THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK PLOT TWIST WAS KEPT SECRET UNTIL ITS PREMIERE
George Lucas hid the massive Darth Vader identity reveal in The Empire Strikes Back.
The iconic Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back line “No… I am your father” was kept secret from movie’s cast and crew until they saw the finished film.
This Star Wars major twist, featuring the father-son connection between Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, unfolds in 1980’s The Empire Strikes Back and still remains one of biggest revelations in movie history.
Mark Hamill, who plays the Jedi knight Luke Skywalker, recently took to Twitter to commemorate the moment.
“The cast and crew first learned of it when they saw the finished film,” he said.
“When we shot it, Vader’s line was “You don’t know the truth, Obi-Wan [Kenobi] killed your father.” Only Irvin Kershner [director], George Lucas [creator] and I knew what would be dubbed in later. Agony keeping that secret for over a year!”.
Imagine the shear weight and agony of keeping that secret from others – it was actually kept quite well, lads!
In recent interview with StarWars.com, George Lucas added how The Empire Strikes Back sound design team also knew about that massive plot twist.
“The mixers, those guys were all dedicated to being quiet. They weren’t going to tell anybody. But there were very, very few people who knew about it until it was shown for the first time.”
“By the end, with the actors, about 12 people knew what that line was. I think, in this era now with the internet the way it is, it’s very hard to have surprises in a movie. And I don’t think you could do it today.”
Just imagine that, in the 1980’s where social media-less does not exist, a genuinely shocking movie plot twist stayed hidden that about 95 percent of the people who made the Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back didn’t even know about it. Well, Star Wars: The Mandalorian successfully hid Baby Yoda from us until its Disney+ premiere, truly, like we all have seen in the Star Wars franchise that there’s still ‘Hope’ that Star Wars will keep on surprising us. May the Force be with you!
Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back – Disney – YouTube
