Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back

Audio problem: When Luke says, "Now all we gotta do is find this Yoda, if he even exists," if you look closely, his mouth never moves.

Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back mistake picture

Visible crew/equipment: A boom microphone is reflected in Luke's goggles when he says "Hey, what's the matter? You smell something?"

Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back mistake picture

Continuity mistake: In the original 1980 version, in the first wideshot of Darth Vader's Star Destroyer, the light of a Star Destroyer can be seen on the right side just flying through space. This is fixed in the 2004 DVD release.

Revealing mistake: When Luke and Vader are fighting in Cloud City, there is something looking like tape wherever they hit something with their lightsabers. Maybe it's pyrotechnic charges?

Dr Wilson

Other mistake: In the original version, when the Rebel Transport ship leaves Hoth before the ion cannon is fired, an X-wing flies past it, and you can see the transport ship through one of its wings. This has been fixed in the Special Edition.

Continuity mistake: When Janson (Wedge's gunner) fires the harpoon at a leg of an AT-AT, in the first shot of the snowspeeder flying around the AT-AT, the speeder casts a shadow on the snow. In all other shots of this sequence, there is no shadow of the snowspeeder.

Revealing mistake: Right after Luke and Darth fight for the first time, Darth gets kicked off the Carbonite freezer. Then Luke jumps down to fight him again. After he jumps, you hear what sounds suspiciously like a trampoline. Then in the lower right screen, you can see Luke's head pop back up into frame. Widescreen Version only, although the sound is audible on the fullscreen version too.

Continuity mistake: When Luke leaves Dagobah, he uses a ladder to climb into his cockpit, but when he sits in, it has disappeared.

Revealing mistake: In the original (not Special Edition): When the AT-ATs are attacking the Hoth base, they do a camera angle from inside Luke's cockpit. As his snowspeeder is passing through the legs of an AT-AT, part of the cockpit becomes translucent and you can slightly see the AT-AT through a metal bar.

Continuity mistake: When the Millennium Falcon is being chased by the Empire after leaving Hoth, C-3PO's position in the cockpit keeps changing slightly between shots. At one point he falls towards Chewbacca (with both arms in that direction) but during the in-between cut to Leia, he is also still there (with his left arm extended her way).

Continuity mistake: When they are escaping from the Hoth base, Chewbacca enters the Millennium Falcon but when Han and Leia enter some seconds later, Chewbacca is still going inside the spaceship.

Dr Wilson

Continuity mistake: At the fight between Luke and Darth Vader, after Luke pushes Vader to fall down from the top of the hibernating cabin, he looks down with the lighting light sabre in the hand. He goes back and we hear the switch-off sound of the light sabre, he comes back three meters left of the point he looked down and in his hand is the switched-off sabre. But as he goes back before this, we can see the end of the prop-light sabre taken out of Luke's hand and obviously the off-prop sabre is given in his hand.

Continuity mistake: When Yoda is teaching Luke, he is strapped to Luke's back in a rucksack. When Luke puts Yoda down, the little Jedi master is still inside the bag. Luke then reaches for his jacket, and in the next shot of Yoda, he has in a few seconds managed to get out the bag and is now sitting next to it. He is not even sitting in the same place as in the previous shot, and is also holding a walking stick he didn't have when Luke put him down.

Revealing mistake: In the shot where the Falcon is underneath the Star Destroyer, it is transparent and you can see the part of the Star Destroyer through it.

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Suggested correction: And in the Star Wars corrections page, you will find that mistake with the explanation that Lawson has used both Denis and Dennis in his career.

Revealing mistake: During the battle on Hoth, after Luke says: "Hobbie, you're still with me?", there's a shot of an AT-ST shooting at the rebel and after that, there a shot of an explosion behind them. You can see that the rebels are actually dummies in that shot.

Dr Wilson

Continuity mistake: After Luke places the thermal detonator inside an AT-AT, he falls to the ground. The AT-AT takes only one step before the charge goes off, but when the AT-AT explodes, it is much further away from Luke than one step.

Continuity mistake: In an exterior shot in Cloud City, Leia can be seen through the window of a building, with one hand on her hip and the other arm at her side. In the following interior shot, her hands are clasped together.

