, Creature Designer) would say ‘We’ve got this thing to do. I’ll get a block of wood and some hinges from the carpentry department and you get a crowbar.’ And then we’d discuss how far we’d want the jaw to open up and I’d knock together something that we’d use as a puppet and then he would go and do his beautiful build-up work with all of the stuff — wax and fur and everything”

• Jon Berg
  Creature Designer
  ILM: The Art of Special Effects

War and Candy

“I have always likened Yoda to a powerful figure like Winston Churchill who might be having to make great decisions about the war, and yet while he’s doing it, he’s wondering if he should take that last candy in the dish or not, because he wants it really bad. It’s that paradox. I think it makes him more human.”

• Frank Oz
  Star Wars Insider #42

Walking Tanks

“George said the Imperial weapons attacking Hoth should look like walking tanks. The intention with the walker was to make it more frightening and anthropomorphic so it would look like a big robot. The idea of having a head and shapes that looked like big eyes and a big jaw was really to make it look more frightening.”

• Joe Johnston
  Art Director/Visual Effects Creator
  Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays

Walk like a Wookiee

“Peter Mayhew was not an actor but he did so well as Chewbacca. Peter got sick He just passed out one day. We took him away and gave him a few days off. So I brought someone in who was just as big and put on the costume. I had him do just a few little things And I had to throw all of that footage out! He didn’t look like Peter. Peter had a certain walk, a certain way of holding his head and it was right.”

• Irvin Kershner
  Director
  The Lucasfilm Fan Club Official Magazine #11

Vader’s Head

“I shot this scene very carefully. When the captain comes in and Vader is sitting in his capsule with his back towards us, all you see are scars on the back of his neck for half a second. I didn’t want the audience to see anything else. I imagined that beneath the mask Vader was hideous; his mouth was cut away, and he had one eye hanging low. I was very surprised to see that he was an ordinary man in the third film.”

• Irvin Kershner
  Director
  Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays

Two-Year Debate

“People were curious about whether it was true or not, and I purposefully left it so it would be ambiguous, so that you wouldn’t really know and people would sort of debate it for the next two years or more…”

• George Lucas
  Interview with Leonard Maltin
  The Empire Strikes Back, 1995 VHS release

Turned to Stone

“The act of turning a person to stone is found in many mythic stories. For example, as Lot and his family flee the biblical Sodom and Gomorrah to escape God’s wrath, Lot’s wife looks back and is turned to a pillar of salt. Perseus uses the Gorgon’s head to turn his enemies to stone. Han is turned to stone as he is encased in carbonite, and his rescuers will have to descend once again into the underworld of Jabba’s lair to reclaim him.”

– Star Wars: The Magic of Myth

Travel Blues

“Getting to Dagobah was easy — It was just a few blue screens away.”

• Mark Hamill
  SPFX: The Empire Strikes Back
  1980

Top Heavy Lobot

“That was murder. It had to be self-contained — they didn’t want any wires hanging out. So it was all battery-powered. They put it on a spring clip, so it clipped around my head. It was very heavy. At the end of the day, you were glad to get rid of it.”

• John Hollis (Lobot)
  Star Wars Insider #33

Toolbox Trauma

“The bit with the toolbox falling on Harrison was improvised on the set… Another thing we improvised was when Harrison hits the control panels of the Falcon to make them work. We were afraid to do it, but I finally said, ‘Come on, this is fun, let’s do it!'”

• Irvin Kershner
  Director
  Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays

Three Lines

“Empire is not an easy story to tell. There’s a lot of plot, a lot of unusual things and changes that take place. And there are many little sections in the script that have something like a three-line paragraph reading, ‘And then the battle started.’ It may have been three lines, but we had to shoot for weeks to get those lines on film.”

• Irvin Kershner
  Director
  The Empire Strikes Back Notebook

The Good Fight

” Princess Leia’s Rebel forces will not do anything in order to win. They will not sacrifice lives. They do not descend to the level of the enemy. That’s the difference between the Rebels and the Empire. It’s possible to fight because you love, not just because you hate.”

• Irvin Kershner
  Director
  Once Upon a Galaxy: A Journal of the Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

The Feel of Norway

“We all had to have special clothing while shooting up there. I remember that once you got on all the clothes, the goggles, jacket and boots, you would go outside and it felt like you were underwater. You couldn’t feel anything… I had never worn arctic clothing like that. When the weather cleared and the sun came out it was absolutely beautiful up there, though.”

• Denis Lawson
  Star Wars Insider #23

The Executor Trials

“A tough ‘time factor’ can breathe life into things, or it can be frustrating. The Executor had to be done in seven weeks. We worked seven days a week, 14-15 hours a day to get that done on schedule. During that time we had a bunch of boxes piled up in the back where one of our guys would go out about once a night to kick them and let off steam. We all learned a lot working on that model.”

• Lorne Peterson
  Chief Model Maker
  Bantha Tracks #22
  November, 1983

The Definitive Chewbacca

“Irvin Kershner, on Empire, he had definite ideas about what Chewie’s character was. He’d say, ‘Chewie should be doing this, that and the other’ and luckily, I presume, I got his message across, because I never got any complaints. It was, I suppose, luck more than good judgment on my part.”

• Peter Mayhew
  Star Wars Insider #28

The Cane Incident

“(Irvin Kershner is) the one who suggested fighting Artoo with the cane. Yoda is a wise Zen master, but like any Zen master, he’ll smack you if you’re wrong.”

• Frank Oz
  Star Wars Insider #42

Talking Backwards

“I remember that George had a feeling about the kind of speech he wanted Yoda to have. It had to do with inversion and with a kind of medieval feeling with religious overtones. Once we figured that out, it became very logical to have Yoda say things like ‘Good it will be…’ Inverting everything did the trick.”

• Lawrence Kasdan
  Co-Writer, Screenplay
  Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays

Subconscious Creature Assembly

“When I was asked to come up with a swamp creature on the planet Dagobah for The Empire Strikes Back, I looked at photographs of deep-sea creatures that exist many miles down in the ocean. I’d then put those pictures aside, and my subconscious would come up with a lot of different forms, assembling a creature from the various parts in my mind.”

• Ralph McQuarrie
  Star Wars Galaxy Magazine #2

Stormtrooper Radio

“In Star Wars, I don’t think the stormtroopers said much when they died. In Empire, they just screamed. Not much actual dialogue, but we recorded what little there was by hiring some local disc jockeys to read lines into walkie-talkies transmitting from across the street. It sounded perfect.”

• Ben Burtt
  Sound Designer and Supervising Sound Effects Editor
  Bantha Tracks #17
  August, 1982

Stop-Motion Feat

“If the first film was a technological challenge to get ships to fly in space, with a lot of movement, the second one was to do a stop-motion movie…”

• George Lucas
  Interview with Leonard Maltin
  The Empire Strikes Back, 1995 VHS release

Star Wars Sequel

On August 4th, 1978, it was officially announced that the title of the sequel to Star Wars will be The Empire Strikes Back.

• Official Star Wars Fan Club Newsletter, 1978

Spontaneous Yoda

“Every scene between Luke and Yoda in Empire had to be looped later, not action scenes, but difficult, serious acting scenes. During looping the main actors have to go back in the studio and repeat their lines and recreate that scene again. That was a struggle a year later. You lose spontaneity and naturalness.”

