The Weekly Planet - The Empire Strikes Back - Caravan Of Garbage

Episode Date: February 12, 2026

It's time to talk what many still consider the pinacle of Star Wars media, The Empire Strikes Back. Released three years after the first movie in 1980 it also came at a time when sequels were almost always inferior to the original. With the original trio of Luke Skywalker, Han Solo and Princess Leia returning and George Lucas not directing but putting it all on the line to make this happen Empire was a massive success with it's darker nature and twist ending. And that green puppet man. Thanks for watching our Caravan Of Garbage reviewSUBSCRIBE HERE ►► http://goo.gl/pQ39jNHelp support the show and get early episodes ► https://bigsandwich.co/Patreon ► https://patreon.com/mrsundaymoviesJames' Twitter ► http://twitter.com/mrsundaymoviesMaso's Twitter ► http://twitter.com/wikipediabrownPatreon ► https://patreon.com/mrsundaymoviesT-Shirts/Merch ► https://www.teepublic.com/stores/mr-sunday-movies The Weekly Planet iTunes ► https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-weekly-planet/id718158767?mt=2&ign-mpt=uo%3D4 The Weekly Planet Direct Download ► https://play.acast.com/s/theweeklyplanetAmazon Affiliate Link ► https://amzn.to/2nc12P4 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There was a time, there was an era mason. Go on. Where sequels weren't good. Now sequels are good. All sequels are good. Every sequel's good. Every movie's good. Second videos for the year are good.

They're good. Some would say they're the best in the trilogy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But we're going to prove that wrong because they're all going to be equal best. Or they're all going to be better than the last. But then the first one's going to be better than the second and third. Oh, you're describing the Lord of the Rings trilogy, I feel. That's how I see it.

These are all good. This is our Lord of the Rings trilogy, us doing videos on the original Star Wars trilogy. Not the videos we did on the Lord of the Rigs trilogy. They're not our Lord of the Rigs. That's old stuff. That's old news. Don't care. Don't care.

This is our Lord of the Rings trilogy. Us saying what we think about the Star Wars trilogy. Fantastic. Please leave a light for us covering the Empire Strikes Back from 1980. A movie that George Lucas was fairly confident was never going to happen. When was he confident about that? Well, immediately afterwards he got Alan Dean Foster who Ghost wrote the original book to do Splinter of the Mind's Eye. I remember it.

Oh yeah. We did a video on it. basically a low budget narrative, which writes out Han Solo, because Harrison Ford didn't commit to sequels at that point. It recycled sets. There's no space battles. There's no Chewbacca. It's about getting a crystal or something. Yeah. I mean, obviously, there'd be no Chewbacca without Han Solo. Otherwise, it's just two acquaintances, but know each other going on a sort of a quest. I think that's fun. Luke and Luke and Chewbarker? Yeah. Luke Barker, they could call them. Their ship name could be Luke Barker. Both

their emotional friendship and the ship they're on. Yeah, okay, that's good. They could christen it for Luke Barker. Yeah, yeah. But obviously after we talked about this last week, Star Wars became literally the biggest movie of all time. He got Lee Brackett to write the first draft. Excuse me?

And the story that she wrote... The thing that I'm stuck on, not that this person wrote an original script. Sure. I've not heard of her before. It's just her name's Lee Brackett. It's just a little bit funny. It sounds like an Australian cricket player.

In comes to Lee Brackett to... He's got to do a bowl or whatever. Or she! Right. It sounds like George Lucas wrote the script himself and wanted to come up with a fake name for someone that he could pretend wrote it and he looked at a bracket. Oh, okay, that's what's happened. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So Lee Brackett's script, has Vader pursuing Luke because he was mad that Luke shot him out of the sky at the Death Star Battle? Which he didn't do. He didn't do that. So the third act, there'd be a funny reveal where he's like, oh, my bad. My bad, it was actually Hans Solo. That's right. Now it's time to get Hans Solo. Episode 3, now it's time to get Han Solo.

We'll get him together. I don't mind. Anakin's Force Ghost guides Luke through the Jedi trials. So this was a moment where also they weren't the one character. Whoa. Yeah. Luke gets hypnotized by a crystal that pops out of a lightsaber. Classic. Classic 70s crystal sci-fi stuff.

Classic crystal hypnotism. That's so good. Lando was from a clone family, so he was a hangover from the Clone Wars. There's a mention of God. I mean, there is a hell in Star Wars. We find out the real Empire Strikes Back. Correct, yes. I don't know what's going on there.

But unfortunately, just as she finished this, she succumbed to cancer and she died. So George Lucas, even though he didn't like this version, she's still credited for having a hand in it. And there were like tiny bits that kind of come over. But basically he scrapped this, wrote a new version, which then he got Lawrence Kasden to come in and basically tweak it to make it better more lively,

fix the Yoda dialogue, made it more concise, added the romance stuff, Vader having a mashed up head. Sure. They're Lawrence Kasden thing. I'm imagining a whiteboard and it's got Darth Vader's mashed up head right in the center and then just a bunch of lines coming off. We're starting with this concept.