Visible crew/equipment: When Luke's X-Wing crashes into the swamp, the set lighting is visible along the edges of the swamp (most noticeable in the the first shot of him getting out of his ship in the original 1980 version of the film).

Continuity mistake: As noted in another mistake, when Han, Leia and Chewbacca are taken captive in Cloud City, two of the stormtroopers change position between shots. This also happens to some of the other troopers, as well as to Lobot, Lando's aide. This is best seen in the widescreen version.

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Trivia: The Special Edition covers of Return of the Jedi and Empire Strikes Back are wrong. The picture of the Emperor on ESB cover is from 'ROTJ', and the lightsaber duel between Luke and Vader on the cover of ROTJ is taken from 'ESB' (notice Luke is in his fighter pilot suit, and Vader is fighting him one-handed)

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Answer: The short, short answer to this is "Yes... from a certain point of view." The long answer is complicated and depends completely on what timeframe you mean by "always." If you're going back all the way to the early rough drafts of the early-mid 70s (which actually resemble Episode I more than they do the Star Wars of 1977), you'll find there's a cyborg father figure protagonist that makes a heroic sacrifice, and then another character that is a "black knight" villain that eventually turns to the side of good near the end. Just to make things more complicated, there is yet another character, a villain by the name of "Darth Vader" that is a human Imperial officer like Grand Moff Tarkin. It may be a stretch to count all that as "Darth Vader was always the father" but the pieces were all there, at least.

TonyPH

(1) Now the earliest explicit mention on any documented material that Darth Vader is Luke's father comes from notes Lucas made outlining the general story of the trilogy and its place in the larger Star Wars saga. These were found in the archives for The Empire Strikes Back, but they are undated and we don't know if they were written before Star Wars (1977) and carried forward, or if they were written afterward. These were found fairly recently (made public in 2010) and as far as I know Lucas has never commented publicly about them.

TonyPH

(3) One thing we know, at least, is that Lucas had come up with the idea of Darth Vader the father before starting work on The Empire Strikes Back. Something incredibly odd, though, is that the first draft written by Leigh Brackett does not feature the twist (and in fact introduces Anakin himself as a ghost); for a long time many fans took this as proof that Lucas hadn't thought of the idea at all by then, but after the series outline was discovered it was made apparent that Lucas simply hadn't told Brackett for some reason. Perhaps he wasn't sure yet that he wanted to go through with it, or maybe at that point he was thinking of revealing it in the third film. Either way, Lucas would write the second draft himself, and that's where the twist first appears in script form.

TonyPH

(2) Something that must be understood about Star Wars (1977) is that it was an ALTERNATIVE to his original plans of a saga. By then he didn't think it was realistic that he would be able to make a long series of many movies, so he came up with a "Plan B": he crammed the general story of the trilogy into one movie. So we know that when Star Wars (1977) was filming, Darth Vader was NOT Luke's father, because this one movie was IT, that was the whole story. But what we DON'T know, is whether that means Lucas had abandoned the idea of Vader being the father in order to simplify the story, or if Lucas simply hadn't thought of that at all just yet.

TonyPH

(2, cont.) On a side note, you can tell by watching Star Wars (1977) how it has condensed the story of the trilogy. The middle portion has the characters trying to escape capture from the Empire while one of them loses a duel with Darth Vader (like The Empire Strikes Back) and the third act is a final battle against the Death Star above a forest moon (like Return of the Jedi). The first act features a member of royalty on the run while a couple of protagonists find the main hero on a desert planet, resembling the original drafts and by extension Star Wars: Episode I. Because of this we've arguably never actually had a "pure" first chapter to the original trilogy, even though Lucas eventually had the film serve this purpose anyway.

TonyPH

Answer: Yes, however, he didn't want anyone to KNOW about it. In fact, the original script said "'Obi Wan never told you what happened to your father.' 'He told me enough... he told me YOU killed him!' 'No, Obi-Wan killed your father'" Even Hamill was only told the real line just before shooting, so his reaction is somewhat natural.

SexyIrishLeprechaun

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