Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back

Revealing mistake: In the shot where the Falcon is underneath the Star Destroyer, it is transparent and you can see the part of the Star Destroyer through it.

Revealing mistake: When Captain Needa is killed by Darth Vader because they lost track of the Millennium Falcon, in the background, two guards come to take him away. You can clearly see the dead captain get up almost by himself. (01:10:50)

Revealing mistake: When Leia and the crew return to cloud city to rescue Luke from the scaffolding, watch very closely as Lando ascends up the lift, just after the top hatch opens from the overhead angle, you will see that Lando has been replaced with a G.I. Joe look-alike figurine. (01:55:10)

Revealing mistake: During the attack on the rebel base, after the headless AT-AT falls on the ground, another one shoots at the rebels. You can see the pyrotechnic charges where the impacts are. (00:33:05)

Dr Wilson

Revealing mistake: When Luke and Leia are watching the Millennium Falcon leave at the end of the movie, its light goes through Luke's arm. (01:56:25)

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

Revealing mistake: After the headless AT-AT begins to fall over, watch its back leg on the right side of the screen. You can see a broomstick being pushed up from under the set. It raises that foot up in order to ensure that the AT-AT falls to the left side of the screen. (00:33:00)

Revealing mistake: Right before Luke nicks Vader in the shoulder with his lightsaber, Vader cuts through a railing. There's a hole in the railing exactly where Vader apparently cuts it. Also Vader's lightsaber never comes into contact with the railing, yet it sparks. (01:50:15)

Revealing mistake: When Luke and Vader are fighting in Cloud City, there is something looking like tape wherever they hit something with their lightsabers. Maybe it's pyrotechnic charges?

Dr Wilson

Revealing mistake: After Chewbacca pulls R2-D2 away from the power socket, he runs away, and you can see white rubber soles under his feet. (01:43:15)

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

Revealing mistake: In Cloud City, Lando, Leia and Chewbacca are running to the Millennium Falcon, and when then they run into a door after Leia shoots a stormtrooper, a white rubber sole can be seen under one of Chewie's feet. (01:42:40)

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

Revealing mistake: Vader cuts off Luke's hand at the wrist. When Luke is holding on to the antennae-like assembly underneath Cloud City, in one shot, Mark Hamill bends his wrist, revealing the gimmick. (01:52:55)

Revealing mistake: In the first shot of Luke riding on Hoth, the tauntaun leaves no tracks in the snow. (00:02:50)

Revealing mistake: Right after Luke and Darth fight for the first time, Darth gets kicked off the Carbonite freezer. Then Luke jumps down to fight him again. After he jumps, you hear what sounds suspiciously like a trampoline. Then in the lower right screen, you can see Luke's head pop back up into frame. Widescreen Version only, although the sound is audible on the fullscreen version too.

Revealing mistake: When the medical droid tests Luke's mechanical hand at the end of the film, his thumb moves before the "muscle." (02:00:40)

Dr Wilson

Revealing mistake: In the original (not Special Edition): When the AT-ATs are attacking the Hoth base, they do a camera angle from inside Luke's cockpit. As his snowspeeder is passing through the legs of an AT-AT, part of the cockpit becomes translucent and you can slightly see the AT-AT through a metal bar.

Revealing mistake: When Luke is talking to Han over the comlink, there's a shot of Han riding a tauntaun. The animal leaves no tracks in the snow. (00:03:35)

Revealing mistake: After C-3PO gets shot, as Chewbacca walks over to the door, his right foot crushes one of the steps on a small set of stairs. (01:19:25)

Revealing mistake: During the battle on Hoth, after Luke says: "Hobbie, you're still with me?", there's a shot of an AT-ST shooting at the rebel and after that, there a shot of an explosion behind them. You can see that the rebels are actually dummies in that shot.

Dr Wilson

Revealing mistake: If you closely when Vader cuts through the three poles at the end of the lightsaber duel, you can see that the saber never actually goes through the poles. (01:45:50)

Audio problem: When Luke says, "Now all we gotta do is find this Yoda, if he even exists," if you look closely, his mouth never moves.

More mistakes in Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back

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.

More quotes from Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back

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!"

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

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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