We want to see. That's what the people want to see. Darth Vader's mashed up head. The S has a line through like a dollar sign. This is what the people want. How do we get here? So 20th century fox, they were wrapped because they were like, oh, we had a huge hit with Star Wars. In Australia, that means they liked it.

Oh, they loved it big time. To be wrapped in something. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They were wrapped about it, Mason. Sure. They thought it was groovy. They thought it was so groovy, Mason, until they realized that they signed over the sequel rights to George Lucas. You fools.

They said, listen, what we'll do? We'll finance this for you. Can we trick you out of this somehow? Let's try. And we're going to give you a 10% increase on your director's fee. And he went, no, I'm not going to do that. What I'm going to do, put your own money away. I'm going to bankroll this myself.

He put in $20 million of his own money, which he had financed through the Bank of a America, which is basically everything that he made off the first movie minus merch. So he still had more money. He M. Knight Sharma landed. He did, big time. And the deal that he got was initially, he would get 52% of the first 20 million, 70% of the next 40 million, 77% of everything after that. And 20th century Fox were just like, I guess.

You'll just take it somewhere else, which is what they did with Indiana Jones. But then this ran over and the budget kind of blew out a bit. and the Bank of America, they called in the loan. What? They worried. So then the loan... This is so boring, I know. Don't worry.

It's going to... I'll make it so concise in the photo video. Bank of America, don't you know you're dealing with one of the most successful film franchises of all time? Well, no, apparently. Don't you know there was going to be baby Yoda toys on the near horizon? So they handed the loan over to the Bank of Boston. Fox had to step back in as a guarantor,

so they got a few more percentage points on it, but Lucas maintained sequel rights. and all that still. Now, I don't know a lot about Hollywood, but I know you've got to get some of those points. Oh, yeah. If you get some points, you're going to be ranked. You can roll some joints.

That's right. Which is illegal. Don't do it. But it's groovy. But it's groovy. George Lucas risked all this because he wanted to build his own empire. He wanted specifically to build Skywalker Ranch. That was his idea.

And he knew that because he was making multiple companies kind of happen and flourish, he will need somebody else to direct. Ilm. Ilm? Exactly. Ilm. Made Ilm? Yeah, he did make it.

I always picture Skywalker Ranch as an actual ranch. It is an actual ranch. Whoa, I was right. Mason, you got something right for once. How does it feel? Feels good. I'm on the board for 2026. Tick.

So he got Ervin Kirchner in, who was one of his instructors at college. Irvin Kirchner said, of all the younger guys around, all the hot shots, why me? And George Luger said, well, because you know, everything a Hollywood director is supposed to know,

but you're not Hollywood. And I liked that. So he also fleshed out a lot of the character work also. And I can push you around. Well, no, he couldn't. We'll talk about that next week. Ileman Kirshner, just an interesting journeyman director. Completely agree.

After this, I mean, the movie I know him from post this is Robocop 2. He did Never Say Never Again. The second unofficial Bond movie that was made out of spite. It does have a weird laser hologram table bit. Probably. No, it does. I know. He worked on Sequest DSV. Did he?

Yeah, that was like the last thing that he did. And in 1976, he made a movie called The Return of a Man Called Horse. All AI is lying to me, but either could be true. I'm not familiar. Either could be true. This is such a huge step up in terms of special effects. It feels so modern. And again, we're looking at the original version of this.

But my goodness, it looks incredible. There's a new ILM facility, which they named the Kinder Company Optical Research Lab, so that people wouldn't come along and go, we love Star Wars, let us send. Let us in. I would have called it the Star Trek Labor. and people would have been like, ooh, yuck. Yuck, not for me.

No. I'm no Treki. Yuck. Not those boring movies. That's right. Yeah. The model work on this is so good. Look, we often, sometimes we make notes when we talk about these movies.

What you're talking about? I'm just notes. I've never remembered anything. I'm just notes, Mason. Okay, well, I've sometimes make notes. But I have only one note. And it just says in all caps, even bigger Star Destroyer.

Oh, yeah. God, it's so big. Initially they were going to use one of the original ones and just painted blue. Come on. Come on, what are we doing? So they built something that's, I think, slightly bigger, but it just has, it's got the appearance of more lights in it. That's one thing that I realized in watching this behind the scenes of this.

All the Star Destroyers have lights, and it gives them a bigger sense of scale because every light is like somebody's room where they're probably looking at a laser or something. Absolutely. They're looking at that laser. They don't know their doom is soon to come upon them, you know? They don't know that, man. I don't know. Yeah.

So that's five. optics running through all of these things, which is really incredible. And another tip, you can just zoom the camera in. Like, everything look bigger. That's true, yeah. Everything. What? Just everything.

Okay, that's interesting. I'm just going to, yep, all right, good to know. Just making a quick note. But God, the mod, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the adats, the all-terate armored transports, if that is, in fact, the acronym, I think it is, you know. Aren't they good, though? Yeah, the weight of them. Some people are like, why would they even, what you do everything to comply?