• Ben Burtt
  Sound Designer and Supervising Sound Effects Editor
  Bantha Tracks #17
  August, 1982

Spaceships and Snow

“The biggest challenge we faced were the snow scenes on the ice planet Hoth. The traditional blue screen techniques and the new ones we developed for Star Wars were all done against black space, which was very forgiving in terms of matte lines around the spaceships and generally making things look real. (With the Hoth scenes), it was as if George had come up with the most difficult thing to do – absolutely.”

• Warren Frankin
  Optical Photography
  George Lucas: The Creative Impulse

Snow Day

“We began shooting in March in Norway. When we got up the first day, it had snowed like crazy. The hotel where we were staying was completely snowed in. We had to cut our way out of the back door, and we looked and the snow was whirling around; it was twenty-six below zero. I needed to have shots of Luke running around in the snow without a coat on. We put the camera in the doorway of the hotel, and I asked Mark to run outside. When I said cut, he would run back inside the hotel and we would warm him up.”

• Irvin Kershner
  Director
  Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays

Smuggler’s Blues

“At one point in the script the characters were doing something, and I had Han say: ‘This is boring,’ and George said, ‘We never want to tell people it’s boring. If a character in a movie says something is boring, then the audience will begin to think that the film is boring.'”

• Lawrence Kasdan
  Co-Writer, Screenplay
  Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays

Skywalker Empire

“I went to see George and he took me to his office and showed me these drawings of what would later be Skywalker Ranch. He said, ‘This is what the film will pay for.’ I thought, wow, what a dream! That’s incredible! You know, it’s not like saying, ‘Look, we’re going to make a lot of money!’ It’s saying, ‘We’re going to build something.'”

• Irvin Kershner
  Director
  The Lucasfilm Fan Club Official Magazine #11

Simple Solutions

“We had an electronic head and arm for Threepio, and I manipulated the mechanism with a joystick. But it wasn’t working. The propman said, ‘Give me fifteen minutes.’ We all went to get coffee, and when we came back, Threepio’s head turned perfectly and his arm moved naturally. I looked up and realized that the prop man had a fishing pole with a fine nylon string attached to Threepio’s arm. He had rigged another string around the head, which Chewbacca was holding. As Chewie moved his hands, Threepio’s head turned!”

• Irvin Kershner
  Director
  Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays

Screaming Wilhelm

“I tracked down an old movie scream I loved as a kid. I call it a ‘Wilhelm’ after a character in an old western who got an arrow in his leg and let out that scream. Every time someone died in a Warner Brothers movie, they’d scream this famous scream. That scream gets in every picture I do as a personal signature. In Star Wars, the stormtrooper who pitches off the Death Star screams that scream. In Empire, a Wilhelm was screamed during the Hoth battle.”

• Ben Burtt
  Sound Designer and Supervising Sound Effects Editor
  Bantha Tracks #17
  August, 1982

Scalped

“There were lots of little gadgets and knee pads and the boots had two little jets on the toes… I found what I thought was my hair so I put it on underneath the helmet, hanging down. When I came out to show George Lucas, he said, ‘What’s that funny thing sticking out of your helmet?’ I said, ‘Isn’t it the character’s hair?’ ‘No,’ said George, ‘It’s a Wookiee scalp it’s supposed to be tied to your belt.'”

• Jeremy Bulloch (Boba Fett), on suiting up as the bounty hunter for the first time.
  The Lucasfilm Fan Club Official Magazine #21

Rush Rocks

“I needed rocks to rise when Luke gets the power on Dagobah. Well, we didn’t have any rocks. It wasn’t prepared, so the art director on the set said, ‘I can make them really fast.’ He ran off and made little paper mache rocks with little wires on them and brought them back. It took about two hours, and we shot them.”

• Irvin Kershner
  Director
  The Lucasfilm Fan Club Official Magazine #11

Quick on Demand

“Boba Fett moves slowly, deliberately, but you know he’s quick when he needs to be. He might stand there not moving for 40 minutes, but when he does move, that one movement will say so much more than a lot of running around and waving a gun at people.”

• Jeremy Bulloch (Boba Fett)
  Star Wars: Boba Fett magazine

Prosthetics

“The audience had to know that Luke had feeling in his hand. That way, even though he has a mechanical hand, when he puts his arm around Leia, it isn’t creepy.”

• Irvin Kershner
  Director
  Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays

Plastering Paris

“International film distribution requires a completely different strategy than does U.S. distribution. While television is the primary advertising medium in the United States, there is often not enough commercial time available in foreign television markets. In Germany, for example, only four 30-second spots a year can be bought by a particular advertiser, and these must be reserved a year in advance. In France, television is state-owned, and allows no film advertising. For this reason, in Paris, Empire posters were the primary advertising method; they were plastered all over the subway walls.”

• Victor Ransom
  Staff Writer, Bantha Tracks
  Bantha Tracks #10
  November, 1980

Out in the Cold

“I thought, the doors are closing and here is Chewbacca, who is like a dog, he is hurt, the one he loves is out there in the snow. So as the doors slam shut, I had him scream in agony. That wasn’t in the original script; that was a decision I made during filming. Take out the yell and it’s just doors closing.”

• Irvin Kershner
  Director
  Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays

Number One in Norway

“You know what the biggest problem was in working there? Going to the bathroom! We had on seven layers of clothes. We were set up on a glacier and nobody could go to the bathroom. We were dying!”

• Irvin Kershner, on the Norway shoot for Empire
  Director
  The Lucasfilm Fan Club Official Magazine #11

Not Hollywood

“Of all the younger guys around, all the hot-shots, why me? I remember he [George Lucas] said, ‘Well, because you know everything a Hollywood director is supposed to know, but you’re not Hollywood.’ I liked that.”

• Irvin Kershner
  Director
  The Lucasfilm Fan Club Official Magazine #11

Norwegian Tanks

“Originally, when the idea for the snow battle was being formulated, we were going to use existing Norwegian army tanks and were basing the layout of the snow battle on that. Then I came across a brochure that was done in the early ’60s which depicted a four-legged commercial vehicle. So we took that idea and developed a military version.”

• Joe Johnston
  The Empire Strikes Back Official Collectors Edition, 1980

No One Will Believe Me

“The trouble is that no one will believe me if I say that Empire is better. They would think I was being paid to say it. I never expected it to be better, but it is better.”

• Anthony Daniels (C-3PO)
  Bantha Tracks #7, Winter 1980

Multiple Personalities

“The stage that housed the big Hoth ice hangar was revamped around the Millennium Falcon into the Cloud City landing platform, then revamped again into the interior of the space slug’s mouth and finally the Millennium Falcon was removed and the bog planet Dagobah set was constructed. Four different sets on the same stage, two fairly simple and two very complex were done on a single stage — all within the short period of principal photography.”

• Robert Watts
  Co-producer
  Bantha Tracks #13
  August, 1981

Muddy Water

“The Dagobah swamp scene in The Empire Strikes Back, in which a monster shoots out of the swamp hoping to grab R2-D2, was actually shot in George Lucas’ unfinished swimming pool. We piled the whole crew in the pool, which was filled with muddy water, and George shot the footage himself. Lot of Fun!”

