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As anyone who can make the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs knows, May the 4th is Star Wars Day. To mark this special occasion in the galaxy, we thought it would be fun to share 10 odd and fun facts about the epic franchise:
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In the original script for Star Wars: A New Hope, R2D2 actually had lines in English. But that’s not even the strangest part: apparently, he wasn’t a nice guy. For example, here is one of his lines that he was supposed to hurl at C3PO: “You're nothing more than a dim-witted, emotion-brained intellectual. Why you were created is beyond my logic systems.”
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The original plan was for Luke to turn evil and join the dark side at the end of Return of the Jedi. However, George Lucas scrapped the idea because he felt that Star Wars was essentially for kids, and they would have a hard time with this.
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Initially, Yoda was going to be played by a monkey who wore a mask and carried a cane (yes, seriously). However, one of the crew members also worked the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, and he warned George Lucas and the other executives that trying to work with apes was a nightmare. They got the message, and the Yoda we all know and love was born.
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On the subject of Yoda: originally, he was going to be called Buffy. Imagine this: “Vampire you will slay, or vampire you will not slay. There is no try.”
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Harrison Ford (who according to Family Guy is the only actor whose career wasn’t destroyed by Star Wars) wasn’t originally supposed to play Han Solo. He was brought on as a helper to feed lines to auditioning actors. However, George Lucas liked him so much that he was cast in the role, and the rest is history.
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Alec Guinness (Obi-Wan) hated Star Wars: A New Hope so much (he called it “fairy-tale rubbish”) that he initially refused to appear in The Empire Strikes Back. Eventually, he was persuaded, but only under certain conditions: he would work only for a single day between the hours of 8:30 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. In return, he would receive 1/4th of 1 percent of the movie’s total gross. That 4.5 hours of work generated Guinness millions of dollars.
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The character of Chewbacca was inspired by George Lucas’ giant Alaskan malamute dog.
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The communicator that Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson) and young Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) used was made from the resin cast of a Gillette Ladies Sensor Excel Razor.
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In The Last Jedi, Laura Dern, who played Admiral Holdo, made “pew pew” sounds when she fired her blaster. And can you blame her? Let’s all do it together: PEW! PEW!
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In Star Wars: The Force Awakens, there is a scene where Rey “uses the force” to free herself from Kylo Ren's interrogation chair. Well, guess what? The weak-minded Stormtrooper that she subdued was actually Daniel Craig of James Bond fame.
And now for a bonus bit of Star Wars trivia. This is not about any of the movies, but it’s so wacky and wonderful that we had to add it.
- In 1977, a remixed disco version of the original Star Wars theme climbed all the way to number one on the Billboard Pop Chart. Click below and start dancing!