Well, what would you with the lace? Because it looks cool. Yeah. It's cool and it's shock and awe. It's scary. It's scary. You know, they're big. They're big.

They're walking tanks. That's fun. That is fun. It's fun. They're all terrain. But it wouldn't even work because they'd shoot out of toe cable. Okay, you got me. They would shoot out of toe cable and trap their legs and make them fall over.

They actually would do that. Also, if they're not that armoured on the top, why wouldn't you just shoot down on them all the time? Absolutely. I mean, but you've got to get up high, don't you? You got to get up high, don't you to do that. It could be different. Yeah, they have floors. You can get under them. You can get under them. So that was go motion, which was a relatively new pioneering trick of stop motion where you move the camera slightly as

you take an image and the blur gives it an effect of motion, which you don't get in regular stop motion. Go motion, of course, very soon superseded by yoga motion. Here's the gorilla. This yo-guerillas making a lot of appearances in our videos. Have you noticed that? First time in 2026 though. Here he is. And you got a point, you got another point on the board. Thanks, man. Yeah. One of my favorite moments in this that I haven't noticed before.

First of all, Admiral Oswald Copset, that's fun. That is fun, yeah. But there's a moment where Vader goes, General Veers prepare your men before he says that he turns and he's like three inches from his face. And Veers, who's a guy from Game of Thrones, he doesn't even flinch. Like he's so close and he just screams it at him. He's just like, all right, yep, cool, got it. Love that.

Is that because on set nobody was actually talking at all? That might have been. David Prowse at this point was probably refusing to speak. What's the point? Even they don't even use my real voice. Yeah, he even use my voice.

And you could just get a tow cable and put it around their legs. But nobody listened to our prouds you do they? Do they? Oh, man, I got some David Prow stuff to talk about later. Also, I think it needs to be highlighted that doing a battle with compositing on a white backdrop

is lunacy. Yeah. Because you get the black mat lines. And in space, you can't see that Because space, for the most part, is black. Could they just make them white outlines? That's a good point. They obviously didn't consider that.

Point on the board? Point on the board. Yeah, you could have another point on the board. But that's all great stuff. I love all of that. There's also new force stuff in this. We get mind moving. We get ghosts, as mentioned, hell is real, because Hans Solo mentions it.

Well, maybe it's real and maybe... I mean, the devil was in the last one. I mean, the devil was in the last one, and Hans Solo was in the canteener with him. Maybe that guy's just an alien. He's like, yeah, I'm from another dimension. mention it's called hell and if you're bad you end up there um Han do you want to join my cult he probably would he probably yeah yeah yeah but yeah all that's amazing and it starts off with a loss and it's just a series of losses throughout this entire movie watching the millennium falcon

outrun the empire is just the best thing in the world it's it's so incredible but it also is it dispersed with Han Solo just casually hitting on princess layer it's just in opportune moments and it's like, dude, we know it's the 80s, but this is not okay, all right? It's inappropriate, Mason. It's inappropriate timing and it's too much. But I guess he is cool. So there is that. That's undeniable.

Yeah. The love story, though, it does, I think it does work in this for the most part because they're just so charming together and the dialogue quite witty and all of that. You know the bit where they go into the cave and it's not a cave? Yes. Had he done that before? Because he clocks it like immediately. Oh.

It's a great question. There's probably a prequel novel by A.C. Crispin or whoever did the Han Solo trilogy. Great series of books, by the way. Okay, yeah. Where that happens or he'd heard about it from us. Maybe Lando had done it once. Oh, yeah, he probably did. Maybe Lando had done it once.

Or maybe Grito told him about it one time, you know? Yeah, he might have told him. And that's probably what Grito got caught by surprise. Grito's always like, yeah, I just show up and I threaten him. Yeah, yeah. And I tell him some old war stories or whatever. Yeah, yeah. And then he runs away or whatever.

It'll be just like normal times We're actually great friends Han and Grito Han and the Greeter over here This is gonna go really well as usual Is that why George Lucas changed it? Because he was like They were actually good friends

Maybe we gotta check a prequel book Gotta check one other prequel books I think if he knew in advance That it was I don't think he knew before Right But as the cave kind of moved He was like he was onto it

I bet he's been in some stuff He's definitely been in some stuff Mason That is undoubtable. Indisputable? Correct. Yeah. The Vader characterization in this, I mean, aside from the father stuff, is so good.

Just the idea of seeing the back of his head. I remember as a kid just being like, oh my God. Yeah. What the fuck happened here? And he's letting people see it because the guy comes in. And he doesn't. He's not like, just give me a minute.

Not everyone's as vain as you, James. Honestly. It's not vanity. I mean, look, we all know that if you got your head, burnt up and with lava and all mashed up. You'd be like, ooh, don't look at me. I probably would be like that. I used to look like Hayden Christensen.

I didn't. And now I'm like a thumb that got, ran down a cheese grater. And you can't even look at it. Grow up. Sorry, that's my fault. But of course, we got Yoder in this. He's keeping it real.