• Ted Moehnke
  Supervising Stage Technician
  George Lucas: The Creative Impulse

Master in Disguise

“I wanted Yoda to be the traditional kind of character you find in fairy tales and mythology. And that character is usually a frog or a wizened old man on the side of the road. The hero is going down the road and meets this poor and insignificant person. The goal or lesson is for the hero to learn to respect everybody and to pay attention to the poorest person because that’s where the key to his success will be.”

• George Lucas
  Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays

Make-Up for Obi-Wan

“We did very little make-up on him. He had a nice tan and his own beard. He looked pretty good as he was. His is a good face to work on, a marvelous face. In some actors the features seem to fight you. Sir Alec has a face that comes together immediately.”

• Stuart Freeborn
  Make-Up and Special Creature Design
  Once Upon a Galaxy: A Journal of the Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

Luke’s Leap

Vader has not been able to dominate Luke, so he now tries to seduce him. “You do not yet realize your importancejoin me, and together we can rule the galaxy as father and son. Come with me.” Rather than surrender to the dark side, however, Luke chooses an almost certain death. As Vader croons, “Come with me, it is the only way,” Luke steps off into the abyss. The act of giving one’s life if necessary to preserve one’s honor is the ultimate sacrifice required of heroes, from those of the Homeric epics to the samurai of Japan.

– Star Wars: The Magic of Myth

Look, a Meteor.

“3PO’s character is transparent. There’s no guile, no deviousness, no mystery. He is so obvious and he always states the obvious. If everyone is cowering back as a meteor hits the window, he is the one who says, ‘Look, a meteor.'”

Anthony Daniels (C-3PO)
Bantha Tracks #7, Winter 1980

Little Green Wookiee

“One story element I wanted to develop was Chewie’s jealousy of Han and Leia’s relationship. Though that was lost in the final script, I thought it was an interesting idea.”

• Lawrence Kasdan
  Co-Writer, Screenplay
  The Empire Strikes Back Notebook

Let it Snow, Let it Snow

“We took out the snow scenes in the first film partially because George doesn’t like shooting in the cold. This time, we were able to include a snow environment.”

Gary Kurtz, Producer
The Empire Strikes Back Official Collectors Edition, 1980

Introducing: Boba Fett

“Not much is known about Boba Fett. He wears part of the uniform of the Imperial Shocktroopers, warriors from olden time. Shocktroopers came from the far side of the galaxy and there aren’t many of them left. They were wiped out by the Jedi Knights during the Clone Wars. Whether he was a shocktrooper or not is unknown. He is the best bounty hunter in the galaxy, and cares little for whom he works — as long as they pay.”

• Bantha Tracks #5
  Summer 1979

Intense Lineage

“I contemplated for a while whether or not I was going to reveal that Vader was Luke’s father in the second film. I was afraid the scene when Vader says ‘I am your father’ and then cuts off his son’s arm might be too intense. That is a pretty intense moment… But I conceived the scene so that you would not know if Vader was lying or telling the truth, so the audience would walk away saying, ‘He is a bad guy, he lied.'”

• George Lucas
  Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays

Indoctrination

“Luke must enter the tree cave ‘strong with the dark side of the Force.’ When Luke asks what is in the cave, Yoda tells him, ‘Only what you take with you,’ but Luke girds on his weapons anyway. They symbolize his impatience and lack of faith, his indoctrination into the ways of violence and hostility in the outside world.”

– Star Wars: The Magic of Myth

Impressive Junk

“I was impressed with the set where Han goes to be frozen. That was 30 feet up in the air and it was a black set. There were no guardrails and it was a round set with about 50 tons of junk hanging overhead, which we got from junkyards. It was just junk but it was so impressive looking!”

• Irvin Kershner
  Director
  The Lucasfilm Fan Club Official Magazine #11

I’d Just as Soon…

“We didn’t need to spend too much time on the love story. When Han tried to kiss her, that was enough… Han is always after her, he’s always looking at her and she is always looking at him, and you have this right from the beginning. Basically, that’s all you need.”

• Irvin Kershner
  Director
  Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays

I Know

“If she says ‘I love you,’ and I say ‘I know,’ that’s beautiful and acceptable… and funny.”

• Harrison Ford
  Once Upon a Galaxy: A Journal of the Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

I Just Want to Paint

“Ralph (McQuarrie) kept saying to me, ‘I don’t want to know anything about how things work around here, I just want to paint.’ And I said ‘Fine, you paint.’ Well, he started coming in eight, ten, fifteen hours a day, just painting…”

• Harrison Ellenshaw
  Matte Painting Supervisor
  Industrial Light & Magic: The Art of Special Effects

Hubris

One of the tragic flaws that may put the hero in harm’s way is the trait of hubris, an arrogant pride that blinds the hero to his true capabilities. Luke has rushed to meet Vader prematurely, and the cost is great: Vader slashes away Luke’s hand, and Luke’s flesh is now part of his sacrifice.

– Star Wars: The Magic of Myth

Hothsicles

“That wonderful set of the ice base was in fact polystyrene walls carved very cleverly by artists. With a stirrup pump, they would squirt liquid candle wax all up and down the walls. Before it dried, they’d throw salt at it, so the crystals would appear to sparkle. The icicles were tubes of hand-blown glass with a little hole in the bottom. They would drip and melt throughout. It was so realistic until you went and touched the wall and it wasn’t cold. The weird thing was with that all the salt on the floor, anybody with real shoes on, it would just rot the shoes right away. So lots of people would wear really weird foot attire on the set to save their shoes.”

• Anthony Daniels
  Dragon*Con 2001

He Isn’t?

“When we were at screenings of (Empire), people asked where Yoda was. He has been accepted by many as a real being.”

• Mark Hamill
  November, 1980

Half Nuts

“You have to be an engineer, painter, machinist, metal worker, mold maker, pattern maker, chemist–and half nuts. You work ten to twelve hours a day detailing an area that’s no bigger than a saucer.”

• Mike Fulmer
  Model Maker
  Star Wars: From Concept to Screen to Collectible

Get Yoda!

“We were doing The Muppet Movie in Los Angeles, and Gary Kurtz came. In my trailer, I saw a picture of what Gary described as a little guy called Yoda. Sometimes I have trouble getting characters and it takes a while, like Bert took me a year to get. Other characters evolve, like Grover. And other characters hit immediately somehow. Yoda hit immediately off that page to me… I strongly felt what he should be like.”

• Frank Oz
  Star Wars Insider #42

Freudian Fairy Tales

“I decided that, instead of suddenly trying to make myself an expert on science fiction, I would do what I believed Star Wars was really all about — they’re fairy tales. So I got a hold of some books — a Freudian interpretation of fairy tales, a Jungian interpretation of fairy tales”

• Irvin Kershner
  Director
  The Lucasfilm Fan Club Official Magazine #11

French-Fried Asteroids

“In a shot with (several) elements, you can get away with inserting some personal humor. I’ve put wads of gum in some shots. This tennis shoe here is in the space battle scene. Even though no one can really see these things I know they’re there. In Empire there’s a potato in the asteroid sequence.”

