Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back

Other mistake: When in the cave, Leia falls and is caught by Han. She tells him that "being held by you isn't quite enough to get me excited." As she is saying this you can see Harrison Ford mouthing her exact words. (00:44:05)

Other mistake: When the Star Destroyers are seen for the first time, in the second shot, some of the TIE fighters that fly over a Star Destroyer are transparent. (00:19:55)

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Suggested correction: Just loaded up Disney+. I watched that scene - all the Tie Fighters are not transparent. What you're seeing is light set used to light up the Tie Fighters in space, to give the illusion that the Star Destroyer engines are shining on them.

Other mistake: In the original version, when the Rebel Transport ship leaves Hoth before the ion cannon is fired, an X-wing flies past it, and you can see the transport ship through one of its wings. This has been fixed in the Special Edition.

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Suggested correction: And in the Star Wars corrections page, you will find that mistake with the explanation that Lawson has used both Denis and Dennis in his career.

Other mistake: When the Millennium Falcon escapes Hoth and is pursued by the Star Destroyers, frantic movements cause them to collide. Watch the interior shot of the Star Destroyer as everybody is thrown around. Near the bottom of the screen one of the computer consoles comes away from the wall and is hurridly pushed back into place by a controller! (00:35:55)

Other mistake: When the Falcon speeds away from Hoth just as Darth Vader steps out, watch carefully as the Falcon exits the hangar. You will notice that a very small spot of the Falcon is visible through the roof of the hangar as the Falcon exits and flies upwards.

Other mistake: After Vader cuts through a pillar with his lightsaber in the beginning of the duel, the hole in the pillar is much bigger than it should be. (01:37:35)

Other mistake: When the AT-AT (Imperial Walker) blasts the shield generator, when it explodes, you can see the glowing remains of it (only visible on widescreen DVD). It was fixed in the 2019 version.

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Mistakes

Visible crew/equipment: When C-3PO is on the conveyor belt, if you look in the reflection in his head you can see the camera crew. (01:26:40)

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Quotes

Yoda: Told you, I did. Reckless is he. Now, matters are worse.
Obi-Wan: That boy is our last hope.
Yoda: No. There is another.

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Trivia

Trivia: This was the only movie in the Star Wars series until Episode VII in 2015 without a scene on the planet Tattooine.

Xofer

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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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