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

Trivia: In Cloud City, when Chewy finds C-3PO in pieces in what looks like a droid scrap room, you can see what looks like the upper half of IG-88 leaning up against the wall. It is revealed later in books to be the IG-88 unit that went in search of Han, but was intercepted and destroyed by Bobba Fett.

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.

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

Continuity mistake: In the last part of the lightsaber duel, and in the following scenes, the color and seriousness of the wounds and bruises on Luke's face keep changing: For example, in the iconic segment where Luke reacts in shock and horror at Vader revealing himself to be his father, the injuries look quite nasty, but when he comes to a stop inside the tunnel after falling from the catwalk, they look far less severe. (01:49:30)

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

Continuity mistake: When Luke climbs into his snowspeeder, his hair is shorter than when he said goodbye to Han and Chewbacca while on his way to the speeder. When he takes off his pilot helmet on Dagobah, his hair is back to normal. (00:22:20 - 00:25:40)

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

Continuity mistake: During the duel in Cloud City, Darth Vader cuts three pillars with his light saber, just before cutting Luke's hand. The pillars aren't burning after that yet in the following shot, they are burned. (01:45:55)

Dr Wilson

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

Continuity mistake: Widescreen version: Darth Vader and Admiral Piett are talking on board the Star Destroyer at the end of the movie. In the first shot, a man is standing behind Piett. In the next shot of Vader and Piett, a different man is standing behind Piett. Then, in the third shot of Vader and Piett, the first man is back. The design of the wall and window also differs. (01:57:05)

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

Continuity mistake: When Luke is hanging upside down in the monster's cave he uses the Force to get his lightsaber. In the shot from Luke's POV it's about 3/4 buried in snow, but in the reverse it's only about 1/4 buried.

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

Visible crew/equipment: While in hot-pursuit, Han and Chewie are desperately trying to fix the Millennium Falcon (just after C-3PO informs them of the damaged hyperdrive, making light-speed impossible). In one shot Chewbacca has a bare human thumb, without gloves or makeup, and can be easily spotted in the lower left part of the screen. (00:38:00)

EachKindOnMars

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

Continuity mistake: When Luke crashes on the snow he tries to open the cockpit pushing the canopy. A shot later he is pushing the windshield. This changes back and forth several times.

Sacha

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

Continuity mistake: After Luke's snowspeeder crashes on the snow, right before he exits, there's no damage on the right window. From the outside shot it's broken all over.

Sacha

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

Continuity mistake: When the Falcon is being pursued by the Star Destroyers after escaping Hoth, C-3PO enters the cockpit, attempting to talk with Han, but the ship shakes and he lands on Chewie. After Han says to check the deflector shields, Chewie pushes C-3PO off him, though C-3PO leaves his hand on Chewie's shoulder. In the next shot, C-3PO is suddenly standing at the other end of the cockpit, with his hand nowhere near Chewie. (00:37:10)

Casual Person

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)

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

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Trivia: When Billy Dee Williams (Lando) picked up his daughter from elementary school after the film's release, kids would run up to Williams and say "You betrayed Han Solo!"

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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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