• Dennis Muren
  Visual Effects Supervisor
  Bantha Tracks #21
  August, 1983

Forces of Destiny

Cloud City marks the turning point in the trilogy; all the forces of destiny seem to meet here. Luke once again finds himself in a mazelike enclosure, but this time he is going toward Vader, not away from him.

– Star Wars: The Magic of Myth

Force Philosophy

“One of the longest conversations (we) had in our first story conference was on the philosophical background of the Empire story and on the meaning of the Force. Basically, George is for good and against evil, but everyone has his own interpretations of what that means. In my opinion, what emerges about the Force are its similarities to Zen and to basic Christian thought. But in our meeting we didn’t talk about specific religions. Instead, George explained to us what he felt the Force was all about…”

• Lawrence Kasdan
  Screenplay
  Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays

First Day

“I met Neil Krepla (Matte Photographer, not shown) in the middle of this big room, with parts of space models and optical machinery scattered all over, and he said, ‘Well, this is the set-up. If we can get it together we’re going to do some wonderful things.'”

• Harrison Ellenshaw, remembering his first day of Empire art production.
  Matte Painting Supervisor
  Industrial Light & Magic: The Art of Special Effects

Fett Evolution

“I designed the final version of Boba Fett. Ralph and I both worked on preliminary designs, and we traded ideas back and forth. Originally, Boba Fett was part of a force we called Super Troopers, and they were these really high-tech fighting units, and they all looked alike. That eventually evolved into a single bounty hunter. I painted Boba’s outfit and tried to make it look like it was made of different pieces of armor. It was a symmetrical design, but I painted it in such a way that it looked like he had scavenged parts and had done some personalizing of his costume, he had little trophies hanging from his belt, and he had little braids of hair, almost like a collection of scalps.”

• Joe Johnston
  Art Director-Visual Effects
  Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays

Essential Interruption

“It was essential to have Threepio interrupt the kiss between Leia and Solo because he is so taken with himself that it makes sense that he would walk in and say,’Hey, what are you doing here?’ He is not human; he doesn’t understand emotions.”

• Irvin Kershner
  Director
  Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays

Empire’s Elephant

“I remember saying, ‘This thing looks so much like an elephant, why don’t we just go out and shoot some film?’ It wound up being this whole expedition that went out — Dennis Muren, Phil Tippett and I, and a whole camera crew. The elephant we used was a sweet Indian elephant named Mardji, and she had a trainer. We shot quite a bit of footage of her walking back and forth, so we could get an idea of the motions an animal that size and configuration goes through in just walking.”

• Jon Berg
  Stop Motion Animator
  Star Wars Insider #49

Emperor Oomph

“I got a call from (Irvin) Kershner, and he said, ‘Listen, I want you to come down and read something.’ I didn’t have anything planned that day, so I went down to the recording studio. He showed me some clips, and he said, ‘Read it and get some oomph in it.’ So I read the stuff through, and gave it the oomph, and they tinkered around with it — and the result is that I get a lot of mail.”

• Clive Revill (Voice of the Emperor)
  Star Wars Insider
  Issue 49

Dripping Evil

“The costume was very hot, because it was extremely heavy. And in the carbon freezing chamber, there was steam coming up out of the floor. I was next to David Prowse, and our helmets were taken off every three minutes because it was so hot. We were dripping.”

• Jeremy Bulloch (Boba Fett)
  Star Wars Insider
  Issue 49

Days of Haze

“There was so much smoke on Dagobah! I began to get very sick so I wore a gas mask — an old World War II gas mask with a mike built in so they could hear me.”

• Irvin Kershner
  Director
  The Lucasfilm Fan Club Official Magazine #11

Darth Deception

“That part of the story point was kept secret. We didn’t even have that in the script. Nobody knew that, not even the actors. When it came time to shoot, I explained it to Mark I told him he was Vader’s son and he thought it was great. And he acted it magnificently!”

• Irvin Kershner
  Director
  The Lucasfilm Fan Club Official Magazine #11

Dark Saga

“Empire deepens the Star Wars saga, taking it to a larger, darker canvas. Luke is changed forever, spiritually. The things that happen to Vader are a logical step from Star Wars and will vastly alter the audience’s perception of the character. To me, the fact that the story is downbeat is very interesting and gives the story texture. If it had a heroic ending, Empire would be the same as the first film.”

• Lawrence Kasdan
  Co-Writer, Screenplay
  The Empire Strikes Back Notebook

Dagobah Fashion

“I wanted him to wear something that looked homemade, but none of the fabrics we selected looked right. Finally we found this raw silk from India, and it was just perfect. It hung nicely, and it looked homemade. We had a piece left over, and I had a jacket made out of it for myself.”

• Irvin Kershner
  Director
  Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays

Cool Outlaw

“I think the secret to playing Boba Fett — if you can say I played (him) — is the less you do, the better. There is no point in Boba Fett waving his gun around and saying, ‘Look at me.’ He was very cool, and he didn’t move much. I always thought of Boba Fett as Clint Eastwood in a suit of armor.”

• Jeremy Bulloch (Boba Fett)
  Star Wars Insider
  Issue 49

Coming of Age

” Star Wars speaks to us from that very optimistic, everything-will-work-out-all-right viewpoint we have when we are young. Empire reminds me of that time in our lives when we leave home and discover it can be a hard world out there.”

• Mark Hamill
  Bantha Tracks #18
  November, 1982

Cold Direction

“In Norway, the tauntaun froze up. We couldn’t get the smoke to come out of the nose, and we couldn’t get the movements right because the thing froze. George (had) said, ‘Remember, nothing’s gonna work.’ He meant the special effects on the set, and he was right. The first shot of the whole film didn’t work.”

• Irvin Kershner
  Director
  Star Wars Insider
  Issue 49

Cold Anticipation

“I hadn’t anticipated being there at all. My snow scenes were supposed to be shot at the sound stage in the studio. I had just arrived in England as they left for Norway, and in no time at all, found myself whisked away to join them in Norway with no preparation, wearing a costume built for conditions on the stage. Another one of those bizarre experiences in life.”

• Harrison Ford
  Bantha Tracks #6

Caught in the Middle

“The evil Empire was opposed by the noble Alliance, and those who didn’t choose sides might get caught in the middle.”

• Andy Mangels
  Author
  Star Wars: The Essential Guide to Characters

Casting a Legend

“I went to Jim (Henson) and said, ‘Do you want to do this?’ And he said, ‘Well, I’m busy, I’m doing this, and doing that, I’m making a movie and all that — I really can’t, but — How about Frank (Oz)? You know, Frank’s the other half of me.’ And I said, ‘Well, that’d be fantastic.’

• George Lucas
  Interview with Leonard Maltin
  The Empire Strikes Back, 1995 VHS release

Carbon Agony

“When the cast of Solo in carbon freeze was created the first time, he was standing straight up, looking normal. That’s what the prop department thought I wanted. I said, ‘No, he’s got to be looking like he is fighting to get out; he has to look like he is in agony.’ So we changed it to the way it looks in the film.”

