Here are some interesting facts about Star Wars, in celebration of Star Wars Day - for a printed copy, visit the foyer or ask at the Office:
1. George Lucas originally planned for Yoda to be played by a monkey wearing a mask and carrying a cane.
2. The word "Ewok" is not said by any character in the original trilogy, although the species is identified in the script and closing credits.
3. The phrase "I have a bad feeling about this" or "I have a very bad feeling about this" is said in every Star Wars movie.
4. In a story development session for Return of the Jedi, George Lucas toyed with the idea that after Luke removes dying Vader's helmet, he puts it on, proclaims "Now I am Vader" and turns to the dark side.
5. Yoda's species has never been named. A mystery, it is.
6. Legendary Muppeteer Frank Oz voiced Yoda, and Jim Henson oversaw his creation. Depending on what movie you’re watching, Yoda has a different number of toes (3 in The Phantom Menace but 4 in The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi and Revenge of the Sith)!
7. There are no female fighter pilots in the original trilogy.
8. Star Wars and 2001: A Space Odyssey share almost the exact same production crew. George Lucas admired Stanley Kubrik, and when he set out to make Star Wars, he hired so many people who worked on 2001 that the group was referred to as "The Class of 2001."
9. No physical suit of armour was ever built for the Clone Troopers in the prequel movies. Every single Clone Trooper was computer animated.
10. The alien race of E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial makes an appearance in The Phantom Menace — officially connecting the worlds of Lucas and Spielberg sci-fi. A senator and his delegation from planet Brodo Asogi are present in the Grand Convocation Chamber when Queen Amidala calls for a vote of no confidence.
11. The Ewok language is a combination of Tibetan and Nepalese.
12. The sound of a TIE Fighter engine was created by combining an elephant bellow and a car driving on wet pavement, and the noise a lightsaber makes is created by combining the hum of an old television's picture tube and the buzz of a film projector's motor.
13. Chewbacca's voice is a mix of bear, walrus, lion and badger sounds.
14. Named by some as the most expensive puppet in the world, the $500,000 Jabba the Hutt model required seven people to bring to life.
15. The tiny South Pacific island of Niue accepts limited edition Star Wars collectible coins as legal tender.
16. Liam Neeson was too tall for Star Wars! The sets for The Phantom Menace were only as tall as the actors, but they didn't account for 6'4" Liam Neeson. They had to rebuild all the door frames for Qui-Gon Jinn- an additional $150,000 in production costs.
17. Originally, Jabba the Hutt was not conceived as a grimy slug, but as a fuzzy creature.
18. George Lucas paid a fine and resigned from the Directors Guild rather than start A New Hope with a traditional credit sequence.
19. Burt Reynolds was among the top contenders to play Han Solo, along with Al Pacino, Jack Nicholson and Christopher Walken.
20. Gary Kurtz, the original producer of Return of the Jedi, said that in the early story outline, Han Solo dies and the Rebel forces are left in tatters, with Luke disappearing into the wilderness.
21. The pants Luke Skywalker wore in the first film were just Levi blue jeans bleached out, with the back pockets removed. Mark Hamill said “George (Lucas) called Star Wars the most expensive low-budget movie ever made and every penny spent had to show up on the screen. I think they started with my costume.”
22. Anthony Daniels couldn't sit down while wearing his C-3PO costume. During the filming of Empire Strikes Back if C-3PO had to sit down in a scene, Daniels would have to first be seated without the costume and production would have to build it around him. This is why you never see C-3PO below the waist whenever he is seated.
23. In The Phantom Menace, Anakin Skywalker drives a Podracer, which was actually constructed from the shell of a Maserati Birdcage. This was a racing car first introduced in the 1960s.
24. C-3PO and R2-D2 may have been best buddies on-screen, but off-camera the actors who played the droids allegedly didn’t like one another.
25. When Star Wars: A New Hope was filming in England, the country was experiencing a heatwave of epic proportions. This made wearing those fighter pilot suits for scenes incredibly uncomfortable. The actors took matters into their own hands by only wearing the pieces of their costumes that would actually be captured on camera.
26. The trash in the Death Star garbage compactor scene in A New Hope was real. So real, in fact, that the smell was so bad that Mark Hamill burst a blood vessel from trying to hold his breath, and the camera angle had to be adjusted for the rest of the scene so as not to show his injury. As for Peter Mayhew’s yak-hair Chewbacca suit? It reeked for the rest of production.
27. At the start of A New Hope, Chewbacca is 200 years old.
28. Darth Vader was made up of four men. The on-screen body of Vader is 6’5” bodybuilder David Prowse; his stunt double for action scenes is professional fencer Bob Anderson; the voice of Vader is the great James Earl Jones, and the de-helmeted face of Vader in Return of The Jedi is Sebastian Shaw.
29. The sound of Darth Vader’s breathing was recorded by putting a microphone inside a scuba tank regulator. The sound of Vader’s pod door closing in Empire is reportedly the sound of a whole block of Alcatraz cell doors slamming shut.
30. In the late ‘70s, Lucas was working on A New Hope at the same time his buddy Steven Spielberg was working on Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Visiting the Close Encounters set one day, Lucas reportedly fell into a panic. Spielberg says: “He said, ‘your movie is going to be so much more successful than Star Wars! This is gonna be the biggest hit of all time.’…He said, ‘All right, I’ll tell you what. I’ll trade some points with you. I’ll give you 2.5% of Star Wars if you give me 2.5% of Close Encounters.’ So I said, ‘Sure, I’ll gamble with that.'” Gamble is right. Star Wars made $775 million at the global box office compared with Close Encounters’ $304 million. Adjusted for inflation, TIME reports, “Spielberg’s edge could come out to as much as $40 million.” The kicker? Lucas actually made good on his bet!
Star Wars facts sourced from Mashable Australia and Reader’s Digest
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