He's just keeping it real. I mean, if he was keeping it real, thing would be perspex. You could see him all the time. That's a good point. That's all I'm saying. Yeah, but you know what? He'd get an email from janitorial, be like, everyone's vomiting all the time. You can see you sloshing around in there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Bits are all coming off and they're sticking on the inside of the perspex. Every time he turns his head, a bit comes off. Fair point, yeah. So Yoda in this, it needed to work. Was he originally just going to be a guy? Yeah, the original concept.

was like a little guy and it slowly morphed into what he became. One idea was to dress up a baby monkey, which was quickly scrapped. Because of the propensity for violence. Yeah, yeah. It was supposed to be Jim Henson and then Frank Oz took it over. And I'll talk later about the guy who actually designed him. But were people, because we didn't see these in cinemas because we're so young. That's so true, isn't it?

Do you think people were fooled by this? I mean, I'd love people to let me know below. What do you mean? Oh, I see that... You know, he turns up and he's like, he's just like a whatever. He's annoying. I mean, I mean, the language of things. and would suggest that there's more to him than meets the eye.

Sure, yeah. Like, it's not like, I can't imagine... Especially the bit where he goes, I knew your dad. And Luke's like, I don't care. Yeah. I'm busy. Shut up. Shut up, you little freak.

Take me to Yoda. Who you seem to have some relationship with. And you know my dad. Yeah. But whatever. I think people... I mean, you know, it's... Probably clocked.

Yeah, it's... I mean, that's the classic reveal, isn't it? Yeah, I guess it is. I mean, maybe it wasn't then. But I think, though, he's so harsh on Luke. Like, Luke has a lot. going on even before his dad turns out to be that guy, that guy. And he's also very important.

Like Luke, and Yoder's just been hiding here. And I guess he has PTSD or whatever. Because he did a flip. But, like, making Luke do gymnastics is just wild. And I know it's part of, like, breaking him down to get to his core or whatever. Yeah. You've got to work on your core. You got to your core.

Exactly. But also him being like, well, Jedi, they never use, you know, the force for attack. It's only for defense. But that's a real, like... That's a lesson some Star Wars. fan film creators might want to learn. Luke mostly uses it for defence, not for flinging 17 lightsabers around, all right?

Just because he can doesn't mean he should. Yeah, fair point. Is it canon in the Star Wars universe that it was always going to be Luke to like... No, so the Vader thing is... To bring the back... To save the universe and etc. Well, it was kind of Luke and then it was

Rett Cond as Vader, which was apparently the plan all along. But then, of course, You know, Yoda says there is another. And he's like, well, maybe Leia can do it as well. I don't know. Well, it wasn't even supposed to be Leia. We'll talk about that next week. I was going to be Gary Skywalker.

Gary Skywalker was around. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But even the bit where Yoda's like, I remember the failure in the cave because he has a test in the cave, he fucking tuned up Darth Vader. I think that's sick, actually. That's right. Like, he very handily won that.

I mean, this is probably going to end in a fight. Yeah. And he got him. He got him really good. And I reckon when, you know, he slices Beta's helmet open. Yep. It's not going to be his own face to back at him, to shock him. It'll just be that wrecked thumb.

That grated thumb. Why is the back of his head also the front of his head? I don't know, but then after he's finishing vomiting, once he's finished vomiting down that shaft, you know, on the Death Star or whatever, he'll, you know, it'll be like, I won. Yeah, I won. This is good. I mean, it does tie into the next film because, you know, Luke does ultimately win by not fighting.

So I guess thematically, yeah. No, it does work. I'm just being a bitch. I'm just being a bitch up in here, basically. Yeah. But even like sending him off is wild. He's like, well, I can't help you save your friends. And if you go, you'll destroy everything that you love and they love and everything.

Well, guess what I didn't? Well, you know, he messed up a little bit. But ultimately he did pretty well. But like, again, it's that thing of like, you could go with him. You can lift some stuff. I think people would be like, that's cool. We got this guy now, it's handy. Yeah.

We made this backpack. So, I mean, just stay in the backpack. Yeah. You'll be fine. I'll swing in the lights over. You can lift some stuff. You can lift some stuff to light. Saber height,

like people, and I'll slice them in half. That's right. Defensively. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's one thing that the Mandalorian and Groglet learned as well, because they're a team. They're ones lifting stuff, one slice and stuff.

Absolutely. You know, they're coming around to it. Bounty hunters. Yes. I've said this before, but Bosque, put some shoes on. Hanging these dirty feet over the edge of that. People are working there, man. Yeah, but it's a dominance thing.

It's a power thing. He's showing off. He's like, I'm on a different payroll to you guys. It's like people who wear their lanyard. You know, out in public, you know, I work in a building. Yeah. That's right. But out here, you're a guy I'm going to throw my coffee on.

Yeah, that's right. But it does, of course, have the introduction of Boba Fett. Cool guy. Cool guy, good guy. Cool guy, good guy. Great guy. Yeah. He just loves people and being good and noble.

