68 | March• 2018
7 BEST-KEPT
SECRET IN FILM
Lucaskeptthetwistend-
ing ofThe Empire Strikes
Backso well guarded,
he even wrote fake text
in the script to throw
theactorsoff.During
filming, David Prowse
yelled to Mark Hamill:
“Obi-Wan killed your fa-
ther!” The cast and crew
thought this was the real
line–onlyHamill,who
hadbeentoldthetruth
about Vader moments
before filming the scene,
knew otherwise.
9 R2D2ANDANEWOK
KennyBaker,themandestinedto
live inside R2D2, also played Paploo- the enterprising Ewok who steals an
imperial speeder bike.
May ttheForcebewithyou.
6 YODA WAS ALMOST
A MONKEY IN A MASK
The spiritual centre of the Jedi order
was almost a real-life monkey in a
green mask carrying a cane.
Luckily, a monkey expert on set
threw a banana peel in this plan’s
tracks by pointing out, “Look, the mon-
key’s just going to pull off the mask
over and over again. It’s never going to
work.” The team called on puppeteer
Frank Oz to bring Yoda to life.
10
LOST AN ENDING
The original ending of Return
of the Jedi has Han Solo dying
in a raid on the Death Star.
Harrison Ford probably would
have been fine with this. Ford
was famously snippy about
Lucas’s script (“George, you
can type this ****, but you can’t
say it”) and in a 2010 interview
he waved off his character as
“Ham Yoyo”, stating he was
officially “done with him”.
Time makes fools of us all.8 IT TOOK SEVEN MEN TO
PORTRAY JABBA THE HUTT
“Three puppeteers were inside: one
controlled the right arm and jaw, an-
other handled the left hand and jaw,
tongue and head movements, and
both of them moved the body; a third
person was in the tail. Outside, there
were one or two people on radio con-
trollers for the eyes, someone under
the stage to blow cigar smoke up a
tube and another working bellows for
the lungs,” according to Mental Floss.