• Irvin Kershner
  Director
  Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays

Burnt Wookiee

“Carrie (Fisher) and I were in the Falcon cockpit. They had baby spotlights placed between my legs. Next, there was smoke coming out. Carrie turned and said, ‘Oh, Peter, you are on fire.’ I was totally oblivious to what was happening. It was a confined space, my (Chewbacca) head was on, and I thought, ‘Come on, let’s just get on with it.’ If Carrie hadn’t said something, there would have been a burned Wookiee.”

• Peter Mayhew
  The Making of Return of the Jedi

Broken Blink

“You know, in the whole film, I saw only one blinkbecause they couldn’t make it (the Yoda puppet) blink. And I wanted him to blink because that gives you a reality.”

• Irvin Kershner
  Director
  The Lucasfilm Fan Club Official Magazine #11

Bitter Pill

“Empire was so unlike Star Wars it was a bitter pill to swallow. There wasn’t that happy-go-lucky, triumphant feeling Star Wars left you with. Empire left too many loose ends, like Vader making Harrison Ford into a coffee table. I found the end so unsatisfying.”

• Mark Hamill
  Bantha Tracks #18
  November, 1982

Billy Dee Backlash

“There’s always been a lot of misunderstanding about Lando’s character. I used to pick up my daughter from elementary school and get into arguments with little children who would accuse me of betraying Han Solo.”

• Billy Dee Williams
  Star Wars Galaxy Magazine #4

Ben’s New Role

“When Star Wars became a hit and I had a chance to make the other movies, I had to figure out a way to bring Ben back, but a lot of the issues he had to deal with were carried by Yoda. In a sense, I combined Yoda with the spirit of Ben. I wanted Ben to have some kind of influence, but I didn’t want it to be a direct influence where he could help Luke. So Ben has managed to keep his identity after he became one with the Force. One of the things he was doing on Tatooine besides watching over Luke was learning how to keep his identity after he became part of the Force.”

• George Lucas
  Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays

Believe in Yoda

“So much of the reason Yoda was successful is because Mark believed in him and responded to him. If Mark didn’t respond to him so well, then the audience wouldn’t have.”

• Frank Oz
  Star Wars Insider #42

Battle Gamble

“I definitely thought I was taking a big chance by having a big battle at the beginning of the film. But the whole idea was that the major confrontation at the end between Vader and Luke was going to be a personal battle, and I wanted to use a simple sword fight instead of pyrotechnics. So I had to put the big battle up front; I was relying on the emotional content of Luke and Vader’s confrontation. I wanted it to have another dimension and to be more interesting than just a basic battle.”

• George Lucas
  Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays

Bad Accent

“All the Americans in the film play the good guys, and all the characters who speak with a British accent are the bad guys. I did that on purpose. Vader, of course, has an American accent, but you see, he was a good guy before he turned to the dark side!”

• Irvin Kershner
  Director
  Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays

Always Welding

“Do you know why I had Chewbacca work with a welding torch on the Falcon? That was the only thing I could find where you could see what he was doing. If he was screwing something with a tool, you wouldn’t see anything. So whenever anything needs fixing, you’ll notice the characters are welding!”

• Irvin Kershner
  Director
  Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays

A Leg, an Antenna, a Claw

“We would come in to work at three in the afternoon and be ready to shoot by nine at night. We would then move a leg of one figure, an antenna of another, a claw of another. Then we would take one frame of film. And then the process started all over again. It took forever, and we usually didn’t leave until eight the next morning.”

• Phil Tippett, Stop Motion Animator
  Bantha Tracks #9, Summer 1980

A Fistful of Credits

“I always thought of him as Clint Eastwood in A Fistful of Dollars. That was my model. Boba Fett always cradles his gun just so. You do those little things to give the character dimension, and you just hope people notice.”

• Jeremy Bulloch (Boba Fett)
  Star Wars: Boba Fett magazine

A Beauty To It

“Of the three films, Star Wars is a little grittier and rougher on the edges, in terms of effects, because it was our first effort. Return of the Jedi was the most incredible and intense, it had so much stuff in it. But I still say Empire was the prettiest of the three movies. There’s a beauty to it.”

• Richard Edlund, Visual Effects Supervisor ESB and ROTJ
  Star Wars Galaxy Magazine #4

Welcome to the Classic Moments Archives. A feature of Star Wars. Com, no longer active. This is not a complete archive but have salvaged what I can. Please note: Not in order of publication.

Zit-umm-woop-new
“The mosquito-faced alien who tracked Luke and Ben Kenobi through Mos Eisley used the voice of a well-known western actor. I took an old loop line where the actor says something like, ‘All right, fertilize the water,’ and ran it through the synthesizer until it came out, ‘zit-umm-woop-new.'” – Ben Burtt
Special Dialogue and Sound Effects
Bantha Tracks #17
August, 1982

You want to see an Oasis?

“One day, I was walking along the street, there was no pavement, it was all dirt, and Alec Guinness came along in a Mercedes and said, ‘What are you doing?’ And I said, ‘Nothing.’ He said, ‘You want to see an Oasis?’ I said, ‘Yeah,’ so I jumped in the car and I went with he and his wife to see an oasis. That was a nice trip.” – Kenny Baker, on filming Star Wars in Tunisia
Star Wars Insider #23

Yin and Yang
“Just like I had Vader to contrast with Ben, I created Solo as a cynical world-weary pessimist to play opposite Luke. I tried to establish this kind of contrast with all the characters, even with the robots.” – George Lucas
Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays

Wookiee Mix
” Chewbacca’s voice is predominantly one bear in combination with a few other sounds, which helps to keep his voice consistent from one reel to the next.” – Ben Burtt
Special Dialogue and Sound Effects
Bantha Tracks #17
August, 1982

Wipe Out
“Wipes were used in the early days of film, in things like the old Republic serials, but used less and less in the post-World War Two era. I remember when I first saw Star Wars I was shocked to see that instead of dissolves it used wipes, which hadn’t been used in a long time.” – Tom Christopher
Film Editor, Star Wars Trilogy Special Edition
The Art of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

What to do with Kenobi?
“As I was writing the third draft of Star Wars, I realized that after they escape from the Death Star, there isn’t anything for Ben to do, and I struggled with finding things for him to do and finally gave up. I figured I’d just write that part later on. When I came to the next draft, it became obvious that he was just standing around, and that was not good, especially for a character of his importance. So it was really in the last draft, the one I wrote before I shot the movie, that I finally came to the decision that I had to do what I had to do.” – George Lucas
Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays

Walking the Talk
“I met George while he was finishing THX 1138, and he talked about this Star Wars idea at the time. He just said it was going to be a vast galactic battle between factions of interplanetary war, and I said that sounded interesting, but I didn’t expect to ever hear from him again.”- Ralph McQuarrie
Concept Artist
Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays

Veer Off
“In Star Wars you got the sense that if you veered off the main storyline, there were more worlds and cultures and stories. Introducing a young Jabba, who has a gang that includes Boba Fett, was a real chance to explore this world. Actually, I remember thinking at the time that the Special Edition work was the ultimate interactive storyline for us.”
– Joe Letteri, ILM
Star Wars: Boba Fett magazine

Trouble With Artoo
“When someone asks me to describe Threepio and Artoo, I say they’re the original odd couple out of Detroit. They really are an archetypal duo: the tall one who is rather elegant and thinks he knows everything and the short, fat, stubby one who gets into trouble.” – Anthony Daniels (C-3PO)
The Lucasfilm Fan Club Official Magazine #1