Yes, he does, doesn't he? Yeah. He loves looking after a town. Love, love the writing of rancourt. Love watching this movie and seeing this guy who I know will one day be a benevolent mayor of town. It's good, isn't it? It's good. Yeah, yeah. But this wasn't his first reveal. There was the holiday special prior to this, which we've got a video on. Well, he appears as sort of a Hunter S. Thompson. Yeah. What's the guy's name? Um, the art style. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's got that kind of

uh, uh, fear and loathing in Las Vegas, Ralph Stedman art. Yeah, in the, in the holiday special. Absolutely. People should watch it if they haven't. It's not good. No, it's not good. The animation is interesting though. Yeah. But also, he was revealed even earlier than that at a 1978 parade. in California where he just strolled out. I was like, I'm Beaufort or whatever. Also, did you know he was a dangerous toy that was recalled? Did he have a rocket launching backpack? You had a rocket launching backpack.

Is that true? Is that... This is true. Because that, I think, I'm sure I would have had, or I knew someone who had a Bober Fed action figure back in the day. And I'm pretty confident the backpack didn't launch because they would have changed. You're absolutely right.

They took the spring out of it. And the reason they did that, and this is from the consumer product safety commission. I did extensive research which said although all products meet or exceed all existing and proposed safety standards there have been incidents of accidentally swallowing or aspiration of a missile including one reported death of a four-year-old

that happened on a Battlestar Galactica toy so the rumor is that the BobaFet toy killed somebody right a toy did kill somebody but it was Battlestar Galactica yeah Secret Galaxy did a video on it Secret Galaxy over at they did they've done a bunch of videos Dan over at Secret Galaxy I believe has a collection of Boberfet's like a million

of them. That's too many. But he's done a bunch of videos on that. There you go. That's good stuff. Well, guess what, folks? Guess what toy safety commission of whoever you are? Jokes on you because I took my Bubba Fet and I taped it to a World War II artillery shell.

And I hit it with a hammer. That's incredible. So you could send a way to get this in 1979, this new figure. But a few prototypes of the recalled one were saved by employees and they're worth like tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars. So yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Lando. Lando.

The first movie is accused of being very white. Just because everybody in it's white? We don't actually know why people are saying these things. But yes, it is a very white film. What about Greedo? Yeah, that's a good point. What about Porkens? That's what George Lucas, he should have just just been like,

that's not racist, what about Grito? Porkens. Say Porkin. Yes, I did. But yeah, so... Chibarker's half Chinese. Excuse me, George. Do you want to explain yourself?

If anything, that makes you the real racist. Oh, God, oh no. But he's great. Billy DeW Williams is incredible. What an addition to the cast. Agreed. He used to get bailed up by kids in the schoolyard when he'd drop his kids off.

They're like, you betrayed Hard Solo. And he's like defending himself. He's like, well, I had to because they got there first. But also, like, if you've seen the movie, I actually steal his clothes at the end of the movie. But earlier than that, I let him out and whatever. I do a rescue or whatever. Yeah.

You guys have no concept of tax. tactics and strategy. You stupid children. Oh man. Harrison Ford going into the carbonite. The carbonite's great. Again, they did that because they thought maybe he's not going to come back for the next one.

And then in the next one, they could just say he died in the carbonite. Yeah, that's right. He died of too much carbonite. Yeah. He went in open-mouthed, which you shouldn't do. That's right. He poop too much in the carbonite,

and then the poop and the carbonite mixed and became toxic. And he died of pooped carbonite poisoning. That's great. Because he pooped too much because he's prone to doing that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's in all the prequel books as well. Yeah. The story is that he came up with the I Love You, I Know thing.

Like Ford came up with it on the spot. But Ervin Kershner, he was a big fan of letting Harrison Ford a meticular improvise. So they actually workshopped a bunch of stuff before they went out to set. And then they threw it out there. And also Lucas didn't understand why people thought that was funny. Huh. But he deferred to the director. And yeah, it's one of the most iconic moments in cinema.

And it is funny. Someone bearing their heart. And you're just like, whatever. That's right. That's funny. Hang on, haven't you been hitting on me this whole movie? On Solo, you dog? Man, the absolute doubt you would feel for the years that he was frozen in carbonide, just be like, I know, what the fuck does that mean?

You'd be worried if you thore him out. First of all, he's covered in poop and he's dead. That's right. Or that he's just like, yeah, no, I don't know. I like you, but, you know. Yeah. I thought it was funny. You be honest? It was a funny thing to say.

