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10 things you didn’t know about The Empire Strikes Back

The Making Of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back by J.W. Rinzler comes out today, and it’s not just essential for fans of the classic film. It’s also a must-read for anybody who’s interested in the creative process, because it goes into excruciating detail, on a day-to-day basis, on the troubled genesis of an amazing film. You get inside the heads of everybody involved with it, and you see how much pain went into every frame of this movie. In particular, there’s a 17-page section in which you get a transcript of director Irwin Kerschner and the actors — especially Harrison Ford — agonize over every second of the crucial carbonite freezing chamber scene, trying to get as much emotional truth and reality out of it as possible. This was on set, after the screenplay had already been revised several times, and every moment of that sequence gets rehashed and debated until it’s (arguably) perfect.

There’s a ton of great illustrations and some great insight on the behind the scenes problems that went into this film. Here’s just a few of the things touched on in the book. Check out the source link to read a bit more about each one.

1. Yoda was originally named Buffy.
2. Lucas considered having a scene where Luke’s face gets injured.
3. Luke’s journey to becoming a Jedi Knight would have had a lot more bumps.
4. We could have visited other planets.
5. Darth Vader would have had a castle.
6. Vader wasn’t Luke’s father at first.
7. The Luke-Leia-Han love triangle is a much bigger deal in earlier drafts of the script.
8. The film posed unique challenges for special effects and model work.
9. Stanley Kubrick nearly killed the movie.
10. Miss Piggy had a cameo in one of Yoda’s first scenes in rehearsal.