Trench Jargon
“Probably the hardest thing I had to do in either film was that last battle scene in the trench in Star Wars. We did it in one continuous take and I had to memorize all those technical words and lines — like you’d memorize the Lord’s Prayer in Russian.” – Mark Hamill
November, 1980

This is Some Rescue
“She is a leader, and even though she gets captured, the guys are the ones who are fumbling around and being in trouble… I mean, they can’t even rescue her!” George Lucas
Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays

Thinking Ahead
“One of the sequels we are thinking of is the young days of Ben Kenobi. It would probably be all different actors.” – George Lucas, August 25, 1977
Star Wars: A New Hope: The Illustrated Screenplay

The Starkiller
“The original name for George Lucas’ epic space fantasy had that extra article, ‘the,’ at the beginning. Concept artist Ralph McQuarrie came up with the design — a character that, at the same time, merged some of the best of Han Solo and Luke Starkiller, soon to be renamed Skywalker.” – Stephen J. Sansweet
Star Wars Scrapbook: The Essential Collection

The Son of the Sun

The second and third draft of the script for Star Wars began with the following quote: “And in time of greatest despair there shall come a savior and he shall be known as: THE SON OF THE SUN” (“Journal of the Whills,” 3:12) – Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays

‘The Girl’
“Originally, I was known as ‘the girl’. During my first day on the set, someone described the next scene I was in as, ‘The girl crossed the room and exits stage left. The camera operator will have to pan to keep her in frame.’ I asked whether I was to be ‘the girl’ or ‘the camera operator’. They got the idea. I’m now an honorary camera operator.”- Carrie Fisher (Princess Leia)
Bantha Tracks #16, May 1982

The Curtain Rises
“At the beginning of Star Wars you read the scrollup. That’s planned to make you feel like you missed some early chapters. You don’t need that data to enjoy the picture, as little kids know, it just makes you feel like you are coming in on the second act.” – Mark Hamill
Bantha Tracks #18
November, 1982

Tarkin in Slippers
“I said to George [Lucas]: ‘I don’t want you to think I’m asking for more close-ups. But whenever possible, could you please shoot me from the waist up? These boots are killing me.’ He very kindly agreed. So, there I was, stomping around, shouting orders to cut people’s heads off right and left, and I was really wearing carpet slippers.”- Peter Cushing (Grand Moff Tarkin)
The Best of Star Wars

Swinging Scared
“When we did the swing across, it would’ve been fun if we’d been allowed to do it a second time. But it was like doing the upside-down roller coaster — We did it one time, and it was scary, and then if we had gotten to do it again it would have been fun. But they didn’t let us do it again.”
– Carrie Fisher
The Making of Star Wars
1977

Sublight Motel
“I went to the White Sands missile testing range once in search of good missile sounds. I got a lot of different missile sounds, but they weren’t nearly as interesting as the air conditioner in the motel where I was staying. It was malfunctioning in my room and produced a very good throb. You might find it hard to believe, but that throb has been useful in constructing many of the large ship noises in all the Star Wars movies.”– Ben Burtt
Return of the Jedi Official Collectors Edition, 1983

Strange Things
“I’d never even heard of George Lucas back in about 1976 when he suddenly appeared in my lab. He vaguely introduced himself. He was very quiet. I really didn’t take much notice because a lot of people were always just wandering in. He said, ‘I’ve heard of what you do and I’d like to see some of the creatures you’ve made.’ I usually keep something of everything I’ve done. He was proposing to make a film that would need a lot of strange things, and he made me interested enough to think that this was really something.” – Stuart Freeborn
Creature Designer
The Making of Return of the Jedi

Story and Spectacle
“People still wonder why Star Wars was so successful. More than anything else, it was because it was about character and story — more than just a visual effects spectacle. For me, the essential moment in the film is the scene before Luke begins his journey. He’s anxious and restless, and he goes out to the crater and gazes up at the two suns above Tatooine. We see so clearly every young man’s yearnings: all of us at some point have experienced that moment. It’s the dream of wanting the journey so much. It’s not so much about finding the treasure. It’s more about the search for it.” – Rick McCallum
Producer, Star Wars Trilogy Special Edition
The Art of Star Wars: A New Hope

Starring Robots
“I love machines. I love gadgets. I think part of it was with Star Wars was that the robots had always been bad and I decided to make them good and make them the main characters of the film. When I started it was an outrageous idea. Everybody thought that I was crazy because in the beginning, the robots were really much more central characters than they are now.”– George Lucas
The Empire Strikes Back Official Collectors Edition, 1980.

Staggering Beauty
“The last line in the script was that the Princess is way down the hall and she is staggeringly beautiful. I crossed off the ‘ly’ and ‘beautiful’ and felt this new wording more approached what I would bring to the character.” – Carrie Fisher
Star Wars Insider #24

Space-y
“It’s kind of a space-y film. Would you like to do the music?” – George Lucas to Composer John Williams
George Lucas: The Creative Impulse

Spacewatch
“George can do anything he wants now. The first one was so successful that he could set the next one in Redondo Beach.”- Mark Hamill
The Making of Star Wars
1977

Solo the Monster

Han Solo appeared originally in the earliest drafts of the Star Wars script as a “huge green-skinned monster with no nose and large gills.” In the early version of the story Solo is a Jedi warrior and an old friend of General Skywalker. –Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays

Slicing Through the Ether
“Sound can be designed in different ways. In the Star Wars Saga you want to hear a space ship really slicing through the ether. To design that sound I inspect what the ship looks like, how fast it moves, and what it does, and develop my own concept of how it should sound, then combine subtle little bits that sound almost like a racecar or almost like a jet plane — not close enough to identify consciously, but if the sound effect is designed correctly then the emotional association will be there. You will hear a fast-moving, frightening object. The film will seem far more real because of the indirect use of elements borrowed from the real world.”
– Ben Burtt
Sound Designer
Bantha Tracks #17
August, 1982

Six Ping-Pong Tables and a Jeep
“They had the equivalent of, say, six Ping-Pong tables in the parking lot somewhere in the Valley, with all the ‘tchotchkes’ glued to the surface–I mean, they cannibalized thousands of battleship kits, and just glued ’em all on, and they were making passes on it with somebody just driving a Jeep… And, of course that’s the footage of the TIE fighters flying past the surface.” – Mark Hamill
A New Hope Special Edition, 1997 VHS release

Sinister Appearances

When 20th Century-Fox studio executives asked George Lucas to provide concrete examples of his vision for Star Wars, the filmmaker enlisted the help of Ralph McQuarrie, a commercial illustrator. Lucas gave the artist a script, and McQuarrie prepared sketches for the characters R2-D2 and Darth Vader. In a sketch for Vader, McQuarrie had given the character a mask, because he felt the evil villain “would need something with which to breathe when moving between spaceships.” Lucas didn’t care about this so much; he just liked the mask’s sinister appearance!- ILM: The Art of Special Effects

