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

Continuity mistake: When one of the stormtroopers unties Han Solo before he is put into the carbonite, watch his wardrobe - he has a disappearing / reappearing jacket on. This is fixed to an extent on the DVD - the jacket is now lightened to almost match his shirt, but it's still shiny like leather. (01:32:05)

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Suggested correction: It just looks like a jacket because it's a shadow.

That is incorrect. You can see the contrast between the jacket and the shirt, with the white collar of his shirt sticking out of the brown jacket.

Catwalk

The shadow isn't touching all of the shoulders, which gives the illusion that there is a jacket on him, but there isn't.

Trivia: There was a false page in the original script in order to fool all of the people working on the film. This was to keep it secret that Darth Vader was Luke's father. Only George Lucas, the producers and James Earl Jones knew the truth. Mark Hamill was told just moments before filming this scene so his reaction would be right, while David Prowse read the lines from the original script "Obi-Wan killed your father."

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Suggested correction: Mark Hamill stated multiple times that he knew for over a year about the twist. It was a secret for the remaining cast though.

oldbaldyone

Trivia: In the first take of Darth Vader and his troops entering the Rebel base, the lead troopers tripped, a stuntman stepped on the cape of David Prowse (Darth Vader), the cape tore free and Prowse fell on the troopers.

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Suggested correction: How is something from the blooper reel considered trivia?

ctown28

Well I for one didn't know about it, so it's interesting to know it happened. Behind the scenes stuff is generally valid trivia.

Jon Sandys

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: 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

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

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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.

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

Continuity mistake: As already noted in another mistake, when Han is about to be frozen in carbonite, his jacket appears and disappears between shots. This jacket can also be seen when Lando says, "You're being put into carbon freeze." This shot was not fixed in the DVD. (01:35:05)

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Suggested correction: That is a shadow, giving the illusion it's a jacket.

That is incorrect. You can see the contrast between the jacket and the shirt, with the white collar of his shirt sticking out of the brown jacket.

Catwalk

The shadow isn't touching all of the shoulders, which gives the illusion that there is a jacket on him, but there's not.

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

Visible crew/equipment: When Luke and Vader are fighting in the carbon-freezing room, in the wideshot after Luke does a somersault, a crew member is visible in the steam on the right side of Vader, moving out of the way. (01:40:50)

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Suggested correction: It's Luke, not a crew member.

Revealing mistake: When we see the Star Destroyer for the first time, there are three of them on screen. The one on the top left, can still be seen even after another Star Destroyer came into frame and blocks the view.

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Suggested correction: The Star Destroyer that blocks the other ones from view is transparent. It got fixed for the DVD.

Continuity mistake: During the battle of Hoth, Wedge flies a full circle around the AT-AT walker and when the walker begins to fall, you can see the cable around its legs, but in a side view of the walker falling, the cable is nowhere to be seen.

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Suggested correction: The cable is thin and we only see closer in shots until the walker falls, but you still can see it, barely in 1080p, right as the head hits as a line between the top of the front leg connecting to the back leg.

jimba

Visible crew/equipment: When C-3PO is on the conveyor belt, if you look in the reflection in his head you can see the camera crew. (01:26:40)

More mistakes in Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back

Luke: All right, I'll give it a try.
Yoda: No. Try not. Do, or do not. There is no try.

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

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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