40 Star Wars fact to celebrate Star Wars Day - may the 4th be with you!
This year marks the 40th anniversary of the world’s best loved space opera. Here is one odd factoid for each of those years in that galaxy far, far away
Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker in Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (1980).1 Bossk, the bounty hunter from The Empire Strikes Back, wears an old costume from a Doctor Who episode. Doctor Who is a British science-fiction television show.
2 Luke Skywalker was originally going to meet his good friend, Biggs Darklighter, much earlier on in the film A New Hope, but that scene ended up being deleted.
3 Finn’s Stormtrooper codename, FN-2187, is the number of the prison cell that Princess Leia was locked in at the start of A New Hope.
4 Poe Dameron, the Rebellion pilot, was originally going to die early on in The Force Awakens, but director J. J. Abrams loved his performance so much that he kept him alive and he goes on to have a role in the second half of the film.
5 The X-wing design from The Force Awakens is actually based on concept art for the original trilogy’s X-wings.
6 During the first read of the script for The Force Awakens, Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker) thought he was going to appear in the Assault on Starkiller base scene. In a scene made to resemble Luke’s iconic scene in The Empire Strikes Back where his lightsaber is stuck in the snow in the Wampa Cave, the same lightsaber Luke uses flies past Kylo Ren’s face. He was sure he would appear in this scene, and was disappointed to find out he wasn’t ...
7 Luke Skywalker’s original lightsaber in A New Hope has seven grips attached to it. When it returns in The Empire Strikes Back, it only has six.
8 Han Solo was supposed to die in Return of the Jedi, but since a lot of the money generated by Lucas Films is from merchandise, creator and director George Lucas decided to end the trilogy on a happy note, and allowed Han Solo to survive. Until his death in The Force Awakens, that is.
9 George Lucas has a cameo in Revenge of The Sith. He plays the character Baron Paranoida.
10 The X-wings and TIE-fighters have become so iconic for fans that Lucas added them to a chase in Attack of the Clones, even though technically they shouldn’t have existed in the Star Wars universe yet.
11 There are many Star Wars references in Indiana Jones, another George Lucas franchise. If you look closely at the carvings on the walls in Raiders of the Lost Ark, you can see R2-D2 and C-3PO.
12 Star Wars also hid a fewIndiana JonesEaster eggs in their films, too – in The Phantom Menace, Indiana Jones can be seen heading to his seat during the pod racing sequence on Tatooine.
13 You’ll probably have spotted Yoda in E. T. the Extra Terrestrial, but did you know that E. T. appears in the Star Wars universe as well? Eagle-eyed fans can spot a group of them in The Phantom Menace. Hmm ... maybe that’s why E. T. seems to recognise Yoda as a fellow alien.
14 As of yet, none of the tie-in comics, films, or novels have addressed what Yoda’s species is!
15 The one Star Wars character that has sold the most action figures is Boba Fett, even though he only had four lines in total in the original trilogy. Impressive.
16 Rey’s line “That one’s garbage!” in The Force Awakens is a nod to Luke Skywalker describing the Millennium Falcon as “a piece of junk!”
17 Rogue One: A Star Wars Story uses footage from A New Hope of the Death Star Assault scene to highlight the importance of the minor characters who die when Luke blows up the Death Star.
18 The show Star Wars Rebels is referred to many times in Rogue One. The ship The Ghost makes an appearance, as does the droid Chopper, and General Syndulla is also referred to. Star Wars has Easter eggs galore. How many have you spotted?
19 Chewbacca’s iconic roar is made up of the sounds made by bears, lions, and badgers.
20 Han Solo’s name has been pronounced two ways in the films – Hon Solo, or Hen Solo.
21 The actor who played Boba Fett, Jeremy Bullock, has a cameo in Revenge of the Sith, piloting the Tontine III as Captain Colton.
22 In the original trilogy, the space battles were filmed with stop motion animation, using highly detailed models of the space ships in front of a green screen.
23 BB-8’s design is based on the original design of R2-D2. The droid’s original design didn’t have legs, it had a wheel. R2 ended up with legs because the technicians and designers back in the 70s and 80s did not have the technology to create something like BB-8.
24 Comedian Bill Hades is the voice consultant of BB-8, but he isn’t credited as such because it wasn’t an official consultation.
25 The name’s Bond ... Stormtrooper Bond. That’s right, the Stormtrooper who guards Rey’s cell in The Force Awakens is actually played by Daniel Craig, the current James Bond.
26 When promotional material came out for The Force Awakens, fans originally thought the lightsaber that Kylo Ren wields was a crossguard lightsaber. It was later revealed that his lightsaber had been so crudely built that it needed to have exhaust ports and vents to work.
27 In Rogue One, a beast-like character and a cat-like character were removed from the film and replaced by Chirrut Imwe (played by Donnie Yen) and Baze Malbus (Jiang Wen), because they looked too much like Groot and Rocket fromMarvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, and because they needed Asian actors in the film to attract a bigger Chinese audience.
28 The famous line “I am your father!” from The Empire Strikes Back wasn’t in the original script and was added right before filming commenced on that scene.
29 Mark Hamill was involved in a car accident right after the initial filming of A New Hope wrapped up. He fractured his nose and his left cheekbone. Because of that, the pick-up shots (small scenes made after the main shot has been filmed) in A New Hope had to be filmed with a double. They added the Wampa scene in The Empire Strikes Back to explain away his beat-up look.
30 If Lucas had his way, at the end of Return of the Jedi, Luke was going to take over from Darth Vader. His last lines would have been “Now I am Vader. Now I will go kill the [Rebel] fleet and I will rule the universe”.
31 In Return of the Jedi, Luke was going to have a new blue lightsaber, which can be seen in some promotional art. They had to replace it with a green one as it was hard to spot on screen in the Sarlacc scene.
32 The first movie that Ewan McGregor (who played Obi-Wan Kenobi in the second three films) saw in a theatre was a Star Wars film, because his uncle was Denis Lawson (Wedge Antilles).
33 Samuel L. Jackson (Mace Windu) had a purple lightsaber because he “thought it would be cool”. On the whole, fans would agree with him.
34 Some of the X-wings on the Yavin IV base in A New Hope are cardboard cutouts, not models. That’s because there was no budget to make more full size ones than were strictly needed.
35 In Rogue One, the planet Jyn Erso was originally held in is called Wobani. That’s an anagram for the name Obi-Wan.
36 In Revenge of the Sith, after Anakin and Obi-Wan crash land what is left of General Grievous’ ship and are taken on a transport, you see the Millennium Falcon land on the lower right of the screen.
37 Anthony Daniels (C-3PO) has a non-chrome plated cameo in Attack of the Clones.
38 In The Phantom Menace, Jar Jar Binks disables a battle droid, which has the numbers 1138 on its back, referencing to Lucas’ first film THX 1138.
39 The opening crawl of the original movie was done by pulling the camera back on two pieces of paper, one being the writing and the other being the black background.
40 Yoda originally was going to have a first name – Minch – but that idea was eventually ditched.
Edited by Ginny Wong