Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back

Continuity mistake: When Han attempts to shoot Vader, Vader deflects the bolts into the walls. As he says, "We would be honored if you would join us," you can see burn marks by the door and on the wall to the left. Two shots later, the burn mark by the door has changed shape and size, and in the last shot of the scene, the other one has disappeared. (01:25:05)

Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back mistake picture

Continuity mistake: When the stormtroopers push Leia into the cell in Cloud City, she is wearing a completely different outfit from when she was taken captive. (01:25:20 - 01:28:35)

Continuity mistake: When Lando invites Han, Leia and Chewbacca for refreshments at Cloud City, we see a box containing C-3PO's remains and the head of C-3PO is looking to the right. But when the four of them leave the room, we see a close up of C-3PO's head and it is now looking to the left. (01:27:30)

Continuity mistake: When Han, Leia and Lando are walking down the corridor to the room with 'refreshments' (aka Darth Vader), Han and Lando keep switching sides. (01:27:55)

Continuity mistake: When the Imperial stormtroopers arrive to prevent Leia, Han and Chewbacca from escaping after being captured by Darth Vader, Lobot (Lando's aide) walks down the steps and stands in front of two of the stormtroopers. When we see Lando saying "I'm sorry" in the next shot, Lobot has disappeared. (01:28:40)

Continuity mistake: When Han, Leia and Chewbacca are captured by the Imperials in Cloud City, Lando says, "I'm sorry", to which Han replies, "I'm sorry too." At this point, Chewbacca is looking at Lando, but as the shot changes he is looking at Han, and then looks at Lando a second time.. (01:28:50)

Continuity mistake: When Lando is talking to Han and Leia in the cell in Cloud City, Leia says, "And we're the bait." As the shot ends, her hand is on the nape of Han's neck, but in the next shot, her hand is on his back. (01:29:15)

Continuity mistake: When Han punches Lando, Lando's cape stays on his back, but in the following shots, it's folded over his arm., before he puts it back on again. (01:29:45)

Continuity mistake: After Leia, Han and Chewbacca walk down the stairs in the carbon-freezing chamber, as the shot ends, Han is turning towards a stormtrooper behind him. In the next shot, he is turned in a different direction, and Leia's head is facing another way. The position and existence of some of the people around them changes between the two shots as well. (01:31:10)

Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back mistake picture

Continuity mistake: When one of the stormtroopers unties Han Solo before he is put into the carbonite, watch his wardrobe - he has a disappearing / reappearing jacket on. This is fixed to an extent on the DVD - the jacket is now lightened to almost match his shirt, but it's still shiny like leather. (01:32:05)

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Suggested correction: It just looks like a jacket because it's a shadow.

That is incorrect. You can see the contrast between the jacket and the shirt, with the white collar of his shirt sticking out of the brown jacket.

Catwalk ★

The shadow isn't touching all of the shoulders, which gives the illusion that there is a jacket on him, but there isn't.

Continuity mistake: After the carbonite block is pulled out of the carbonite freezer, there's a close-up of Leia leaning towards Chewbacca. In the next shot, she is not leaning on him, and then Chewie pulls her towards him again. (01:33:05)

Continuity mistake: After Luke first sees Boba Fett in Cloud City, he begins to walk away from the corner he is hiding behind. In the next shot, he is closer to the corner than in the previous shot. This has nothing to do with camera angles - notice the distance between him and the wall to his left. Also, his right arm is in a different position. (01:34:55)

Continuity mistake: When Luke is hiding behind a corner in Cloud City right before he signals to R2-D2 to keep silent, his blaster is held in different angles between the shot from the back and the shots facing him. (01:35:00)

Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back mistake picture

Continuity mistake: As already noted in another mistake, when Han is about to be frozen in carbonite, his jacket appears and disappears between shots. This jacket can also be seen when Lando says, "You're being put into carbon freeze." This shot was not fixed in the DVD. (01:35:05)

Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.

Suggested correction: That is a shadow, giving the illusion it's a jacket.

That is incorrect. You can see the contrast between the jacket and the shirt, with the white collar of his shirt sticking out of the brown jacket.

Catwalk ★

The shadow isn't touching all of the shoulders, which gives the illusion that there is a jacket on him, but there's not.

