This post was originally published by In A Far Away Galaxy.
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We’ve got Star Wars trivia and lots of it
Some might say we’re crazy (or quite brilliant) for doing this but we know Star Wars fans love facts and trivia about making these brilliant movies so here we go.
Here’s everything you probably didn’t know you needed to know about every Star Wars movie, including the damn Holiday Special!
After appearing in Return of the Jedi, fan favourite Wedge became the only X-wing pilot character (apart from Luke) who survives all three major battles in the original trilogy.The Millennium Falcon is spied landing on Coruscant in Revenge of the Sith. This was prior to Lando or Han Solo owning it!It’s a myth the Wampa was created to allow for Luke’s rearranged face after a car accident. Mark Hamill was injured prior to the filming of The Empire Strikes Back. This is fact though. The myth is that due to his face being rearranged, Lucas had to re-write the Hoth events to include the Wampa attacking Luke to account for his injury. The truth is that no accommodations were made for Hamill’s face. The myth is probably stoked by this moment from Empire that was unused.Boba Fett was first seen in The Empire Strikes Back right? Nope, technically his first appearance was in an animated segment of The Star Wars Holiday Special. It is the only good part of that movie. Yoda’s species has never been mentioned. In official records, he is simply an ‘unknown species’. He’ll always be Kermit’s ugly cousin to us.Revenge of the Sith is the only Star Wars film thus far that does not feature R2D2 in the final shot (and Rogue One if that counts!).Alden Ehrenreich was the first actor to audition for directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller for the Solo movie. They saw many other actors but Alden made a lasting impression.In the Solo film, there was a fourth member of Beckett’s team called Korso but the character was cut in the editing room. You can actually see a few shots of him in the Mimban sequences. Korso was to be killed early on so that Becket would see value in replacing him with Chewbacca.That dude in the Rebel Base to which Han Solo retorts, “Then I’ll see you in Hell!”? just before he heads out to find a certain missing Jedi? That’s Cliff Clavin from the TV sitcom Cheers and the Pixar movies AKA John Ratzenberger.Dryden Vos has a set of Mandalorian Battle Armor in his collection on his space yacht in Solo This is the same style of armor made famous by bounty hunter Boba Fett.Princess Leia never actually gets to ‘meet’ Obi-Wan Kenobi. She sees him from afar when she’s escaping the Death Star and Obi-Wan is about to let Darth Vader kill him but that’s it. Unless you count Obi-Wan being present for her birth in Revenge of the Sith…When Han is caught in the mud during his first encounter with Chewie in Solo, his pose is very similar to the one of him in the frozen block of carbonite in The Empire Strikes Back.Carrie Fisher wrote an actual bestselling novel Postcards from the Edge and screenplay for the film based on her writing. In some Holywood circles, she was considered an excellent script doctor. The book was about her drug addiction and her relationship with her mother. Fisher has managed to parlay her writing talent with a few turns at playing script doctor for a few Hollywood movies, most notably Dustin Hoffman’s Outbreak. Her appearance in Scream 3 was apparently scripted by herself. Beauty and brains eh?Frank Oz who is the voice for the most famous little green guy in cinema history, Yoda was also the voice of the Muppet’s Miss Piggy. It was because of his talents that he developed with Jim Henson that saw him get the call up. He also did the puppetry. George Lucas made his first and only Star Wars cameo in Revenge of the Sith. He dressed as a Pantoran senator, Baron Papanoida. You might not have recognized him as he all dressed up in blue body paint! His daughter also cameoed with him at the same time.The so-called Tusken Raiders or sand people of Tatooine are the actual natives of the planet. The Jawa, Hutts, and Humans all came after.In the original drafts of Star Wars, Darth Vader and Anakin Skywalker were definitely different people – it wasn’t until the development of the script for The Empire Strikes Back that the two were combined as one character. This means Darth Vader does not mean Dark Father and the name was not a hint as to Luke’s parentage.In a New Hope, Leia was kept captive on the Death Star in cell number 2187. This was a deliberate choice as 2187 is the year that the Lucas directed film THX 1138, was set. The Force Awakens took this even further and used the number as Finn’s designated Stormtrooper number FN2187Every clone trooper in Revenge of the Sith is a creation of CGI. No clone costumes or helmets were manufactured for filming.In ROTS, a quick character cameo occurs when Vader and the Emperor are standing on the bridge of a Star Destroyer, overlooking the initial construction stage of the Death Star. In a blink and you’ll miss it moment, a young Moff Tarkin quietly sidles up to the Sith Lords. Moff Tarkin features heavily in A New Hope, it is he who orders the destruction of the planet Alderaan
Harrison Ford famously was never intended to be Han Solo, he was just hanging around after American Graffitti and was helping other actors read their lines as Lucas was in the casting process. Eventually, Lucas wised up and realised Harrison already had the part down cold. A very early draft of the Empire Strikes Back script saw Han Solo going in search of his Father-In-Law, Ovan Marekal, who has political ties with Lord Vader. Luke Skywalker flies to the ‘Bog’ Planet where he meets a frog-like Jedi named Minch, who teaches him the ways of the force. That’s right, Yoda was frog-like and was going to be called Minch. Can you image it, “But Master Minch, you cannot die!”As General Kenobi is about to leave to hunt down General Grievous, he shares a nice moment with Anakin which finishes with a very loving, ‘Goodbye old friend’ from Kenobi. This is the last time in the movie the two Jedi converse as friends. A key thing is the lighting – Anakin in the dark and Obi-Wan