Star Wars Fun Fact Day!

It's approximately 30 years to the day today when Star Wars came out. To commemorate this day, I have gathered the following information:

At one point, George Lucas planned for the characters of Luke Skywalker and his aunt and uncle, to be dwarves.

The opening crawl for this movie was co-written by Brian De Palma.

In Italy, R2-D2 was renamed C1-P8 while Darth Vader became Dart Fener, the reason being that "Vader" in Italian sounds too close to the common noun for the toilet bowl (the "water", clearly from the English "water closet").

Mark Hamill held his breath for so long during the trash compactor scene that he broke a blood vessel in his face. Subsequent shots are from one side only.

The targeting grid used for the Millennium Falcon's canon is based on a paperweight Lucas saw on Arthur C. Clarke's desk.




Peter Cushing found the boots that came with his costume extremely uncomfortable to wear because they were too small for his feet. Thus he only wore them in the few shots in which Tarkin's feet could be seen. In all other shots, Peter Cushing wore a pair of fuzzy slippers.

In early drafts of the script, R2-D2 could speak standard English, and had a rather foul vocabulary.



Lucas acknowledges his debt to Akira Kurosawa's _Kakushi toride no san akunin (1958)_ "Hidden Fortress" in the first conference room scene on the Death Star. Just as an Imperial Officer is saying the line "...the Rebel's hidden fort..." he is telekinetically strangled by Darth Vader, shutting him up before he can say the full title.

All of the dialogue by Shelagh Fraser (Aunt Beru) was dubbed.

Later in his life, Alec Guinness always recalled the experience of making the movie as a bad one and consistently claimed that it was his idea to have his character killed in the first film, so he "wouldn't have to carry on saying these rubbish lines". He also recalled an occasion when he was confronted by a fan who claimed to have watched the film many times. He said that he asked the fan to do something for him, and that when the young man eagerly answered that he would do anything for Obi-Wan Kenobi, he said, "I want you to promise me that you will never watch it
again."