Luke versus Vader is incredible. Oh, great. First off, I just want to say, Luke, the outfit that Luke is wearing in that, he zips it under his flight suit at the beginning of the movie before the Battle of Hoth. Which means those clothes he wore then, through that entire battle, into the snow,

into the mud and the muck, and then to Cloud City. And I don't know, I don't know if Vader smells anything through that suit, but if he does, my goodness, horrendous. I think maybe his senses are, they're enhanced, if anything. Exactly, yeah. That's probably how Obi-Wan and Darth Vader

could sense each other in the first movie. just their stinky roads Yeah, probably right, yeah Oh no, it's the force actually No, it isn't you like If that's the case, I've got the force too Because you guys, ooh, pee you So you probably heard the story about

How Mark Hamill was in a car accident Shortly after the first movie was filmed I do And the reason he gets attacked by the monster It's to explain why he looks slightly different Than the other movie He did have a car accident But he has talked about this

And he did at the time And since that No, his nose was broken and he got a fractured cheekbone, but he was fine. Like, he may have been, he probably looked worse around the time of the filming of the holiday special because he's like, Kate didn't make up, or everyone was on cocaine, so they just caked him in makeup. But that scene wasn't added specifically for that.

Apparently, that could change again because also Mark Hamill notoriously has a really terrible memory when it comes to Star Wars. But that's his story. Well, that's understandable, because I mean, it's only been a very small part of his life. Yeah, but also I should point out that was his story from the time. Right. There's an interview of that. So anyway, Luke versus Vader.

Yes. My God. It does seem like up top that Luke kind of knows what he's doing. You know? You're like, okay, this is a... He did all those core exercises. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He stood on one hand and Yoder was on his feet or whatever.

Yeah, he was there for months or weeks or days or whatever people say. Yes. Probably months, it turns out. But there is a moment where it's like, oh shit, he's not ready for this like at all. Have you seen this other guy? He's like seven feet tall. Yeah. Armour plated this guy.

He's throwing. stuff at you. Yeah. He's throwing a lot of stuff out of you actually. You could chop up his arm. Nothing would happen. It wouldn't care.

I mean, to be fair, Luke does land a hit on him. True. So that is something. But yeah, that leads up to the big twist. And this, of course, was kept hidden.

Lucas and Kirchner didn't tell anybody. They didn't even write it down. And they told Mark Hamill just before they filmed it. They didn't tell David Prows. So he delivered the line, Obi-1 killed your father.

And Mark Hamill's reaction is to him thinking about the line he actually will say in post. Because they thought Prowsy was going to betray everyone. Well, David... Landau-Star. Yeah, well, David Prows apparently had been telling people a few years prior about this twist.

Interesting. In the book, How Star Wars Conquered the Universe, the author from that, like, tracked him down and asked him about it. And it's not really clear if he was told that, or it was just something that he made up. Right. You know, Lucas was floating a bunch of ideas, but he was definitively. telling people before. Maybe he was in the Darth Vader suit and he pretended like it was empty

and he just sat in Lucas's office and you could see his eyes going back and forth in the cow and then Kirchner and Lucas are there and I think he should be Luke Skywalkers. Well I also think that. This is how I sound.

I'm Irvin Kirshner. Gidey, George, it's me. Irvy Kirshy. He actually, he's got a bit of a Yoda to a Mervid Kirsto. It's kind of like this. That's not right. But you know, here's a clip.

You'll hear it. James L. Jones, when he recorded the lines, oh, there you go. There's somebody in Star Wars who isn't white, the voice of a white man. Absolutely.

This is perfect. He thought he was lying. He's like, oh, he's messing with him. That's not true. Right. Yeah. And people also debated for the years after this whether or not he was telling the truth.

Yeah. Why didn't they just watch episodes 1 through 3? Then they'd know. That's the easiest way to know, exactly. It's probably in those Han Solo prequel books as well. It's probably a bunch of time dedicated to that.

Grito's just sitting with Han. He's like, did you know that, did you know that Darth Vader's Luke Skywalker's father? Yeah, just something I heard. God, it's great hanging out with you, Han. Anyway, see you next time. Bye. Also, the Empire Strikes Back.

The book came out a week before and sold 3 million copies. So the secret, it was out there, but, you know, there wasn't the internet and then someone didn't post it to Twitter, like immediately or whatever. Yeah. Like when Han Solo was stabbed. Got, but when Luke drops off or whatever, But like that's all incredible.

And Vader, and they changed it in the re-release, but I'd forgotten, in the original, as he's leaving, he just goes, bring my shuttle. I'm not going to, I'm not doing it justice, but put the line in, but they change it to like, tell everybody I'm coming on my shuttle or whatever, but just like, he's so fucking mad. Like, it's so good.

Or they change it to like, tell the Starship I'm coming in or whatever. Yeah. Would you mind? Do you mind terribly? It's a real damn. of an ending too. Disagree.

Depends who side you're on. Well, here's true. And also, I should point out that the ending to this was redone after the movie came out. Huh. Yeah. How they do that, James? And what do you mean?

What do you mean? Because these days, that is an easy fix because a lot of stuff is delivered digitally to movie theaters. And so if they, I don't know, hadn't finished some special effects or whatever, they wanted to change something, or there's a coffee cup or whatever. Or a cat's got a butthole. Cat's got a butthole and you want to add more buttholes or whatever.

They can just digitally, they can send a patch via the internet. How you fix this in real life? What are you talking about? In the 80s? What are you going to fax a new film canister? Pretty much. Huh.

