The word “Ewok” is never uttered by a character in the original trilogy. Although, the species is identified in the script and closing credits.
Ford did not want to play Han Solo anymore after The Empire Strikes Back, and wanted the character to be killed off. Lucas decided to freeze him in carbonite so he could be revived if Ford agreed to do the next movie.
The noise a lightsaber makes is created by combining the hum of an old television’s picture tube and the buzz of a film projector’s motor.
Yoda tells Luke that Darth Vader is indeed his father because kids in real life assumed Vader was lying and after speaking with a child psychologist George Lucas wanted to make it clear for his younger viewers.
When filming The Empire Strikes Back in Norway, an intense snowstorm hit the hotel the cast and crew were staying in. Director Irvin Kershner thought it would be the perfect chance to film Luke wandering into the snow from the Wampa cave. He sent Hamill out into the snowstorm while he and the production crew filmed, nice and cozy, from inside the hotel.
Yoda’s species is never named. A mystery, it is.
“I have a bad feeling about this” became a running gag for the franchise and a variation of the line appears in every Star Wars movie.
When Hamill was injured in a car crash in 1977 and needed facial reconstruction, Lucas planned to include a scene in The Empire Strikes Back where Luke’s face is damaged to work with any effects of Hamill’s injury. They filmed a scene where Luke’s face is being treated by a droid, but it was cut from the final movie.
While filming scenes from A New Hope in Tunisia near the Libyan border, a war nearly broke out when the Libyan government threatened military action after they noticed a large military vehicle near their territory. Thankfully, that vehicle turned out to be the Jawan sandcrawler, and the Tunisian government just had Lucas move it further from the border and crisis was averted.
Admiral Ackbar has a backstory: he used to be Grand Moff Tarkin’s slave and personal pilot.
George Lucas admired Stanley Kubrik, and when he set out to make Star Wars, he hired so many people who worked on 2001: A Space Odyssey that the group was referred to as “The Class of 2001.”
Depending on what movie you’re watching, Yoda has a different number of toes. In The Phantom Menace, Yoda has three toes. But in The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi and Revenge of the Sith, he has four.
In Return of the Jedi, the filmmakers distributed fake scripts to cast members they considered likely to leak details to the press. Some of these fake details did leak, including the fake plot point that Lando Calrissian was “the last hope” for the Jedi, as mentioned by Yoda and Obi-Wan in The Empire Strikes Back.
Carrie Fisher got along so well with Peter Cushing that she found it difficult to act like Leia hated Grand Moff Tarkin.
The sounds of the Rancor in the Jabba’s palace were made by a growling dachshund.
Lucas had no idea how popular Boba Fett would be. He later said that if he had known, he would have given the character a more memorable death. He even considered adding a scene where Boba Fett escapes the Sarlacc pit for a DVD release, but decided against it.
Harrison Ford almost wasn’t Han Solo. Burt Reynolds was among the top contenders, along with Al Pacino, Jack Nicholson and Christopher Walken.
Jabba the Hut was originally meant to be furry, not slug-like.
David Prowse, the actor who portrayed Darth Vader (in form, not voice), is banned from attending official Star Wars conventions because George Lucas finds him annoying.
George Lucas paid a fine and resigned from the Directors Guild rather than start Episode IV with a traditional credit sequence.
R2-D2 spoke standard English in early drafts of the script, and used a lot of foul language in the process. All of his English lines were cut in the end, but C3PO’s shocked reactions stayed the same.
An early version of the script had Obi-Wan returning from the dead in Return of the Jedi rather than just appearing in ghost form.
In Return of the Jedi, the Emperor’s chair was supposed to be mechanized to rotate, but it never worked properly. Instead, Ian McDiarmid, who played the Emperor, had to move the chair himself by shuffling his feet. A piece of tape on the floor told him where to stop shuffling so it would not be visible on screen.
Peter Mayhew, who played Chewbacca, was cast in his role 10 seconds after meeting Lucas. Mayhew was 7’2”, and he was cast as soon as he stood up.
In a story development session for Return of the Jedi, George Lucas toyed with the idea that after Luke removes dying Vader’s helmet, he puts it on, proclaims “Now I am Vader” and turns to the dark side.
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#19 there was a lot more to it than that