Re: 10 Things You Didn't Know About The Empire Strikes Back

I actually knew a few of these.  :)

> 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.

Sounds like it's identical to the transcript that was already published in 
The Making of The Empire Strikes Back back in 1980; I have a copy.  Or 
maybe it's longer?  Anyhoo, I have *frequently* pointed to that transcript 
of an example of how The Empire Strikes Back became the best movie in the 
series because the director, Irvin Kershner, was actually *curious* about 
the characters and why they were doing what they were doing in a way that 
George Lucas *never* was.  In the movies that Lucas himself directed -- 
especially the prequels -- everything feels a lot more arbitrary, and the 
characters' decisions frequently don't make any sense at all.  And the 
writers and actors who have worked with Lucas all agree that he shows no 
curiosity whatsoever about his characters; he just decides that they're 
gonna do something, and then he expects them to do that something.

> 1. Yoda was originally named Buffy. . . .

This much *did* surprise me.  I knew about Yoda's first name "Minch", but 
I had never heard about "Buffy" before.

> 2. Lucas considered having a scene where Luke's face gets injured. Mark 
> Hamill was injured in a car accident in 1977, and his face had to be 
> reconsctructed — so for a while, George Lucas planned on including a 
> sequence where Luke's face is damaged, and we see it getting patched up 
> by a droid. This got as far as filming — there's a set picture showing 
> the droid bandaging Luke's face — but was cut out of the movie.

I knew that the car accident was one reason why the movie begins with Luke 
being attacked by the wampa.  I wasn't aware that there was a set photo 
showing Luke's face in even *worse* condition, tohugh.

> 5. Darth Vader would have had a castle. And it would have been an evil 
> fortress — in some versions, it's surrounded by lava, and full of 
> gargoyles who are Vader's pets.

Yep, I knew about that.

> 6. Vader wasn't Luke's father at first. In Leigh Brackett's first script 
> draft, Luke meets his real dad, who says he sent away Luke and his 
> secret sister for their own safety. (Luke's sister has been training to 
> be a Jedi knight in secret, just as Luke has.) And Papa Skywalker 
> administers the oath of a Jedi Knight to Luke . . .

Yep, I knew about that, too.

> 7. The Luke-Leia-Han love triangle is a much bigger deal in earlier 
> drafts of the script. It's at the root of Luke's struggles for self 
> respect and his humiliations. When Darth Vader is trying to win Luke 
> over to the Dark Side in the second draft, written by Lucas himself, 
> Vader says, "You're in love with Leia. You don't want to lose her to Han 
> Solo... But you will, if you lack the courage to use the strength that's 
> in you. A strength as great as mine, Luke."

I knew that the love triangle was a much bigger deal at one point, because 
I've seen the set photo of Luke and Leia getting ready for another kiss 
just before the Battle of Hoth (Luke is wearing the costume that he wears 
when he gets into the snow speeder), and also because I've seen the 
footage of an earlier version of one of Han and Leia's conversations in 
Cloud City; in the earlier version, Leia tries to deflect Han's attentions 
by saying, "I wonder what Luke's doing right now," and Han comes in for a 
kiss by saying, "Probably wondering what *we're* doing right now."  In the 
final version, however, this was changed so that Han and Leia don't 
mention Luke *at all*, and I don't believe they even kiss; instead, she 
says "And then you're as good as gone, aren't you?" and the scene ends 
with this sort of serious moment as they ponder being separated.

Still... considering that Lucas went on to revise things so that Vader was 
now Luke's father and Leia was now both Vader's daughter and Luke's 
sister, it's a little... interesting... to hear that an earlier version of 
the story had Vader preying on Luke's desire for Leia like this.  :)

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