Well, not that specifically, but the book... Yeah, because you can't do that. You can't do that, Mason. J.W. Rinsler wrote a book called The Makes. Rinsler? Rinsler? Yeah, like Tron. Like Tron, yeah.

Called the Making of the Empire Strikes Back. He is named. Rinsler is named after that guy. Oh, because we looked at Tron recently, didn't we? Yeah, that's probably in the video. Remember Tron? Yeah, sort of. Tron, man. So Tom Smith from ILM got a call by Lucas,

and basically the idea was that the 70mm print of the film had opened in 100 theatres. And that had been out for a few weeks. That's a nice little learner. Great. And Lucas was like, we've got an opportunity here, because I feel like watching this with an audience, they don't realize kind of the geography of the Millennium Falcon

being strapped to the bigger frigate and whatever's going on there. Can we add a line where somebody's like, damn, that's on the bigger frigate? We put this on the bigger frigate. And nobody even knows it's a secret. Can we get Harrison Ford to say that? He's refusing?

He's also frozen? Okay, I understand, yeah. So before the 35mm print, they had three weeks to get a new shot, and these were special effects shots. So the ships, like moving away with a Millennium Falcon strapped underneath, George Lucas made them do that.

Okay. And then after he saw it, he said, wait a minute, if you guys did this so fast, why did it take so long to do all the other ones? And you know what blows me away about that scene? Yes. In the original original, there's a window where you can see Princess Leia and Luke and the droids. And they're moving.

And it's a ship, like moving away from camera. And I'm like, how the fuck did they do that? Oh, special effects. It was special effects. They projected it from like inside to tiny little. It's incredible. That blew me away. Well, now they'd just do it with computers.

Yeah, it's computers and who cares. Who cares and whatever. Yeah, exactly. They had to build a little projector. They had to hire a little mouse. Yeah. A little mouse engineer, a little mouse AV guy. And he came and he's like, it's not going to be cheap.

I'm a little mouse. I like big cheese. Cheap, fast, small, pick two, he said. Anyway, great movie. Yeah, I agree. Some say the best Star Wars movie ever Some do say that Some say the best Star Wars anything ever

Some say it's Andor Nobody says it's Obi Wonkaobie Nobody is saying that No I'm just saying to be clear We're not saying it either I don't want to predict the future by saying that though Because we don't know Right yeah I just want to put it down

You know permanently that No one's saying that currently Okay good good Anyways it's time for the trivia section of the show The Empire has trivia Ooh John Ratsenberger plays Rebel Major Brenner

Is he from Cheers? He's from Cheers Mason and he's in Toy Story as well, I think. Yes. He also reprised the role 37 years later in the Lego Star Wars, The Freemaker Adventures. So there you go.

The what? It doesn't matter. There's pictures of it. Moving pictures. That's great. Well, I'm not going to see him. No, you don't need to. Stuart Freeborn, he modelled Yoda after himself

and also Einstein because he added the wrinkles. And if you see Yoda and this guy side by side, yeah, he very clearly did. But it works because he's got this kind of expressive kind of cartoony kind of face. Green? He is green, yeah.

Interesting. Yeah. Mark Hamill was bitten by a snake on the set of DeGaba. He's fun behind the scene footage of that where he's clooned out his ex-wing and a snake bites him. Okay. Yeah. And that's just a set.

So somebody would have had to add that snake. Yeah. Somebody brought in a snake? Absolutely. Would think it was David Prouse? Yes. Okay. That stunk, that whole area.

I bet. Yeah. Because it's just got stagnant water and Mark Hamel's going insane because he's talking to a puppet but he can't hear the puppet. Because it's like, because Frank, Oz is voicing it like under the set and he's got an earpiece to kind of ear. And there's stagnant water pouring into his puppet hole. Yeah, that's right.

And George Lucas is there like, Frank, do the lines before you drown, Frank. Also, this has a really fun blooper that I've never seen anybody pick up on. I'm sure people have though. Where Vader... That stormtrooper bangs his head on the way in. No, Matt Moore talked about that. Oh. Where Luke...

That stormtrooper bangs his head on the way out. Oh, that's probably it. Mm-hmm. Where Luke kicks. He picks Vader off the platform And then Luke jumps off the side This kind of a pause Because he falls for a bit

And then he lands And then you see Mark Hamill just stand up So yeah It's really great I can never not see it Man Yoda should have taught him All the cool force power Well he would have if he had to stay

Big jump Absorbing lightning Super speed that one time You can do it the one time You're allowed to do it Use it to rush the emperor Come in and just fucking come in And behead him

Turns out you can do it more than once You're just not allowed to do it more than all Oh, really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Damn, okay. Yeah. Anyways, the box office for this on a budget of 30.5, it did get a bit out of hand. Oh, yeah.

The return was 401.5 worldwide. Well, that's a bit out of hand, too. Yeah, great. I would have, if I were George Lucas, I would have said, no, thank you. Yeah. That's enough. You think that's enough money? Yeah.

That was the highest grossing movie of the year, and with re-releases, it's made $550 million in total. Not bad. And, of course, TV and DVDs and merch, ridiculous. VHS. Beta Max at the time. Probably beta max at the time. Laser disc. Laser disc's at the time.

