Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back

Continuity mistake: After Luke crashes during the battle on Hoth , the AT-AT is far away from him and is moving rather slowly. A few shots later, the AT-AT stomps on his snowspeeder, but it was too far away from him in the previous shots to reach it that quickly. (00:29:55)

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

Revealing mistake: After the headless AT-AT begins to fall over, watch its back leg on the right side of the screen. You can see a broomstick being pushed up from under the set. It raises that foot up in order to ensure that the AT-AT falls to the left side of the screen. (00:33:00)

Revealing mistake: Right before Luke nicks Vader in the shoulder with his lightsaber, Vader cuts through a railing. There's a hole in the railing exactly where Vader apparently cuts it. Also Vader's lightsaber never comes into contact with the railing, yet it sparks. (01:50:15)

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

Continuity mistake: When Luke is doing a handstand and has the vision of Han and Leia, in the last close-up of him upside-down, his elbows are bent, but in the next shot, his arms are fully extended. (01:14:05)

Kylantha

Continuity mistake: When Vader and Luke are duelling on the catwalk over the chasm, Luke lies on his back after he falls. In the first shot, he is lying in front of the steps leading to the round part of the platform, but when he rolls sideways a few seconds later, he is lying on that part of the platform. (01:50:05)

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

Continuity mistake: When Han first walks into the command center on Hoth, there's a shot of Leia looking at him. The shot has been flipped. This can be seen, for example, from that the men on either side of her have switched sides. (00:04:50)

Other mistake: When the Star Destroyers are seen for the first time, in the second shot, some of the TIE fighters that fly over a Star Destroyer are transparent. (00:19:55)

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Suggested correction: Just loaded up Disney+. I watched that scene - all the Tie Fighters are not transparent. What you're seeing is light set used to light up the Tie Fighters in space, to give the illusion that the Star Destroyer engines are shining on them.

Continuity mistake: After Vader cuts through the poles at the end of the duel, the burn marks keep changing size and appearance between shots. (01:50:25)

Continuity mistake: At the end of the movie when the Millennium Falcon is escaping from the TIE fighters we see some going after the Falcon then we see a shot of Vader looking at it - there are now no TIE fighters. They had no time to escape away. (01:57:45)

han_solo_321

Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.

Suggested correction: Actually, the TIE fighters are still there. They're just too small to see.

Continuity mistake: After Luke's hand gets cut off, in the wide shot where he first comes to a stop after going down the tunnel, you can see his hand. (01:47:55)

Continuity mistake: When Leia is briefing the Rebel pilots, some of the men behind her change position between shots. (00:24:00)

Continuity mistake: When Ben appears to the injured Luke (on Hoth), Luke is reaching out with his left hand calling, "Ben. Ben." As Han appears, Luke is found with his right arm reaching out. (00:13:35)

Lynette Carrington

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

Continuity mistake: After Han is frozen in carbonite, the outline of his shirt indicates that he is wearing a different shirt from when he was frozen. It isn't the shirt he's wearing after being unfrozen in "Return of the Jedi", it looks more like the shirt he was wearing in "Star Wars". (01:36:00 - 01:37:10)

Audio problem: When Luke is about to leave Dagobah, he says, "But Han and Leia will die if I don't," but the words don't match the movement of his lips. (01:19:45)

Audio problem: At the beginning, when they close the door of the hangar, it makes no sound on the first shot. (00:11:45)

Dr Wilson

Revealing mistake: After Chewbacca pulls R2-D2 away from the power socket, he runs away, and you can see white rubber soles under his feet. (01:43:15)

Audio problem: When Chewie is choking Lando, Leia says "We understand, don't we, Chewie?" A shot later, her mouth moves but no sound is heard, and when she says "We don't need any of your help", her voice is heard a little bit after she starts moving her mouth. (01:42:20)

Dr Wilson

Continuity mistake: Widescreen version: When Leia, Han, Chewbacca and C-3PO are first walking through Cloud City, as Han says to Lando, "You sound like a businessman", Chewbacca is walking behind Leia. In the next shot, he is ahead of her, and then seems to walk to the side to wait for her. In the following shot, he is behind her again. (01:18:45)

More for Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back

Quotes

Yoda: Told you, I did. Reckless is he. Now, matters are worse.
Obi-Wan: That boy is our last hope.
Yoda: No. There is another.

More quotes from Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back

Trivia

Trivia: This was the only movie in the Star Wars series until Episode VII in 2015 without a scene on the planet Tattooine.

Xofer

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Questions

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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