Sheer Audacity
“My favorite spacecraft from the Star Wars trilogy comes from my very first and still-vibrant memory of A New Hope. Speaking as a spacecraft designer, what space-faring vehicle could be more impressive than the Imperial-class Star Destroyer? What size, what power, what it must have cost to build. One can only marvel at the sheer audacity of its designers and the resources of the civilization that could afford her. Oh well, back to the real world of -million space vehicles (how many credits would that be?).”- Brian Muirhead, Project Manager for the Mars Pathfinder
The Best of Star Wars

Sequels
“We’ve had a lot of speculation about sequels. We are working on story material that will develop into potentially one or more motion pictures that will use the same characters, and I’d like to consider them different adventures rather than direct sequels.”- Gary Kurtz
Producer
The Making of Star Wars
1977

Seizing the Day
“We (Threepio and Artoo) were scripted to march up the aisle with the rest… On a good day I could do steps — at great personal risk. Like my cleaning lady, Artoo doesn’t do steps — even on a good day. So a decision had to be made. My companion and I would not make the trip at all. Instead we would lurk on the platform awaiting the arrival of the superheroes who could go the distance without seizing up.” – Anthony Daniels
Star Wars Insider #42

Samurai
“George described Darth Vader to me as this tall, dark being who sort of fluttered in on the wind, with these black robes, wearing a helmet that looked like one of those flaring Japanese samurai helmets” – Ralph McQuarrie
Star Wars Galaxy Magazine #2

Rubber and Wrinkles
“Playing the role of Princess Leia was fun a lot of times — well, it wasn’t fun all the time. After about two hours in the garbage room, the fun started to wear off, and your skin started to wrinkle, and your rubber suit didn’t fit right anymore.” – Carrie Fisher
The Making of Star Wars
1977

Royal Attitude
“I came to Star Wars straight from an English drama school — quite a jump. I played Leia Organa, who is royal. That was a part I had never played and a type of acting I wasn’t used to. Leia is angry, which is part of her strength, but not all of it. She was very clear about her responsibilities toward her cause, the Rebellion, and that was it for her. That commitment didn’t leave her any time for relationships. While it was okay for ‘the boys’ to be strong, that same strength made Leia seem, somehow, almost mean or sarcastic with her ‘my way or no way’ attitude.” – Carrie Fisher
Bantha Tracks #16
May, 1982

Royal Accuracy
“The ‘helpless’ female who needed rescuing was the best shot of the bunch. Check it out — Princess Leia never misses.” – Andy Mangels
Author
Star Wars: The Essential Guide to Characters

Robot Wars
“In the scene where the Jawas are trying to sell R2-D2 to Luke and his Uncle, I was inside the robot and (my partner, Jack Purvis) was playing the head Jawa. There were all kinds of robots careening all over the desertOne robot crashed into me. Jack was yelling to me, ‘Lookout! There’s a robot coming!’ There was nothing I could do about it, it just crashed into me. It tipped me over.” – Kenny Baker
Star Wars Insider #23

Reel 2-Dialogue 2
“R2-D2 cropped up when we were dubbing American Graffiti. We were working late one night and looking for Reel 2, Dialogue 2, and somebody yelled out ‘R2-D2.’ Both Walter Murch, who was mixing the film, and I loved that name so much we decided to keep it.” – George Lucas
The Making of Return of the Jedi

Rebel Dental Plan
“It was rather strange! As you know, we shot against a blue screen. There were probably 20 different Rebel pilots sitting around on a soundstage and there was a cockpit of an X-wing set up high on what I would describe as a raft on stilts. It was almost like waiting to go to the dentist!” – Denis Lawson (Wedge Antilles)
Star Wars Insider #23

Quick Draw

The Western’s gunfighter persona became, in Star Wars, the rough-riding, quick-on-the-draw Han Solo. Mos Eisley’s cantina is the frontier-town saloon, and Greedo is indeed the bounty hunter. Han’s quick dispatch of his adversary proves that Luke and Ben have hired themselves a proficient gunslinger. – Star Wars: The Magic of Myth

Prequel Prediction
“The man Leia called Father was obviously not her father. He is part of the group that ends up having to fight Darth Vader in the film that will be out in 2003 [laughs].” – George Lucas
Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays, 1997

Predators

For his Star Wars fantasy, Lucas used a mix of themes from the Westerns of his youth. The first major Western motif we recognize is life on the frontier. Luke, Uncle Owen, and Aunt Beru are “farmers” living at the edge of civilization on the brink of wilderness; the Sand People take the place of the uncivilized “other,” the Western’s predators. – Star Wars: The Magic of Myth

Pole Position
“Whenever I used to watch the garbage-masher scene from A New Hope, I’d always picture some stormtrooper standing around on the Death Star with his stormtrooper roommates. ‘Hey, does anybody want this big giant pole? You sure? I’m just going to throw it away…'” – Dan Wallace
Star Wars author

Performance Mix
“There were three different domestic mixes of Star Wars that went out originally, each done at a different time. The stereo version was followed later by the mono mix. Today, each mix is computerized and the settings are saved digitally, but in those days, each mix was a separate performance, so each would come out differently.”- Ben Burtt
Star Wars Galaxy Magazine #10

Pecking Order
“You focus on the human story first, and then you begin to create this world that everybody inhabits, and playing with the lowest person in this hierarchy, I created droids. And that is really how they came about. I was looking for the lowest person on the pecking order, basically like the farmers in Hidden Fortress were.” – George Lucas
Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays

Over my Head
“When George first took me around Industrial Light and Magic, showed me the model room, the computerized camera for shooting the miniatures and glass paintings, my head started to spin. I said, ‘Look George, I don’t want you to get this wrong, but I’ve never worked on anything this complicated before.’ His reply was, ‘That’s all right. Nobody has.’ I felt much better.”- Paul Hirsch
Editor
Once Upon a Galaxy: A Journal of the Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

One Website
“We’re starting out modestly, just as George Lucas did 20 years ago with a relatively low-budget space fantasy called Star Wars: A New Hope. Just as Star Wars grew, or rather exploded, in the public consciousness, this website will continue to grow and change. And like the films, our aim is to inform, entertain, surprise and amuse you. We’ll all have some fun, and we promise to provide the most up-to-date information (and shoot down rumors) on the Star Wars Universe.” – starwars.com
November, 1996

On the Catwalk
“We tried to find items that were in stock which approximated to the [Ralph McQuarrie] drawings. It was sort of a short cut way of doing it; we dressed the model up in whatever we could find. For instance, Darth Vader had this sort of black motorcycle suit on and a Nazi helmet, and a gas mask, and a monk’s cloak we found in the Middle Ages Department. Once all the costumes were assembled, the artists put on a live fashion show for George Lucas’ approval.” – John Mollo, Costume Designer
Bantha Tracks #10
November, 1980

Nothing Special
“Star Wars was just another film, as far as we were concerned at the time. It was nothing special. Nobody expected it to be something terrific. I thought if Alec Guinness was in it, it must have some credibility. He must know more than I do”- Kenny Baker (Artoo-Detoo)
Star Wars Insider #39

Necessary
“It was the first time a character I had played was so important to the film. It was necessary that this character worked, as necessary for them as it was for me.”- Harrison Ford (Han Solo)
Bantha Tracks #6, Autumn 1979