in the light – it is a literal case of foreshadowing what was to come.George Lucas funded the production costs of The Empire Strikes Back by himself to the tune of $33 million thus making it one of the most successful ‘independent’ films of all time. Return of the Jedi’s Ewoks were originally intended to be a tribe of Wookie, however, it was eventually realized that given Chewbacca could fly the Millennium Falcon, Wookie were not so primitive and thus the entire plot of the Ewok attack on the Shield generator would have seemed a nonsense. The Ewoks thus came into play for this reason – and also apparently it was thought a lot of kiddie friendly Ewok teddy bears and associated merchandise could be sold. You saw Caravan of Courage right? The Wookie were eventually seen on their home planet of Kashyyyk in Revenge of the Sith. During Revenge of the Sith Bail Organa and Yoda step into the hallway of Organa’s ship and have a nice conversation about becoming rebels or something. It’s the same ship that Darth Vader boards to capture Princess Leia Organa in the start of A New Hope. The famous Catina where our heroes met Han Solo in ANH is actually called Chalmun’s Cantina. Ralph McQuarrie designed C3PO by taking liberty with the Maschinenmensch design from the classic 1927 film Metropolis. Robby the Robot also was an inspiration for the protocol droid aspect.Carrie Fisher had to stand on a box for most of her scenes with Harrison Ford in the original Star Wars films because she is a foot shorter than him. This was done so the actors would look better in the frame shot together. George Lucas at one stage considered using the great actor and director Orsen Welles as the voice actor for Darth Vader.The Bantha milk drank by Luke and Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru in A New Hope is blue. Coincidentally or not, the code name for Return of the Jedi was Blue Harvest.Everyone assumes Luke only appeared in the three original Star Wars films. Think about it for a moment and you’ll realise Skywalker appears as a baby at the end of Revenge of the Sith. He, of course, appeared for 30 seconds in The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi making it 6 film appearances. Will we see Luke in Episode IX?R2D2 had a wee moment in Star Trek Into Darkness where he was spied being flung into space in an explosion. This also happened in Abram’s first Star Trek movie. How did this happen? A certain company called ILM may have done the special effects CGI on both films!Contrary to popular belief, the city where Qui-Gon discovers a young Anakin is not the famous spaceport of Mos Eisley, but a different place called Mos Espa. Qui-Gon’s description of Mos Espa is almost the same, if not the same word for word, as Obi-Wan’s description of Mos Eisley during A New Hope.The orange doll that Rey has fashioned in her living abode in The Force Awakens is very reminiscent of the suits worn by the rebel pilots in A New Hope. In A New Hope, Darth Vader has only 12 minutes of screen time.After Padme dies in Revenge of the Sith, she is returned to her home planet of Naboo for burial – her body has been altered to make it appear like she was still pregnant – this is all part of the deception of to keep the existence of Leia and Luke a secret. In the trailer for TFA, when entering Maz Kanata’s castle, our heroes observe a large array of flags. Many of them refer to the pod racing flags that racers like Sebulba and Anakin flew in The Phantom Menace. The Mandalore flag which is a link to Boba Fett as well. Many of these were removed from the final version of the film.It’s a myth that George Lucas had 12 films all mapped out before the first Star Wars was released. That’s the legend but the mythology of it has grown over the years. The nutshell is that Lucas wrote a great deal of material when he was developing his little sci-fi adventure. Based around a so-called “Journal of Whills”, Lucas script eventually was cut up and Star Wars as we know it was filmed. It was not until Empire Strikes Back came out that the term Episode 5 was mentioned officially. Lucas’s grand vision was actually pieced together over several years in very broad strokes. The 12 or 9 films as most people know of were never fully scripted but were largely imaginings of Lucas that were eventually firmly realized well after 1977A very early draft of the Empire saw Han Solo going in search of his Father-In-Law, Ovan Marekal, who has political ties with Lord Vader.Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa was a major influence on George Lucas and his ideas for his films.R2D2 is taller than the Ewok ‘Wicket’ from ROTJ.George Luca’s original Star Wars draft took a lot of inspiration from a film called The Hidden Fortress. It featured a pair of bickering sidekicks who served as comic relief and crucially managed to help keep the plot ticking along. Lucas adopted this concept and applied it to the robots.A lot of people miss it, thinking the C3PO is totally a ‘golden rod’ but his right leg is actually silver from beneath the knee joint. In The Force Awakens he had a red arm for a time but at the end of the movie has gone back to what we presume was the original gold. Phantom Menace is the only film in the series in which the top-credited actor plays a non-recurring character, and in which the top-credited character dies.Every single Clone Trooper in Revenge of the Sith is a creation of talented CGI designers. No clone costumes or helmets were manufactured for filming.The name “Qui-Gon” derives from an ancient Chinese system of alternative medicine called “Qigong”. The word “Jinn” refers to the “Djinn” one of the so-called genies of Arabian myth.The dice that were first featured in The Last Jedi were originally actually filmed in The Force Awakens but were cut from the film. In the Solo movie, they are first seen again when Han places them in his escape vessel.In Batman v Superman, Luthor’s jail uniform reads’16-TK421’. Part of this number is the same as the Stormtrooper that was asked why he wasn’t at his post in A New Hope. In the Force Awakens, as BB-8 does some rolling to escape the TIE attack, two podracers can be spied in the background, a nod to The Phantom Menace.