Continuity mistake: When Boba Fett shoots at Luke, he fires his blaster four times. The second shot hits the corner Luke is standing by, but in the next shot of Luke, there is no burn mark there. The only burn mark seen is the one from the third shot. (01:35:05)

Continuity mistake: When Han is put on the platform during the carbon freeze sequence, Darth Vader and Boba Fett are standing behind him and there is no one else in view, but when we see a close up of Han, an Imperial stormtrooper has suddenly appeared. (01:35:55)

Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back mistake picture

Continuity mistake: After Han is frozen in carbonite, the outline of his shirt indicates that he is wearing a different shirt from when he was frozen. It isn't the shirt he's wearing after being unfrozen in "Return of the Jedi", it looks more like the shirt he was wearing in "Star Wars". (01:36:00 - 01:37:10)

Continuity mistake: Before Han is frozen in carbonite, you can see there is nothing by Leia. When the platform Han is standing on begins to drop, we return to Leia and she now has an Imperial stormtrooper standing by her. (01:36:10)

Continuity mistake: When Luke first meets Vader in Cloud City, in the shot from behind him after he walks up the stairs, his arms are positioned differently from the previous shot. (01:36:55)

Continuity mistake: When Lando releases Leia and Chewbacca, as Leia says, "What do you think you're doing?" her body is turned in a different direction from the previous shot, and she's holding the blasters differently. (01:37:55)

More for Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back

Mistakes

Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back mistake picture

Visible crew/equipment: A boom microphone is reflected in Luke's goggles when he says "Hey, what's the matter? You smell something?"

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Quotes

Luke: All right, I'll give it a try.
Yoda: No. Try not. Do, or do not. There is no try.

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Trivia

Trivia: When Billy Dee Williams (Lando) picked up his daughter from elementary school after the film's release, kids would run up to Williams and say "You betrayed Han Solo!"

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Questions

Answer: The short, short answer to this is "Yes... from a certain point of view." The long answer is complicated and depends completely on what timeframe you mean by "always." If you're going back all the way to the early rough drafts of the early-mid 70s (which actually resemble Episode I more than they do the Star Wars of 1977), you'll find there's a cyborg father figure protagonist that makes a heroic sacrifice, and then another character that is a "black knight" villain that eventually turns to the side of good near the end. Just to make things more complicated, there is yet another character, a villain by the name of "Darth Vader" that is a human Imperial officer like Grand Moff Tarkin. It may be a stretch to count all that as "Darth Vader was always the father" but the pieces were all there, at least.

TonyPH

(1) Now the earliest explicit mention on any documented material that Darth Vader is Luke's father comes from notes Lucas made outlining the general story of the trilogy and its place in the larger Star Wars saga. These were found in the archives for The Empire Strikes Back, but they are undated and we don't know if they were written before Star Wars (1977) and carried forward, or if they were written afterward. These were found fairly recently (made public in 2010) and as far as I know Lucas has never commented publicly about them.

TonyPH

(3) One thing we know, at least, is that Lucas had come up with the idea of Darth Vader the father before starting work on The Empire Strikes Back. Something incredibly odd, though, is that the first draft written by Leigh Brackett does not feature the twist (and in fact introduces Anakin himself as a ghost); for a long time many fans took this as proof that Lucas hadn't thought of the idea at all by then, but after the series outline was discovered it was made apparent that Lucas simply hadn't told Brackett for some reason. Perhaps he wasn't sure yet that he wanted to go through with it, or maybe at that point he was thinking of revealing it in the third film. Either way, Lucas would write the second draft himself, and that's where the twist first appears in script form.

TonyPH

(2) Something that must be understood about Star Wars (1977) is that it was an ALTERNATIVE to his original plans of a saga. By then he didn't think it was realistic that he would be able to make a long series of many movies, so he came up with a "Plan B": he crammed the general story of the trilogy into one movie. So we know that when Star Wars (1977) was filming, Darth Vader was NOT Luke's father, because this one movie was IT, that was the whole story. But what we DON'T know, is whether that means Lucas had abandoned the idea of Vader being the father in order to simplify the story, or if Lucas simply hadn't thought of that at all just yet.

TonyPH

(2, cont.) On a side note, you can tell by watching Star Wars (1977) how it has condensed the story of the trilogy. The middle portion has the characters trying to escape capture from the Empire while one of them loses a duel with Darth Vader (like The Empire Strikes Back) and the third act is a final battle against the Death Star above a forest moon (like Return of the Jedi). The first act features a member of royalty on the run while a couple of protagonists find the main hero on a desert planet, resembling the original drafts and by extension Star Wars: Episode I. Because of this we've arguably never actually had a "pure" first chapter to the original trilogy, even though Lucas eventually had the film serve this purpose anyway.

TonyPH

Answer: Yes, however, he didn't want anyone to KNOW about it. In fact, the original script said "'Obi Wan never told you what happened to your father.' 'He told me enough... he told me YOU killed him!' 'No, Obi-Wan killed your father'" Even Hamill was only told the real line just before shooting, so his reaction is somewhat natural.

SexyIrishLeprechaun

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