Another format? Eight track. Eight track. Probably just get an eight track, put it in your car. UMDs at the time. Absolutely. These are all true. Absolutely.

Yeah. USB stick? Yep. Beautiful. Yeah. Oh my God. Jazz Drive. Jazz Drive.

Put it on a jazz drive, you know? First Jazz Drive mentioned 2026. Thank you very much. You're welcome. I wanted to look in, of course, to Alec Guinness's pay day. Sorry. Sorry. Jizz Drive.

Oh, yeah. In the Star Wars universe, it's called the Jizz Drive. They shouldn't do that. No, I agree. But they're doing it. They did it. We can't stop them. I wanted to figure out

what Alec Giddis got paid for this. Oh yes. Star Wars explained in a video on this. It was a great channel. He should go check him out. He would only be available to work half a day. That's it. In total.

Wow. Not even the full day. That's incredible. That's a power move. Absolutely. Because there's no way. That's also partially why they put Yoda in this because they're like,

well, we need an actor who will do this. There's no way you couldn't set aside one day. No. And it's like... And it's filming in England. Yeah, right? In his house, mostly. that's where the Degabas set was

and that's why it was so stanky. It's a musty English sitting room. He worked from 8.30 a.m., bit of a sleeping, that's nice, to 1pm. And if they didn't get it, that was it. Wow. And as a result of that, he got 0.25 points on the gross revenues for the movie.

So you got those points, didn't he? You got $1.3 million. Nice. Yeah. I mean, that's just initially. So, like, over the years and et cetera. When you include the DVDs and the Super 8s and the Jiz drives.

And the Giz drive and so forth, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The charity Giz drive. Absolutely, yeah, yeah. Anyways, come back next week because we're going to be talking about return or revenge of the Jedi. Oh, working title. But if you do want to say that early, you can actually head over to big sandwich.com where a bunch of stuff happens there, if you do want to sign up, it's like our private Patreon. There's video game let's plays.

We looked at the original Star Wars arcade trilogy, every one of those games. Oh, so good. Vectar graphics. Ooh. Does it look good? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. You can come check it out.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. We also do movie commentaries. We've got one for literally every Star Wars movie. We do comic book clubs. We're actually going to look at the Star Wars, the original Star Wars comic book, which is the original story that they turn into a comics. It's not very good, I think.

But we'll talk about it. All right. And we've got other ones. Yeah. We also have a podcast called The Weekly Planet where we talk movies and comics and TV shows. If you want to check it out, it's on its own YouTube channel, Spotify, Apple. We talk big movie, don't we? We want to talk big movie.

We want to know what big movie is and we do it. For a long time, Star Wars was big movie. That was the only big movie. Now it's TV show. That's no idea. Now it's simply TV show. Yeah. But sometimes that TV show becomes big movie, mandolian.

Big movie. Big movie. We'll see, won't we? We will. Is this the... Is this why we're doing it? No, no. No, we're celebrating the 49th anniversary of Star Wars.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Is this the first, like, the big acid test for Star Wars, if it can pull off big movie? Yeah, potentially. Episode 9 was the last one, right? Bill and a dollar movie, yeah. And that was big movie, but bad movie. movie. Yeah.

So this is, ooh, this is exciting. I'm excited. I'm excited too. I'm not that excited. I'm really excited to see if there's bombs. I'm excited about that.

Yeah. Thank you so much to Ben and Lawrence for the edit. These are incredibly extensive. Thank you, Ben and Lawrence. We really appreciate it. And we'll catch you guys next time. Grab that Jimmy, guys.

We'll see next week. Wait before we. Do we have any thoughts about, I don't know, just Alec Guinness in his... Oh, doing this? I just, yeah. Did you like you phoned it in or like...

No, I just thought, I just think it's interesting. Like, what would they? do if they didn't get it. Well, they didn't get what they needed to do on the day. I mean, he didn't have to do much. I was going to say. Just like, no, no, no it.

Yeah. And like, you know, I think that's, it's just impressive that he pulled that power move when they could have just replaced him with a guy in a brown robe. Pull hood up and get a guy to go, oh. I think also. Oh, Luke. I'm here again. Oh.

And I'm a bit faded because I'm a ghost or whatever. So I could be anyone, really. Apparently also he felt kind of indebted because he did earn like $90 million from Star Wars. So like, yeah, I guess. Oh, from the first one? From the first one in total, he had the time of his death. What about, what about at the time though?

We talked about last week. It was between like seven and nine million, like straight out the gate. That's okay. Because it was two, it was over two percent and it made four hundred million dollars or whatever it was. So, yeah. Well, in that case, greedy. Give him a full day.

I'd give anyone a full day's work. for $9 million. Anybody? What about Adolf Hitler's dog walking service? Yeah. Yeah, I would do that.

Yeah, I would tell you. I mean, the dogs don't know, do they? That's, well... Well, some of them probably do. Some dogs are really smart. Yeah, well, they don't like that. All right, let's go.