Monstrous Proportions
“The studio sculptors and designers had thought and created for weeks. On the way from my dressing room I had frequently walked past a giant, steel armed, mucus-green tentacle, a football field long… And what did we get? A fearsome and utterly terrifying…mini periscope and a yard of plastic squid.” – Anthony Daniels
Star Wars Insider #28

Modesty
“I definitely did the movie on the seat of my pants. I didn’t really know what I was doing, I mean, I had some experience in animation, I knew how to make movies, and, you know, I knew I was going to attempt to do something that had never been done before.” – George Lucas
Interview with Leonard Maltin
A New Hope, 1995 VHS release

Modest Threads
“I didn’t want something very flashy in design; I wanted something very amorphous and vague on the costumes. We tried to keep away from anything that brought attention to itself.” -George Lucas
Bantha Tracks #10
November, 1980″

I got the impression that George wanted all the costumes to be a lot more simple. He didn’t want the costumes to be the center of attention.”- Ralph McQuarrie
Concept Artist
Star Wars:The Annotated Screenplays

Missing Medal
“I say, yeah fine, but I got the last line in the movie because as the camera pulls back you can hear Chewie roaring, so I always think, I was lucky I got the last say.” – Peter Mayhew (Chewbacca), on not receiving a medal at the end of A New Hope
Star Wars Insider #35

Milking It
“George staged the stormtroopers breaking through the door only twice; that’s all he had time to do, but he shot with six different cameras. The scene was very short, but because the angles were so drastically different, we were able to overlap some of the action and extend the length of the scene. Basically, the audience didn’t realize that we covered some of the action twice because we managed to go from tight angles to very wide angles.”- Richard Chew
Co-Editor
Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays

Matchbook Memories
“(Anthony Daniels) did the role so well that the crew making the film often forgot that there was a man inside the suit and behind the mask. So Tony printed up a reminder on matchbook covers that he placed on cast and crew buffet tables. ‘They thanked me for the matches, but most of them didn’t get my point,’ he says.” – Steven J. Sansweet
Star Wars Scrapbook: The Essential Collection

Making ‘Splosions

“We started off testing acetylene gas and plastic models of Boeing 747s just to see if that would work. We finally ended up using the standard squib, a mixture of gasoline and mothballs and vermiculite. It gives a pretty good scale explosion.”– Joe Johnston, Effects Illustration and DesignThe World of Star Wars: A Compendium of Fact and Fantasy, 1981

Locomotion Pictures

“Ever since I was in film school in the ’60s, I’ve been on a train. Back then I was pushing a 147-car train up a very steep slope — push, push, push. I pushed it all the way up, and when Star Wars came along in 1977, I reached the top. I jumped on board, and then it started going down the other side of the hill. I’ve had the brakes on ever since.” – George Lucas

Lifelong Friends
“The idea was that Han Solo was an orphan. He was raised by Wookiees, befriended Chewbacca, and they went off.”- George Lucas
Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays

Life on Tatooine
“George described the Tusken Raiders to me as nomads in the desert, Bedouin type of people. I could have created some alien-type creatures, but I simply decided to give them this mask instead. I knew they were going to have to live in dust storms, and I decided that they were aliens that required an adaptive sort of breathing device to make their life on Tatooine possible.” – Ralph McQuarrie
Concept Artist
Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays

Laser-Brain
“George said it was a lasersword, and I know that when you project a laser beam, it doesn’t just end after three feet, it continues to project out. But because it had to be used in fights, I gave it about the length of a medieval broadsword.”- Ralph McQuarrie
Concept Artist
Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays

Jabba the Hutt, Cut
“Even when I first shot the scene with an actor, I had planned to replace him later with some kind of stop motion animated character. I imagined Jabba would be furry, but we just never had the time or money to do that shot, and I had to eliminate the scene. But I always wanted it in there.” – George Lucas
Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays

Indiana
“My dog Indiana used to ride on the front seat of my car. He was a big dog, and when he sat there, he was bigger than a person, so I had this image in my mind of this huge furry animal riding with me. That’s where the inspiration for Chewbacca came from.”- George Lucas
Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays

In Your Face
“While Jabba is physically imposing in Jedi, he’s not menacing, but by putting him on the ground, he could be a really dangerous creature to have in your face.”- Joe Latteri, ILM, A New Hope — Special Edition
Star Wars Galaxy Magazine #11

Imperial Machine

“Vader himself is made up partly of prosthetics, a symbol of how his spirit has been consumed by the Imperial machine. Yet Vader knows that machines aren’t everything; early on he reminds the Imperial officers, ‘Don’t be too proud of this technological terror.'” – Star Wars: The Magic of Myth

I Have a Bad Feeling About This
“I used the line ‘I have a bad feeling about this’ in all three films. It was just a funny understatement, and I liked using it whenever something really bad was going to happen, something outrageously bad. At the same time I was doing Star Wars, I was working on Raiders of the Lost Ark, and it was a line that I was really going to use in Raiders, but I realized that Indiana Jones, most of the time, is by himself when he is in those desperate situations. But I had so many characters in Star Wars that no matter what, I figured that there would always be someone there to say the line and someone else to hear it. So the line became a joke that floated not only in Star Wars but in all my movies.” – George Lucas
Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays

Hi, I’m Mark Hamill
“I went in on one interview, didn’t see a script, didn’t do anything. I just talked about myself. ‘Hi, I’m Mark Hamill. I have four sisters and two brothers. I grew up in Virginia and New York and Japan.’ They said, ‘Thank you,’ and I went away.”- Mark Hamill, on interviewing for Star Wars
Official Star Wars Fan Club Newsletter, 1978

Hero’s Journey

“The hero’s journey actually begins with the call to adventure, the first occurrence of a chain of events that will separate the hero from home and family. Sometimes that call comes from the hero’s own nature, and the hero will set out of his or her own accord, but usually fate brings the call, often sending a herald — a person or animal who literally carries a message that causes the journey to begin.”- Star Wars: The Magic of Myth

Head Jawa Jack
“I actually came to the interview with my (cabaret show) partner, Jack Purvis. I got the job right away because they wanted someone small to get into the robot… I said, ‘I can’t just walk into a movie and leave my partner stranded.’ They said, ‘ ‘Well, we have plenty of work for Jack.’ And they made him the head Jawa.” – Kenny Baker (R2-D2)
Star Wars Insider #23

Harrowing Hairdo
“I hear the (Special Edition) is fabulous. I understand that the special effects have withstood the test of time very well, and they’ve actually redigitized my hairdo because that was the only thing that really dated the film.” – Mark Hamill
The Official Star Wars 20th Anniversary Commemorative Magazine

Han and Bob
“A lot of the elements of Han Solo are a lot like Bob Falfa in American Graffiti. But I don’t — I hope — they’re not the same person. I never intended them to be. The jump to hyperspace is like the drag racing in American Graffiti“- Harrison Ford, comparing his two famous roles.
The Making of Star Wars
1977

Hairy Script
“They started trying on all those awful hairstyles, and I was so scared that they’d made a mistake, because the script described how pretty the princess was.” – Carrie Fisher
Star Wars Insider #24

Funny Sound Guru
“I’d call somebody and say, ‘I hear you have a trained bear that makes a funny sound…'” – Ben Burtt
George Lucas: The Creative Impulse