May the 4th be with you! Today is Star Wars Day.... and here's what is important for YOU to know as you celebrate this joyous day of days!
• Originally R2-D2 had dialogue, with actual speaking parts. Many of C-3PO’s reactions correspond to R2’s original lines.
• The 20th Century Fox executives wanted Chewbacca to wear shorts. They sent memos to Lucas, scandalized that there was a naked character.
• George Lucas has said that his Alaskan Malamute, Indiana, was the inspiration for Chewbacca.
• There are an estimated 2,002,795,192 deaths in the original trilogy. The film with the greatest number of deaths is The Force Awakens.
• Han Solo was frozen in carbonite because of Harrison Ford. Although Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher had a contract for a third film, Ford was not sure he would return for the third. The writers and Lucas decided to freeze Han, in case Ford decided (or failed) to return.
• Carrie Fisher’s daughter, Billie Lourd, made her film debut in The Force Awakens.
• Princess Leia was almost played by Laverne & Shirley star Cindy Williams. Decades later the actress praised Carrie Fisher as the only choice for the rebel princess.
• Oscar winner Eddie Redmayne auditioned to play Kylo Ren. According to an interview he gave, his audition was a complete disaster.
• Ello Asty, one of the X-wing pilots in The Force Awakens, takes his name from the Beastie Boys album Hello Nasty.
• Although they appear throughout the whole of Return of the Jedi, the word “Ewok” is never spoken out loud.
• Yoda was almost a monkey. Long before Yoda was created with animatronics and puppetry the plan was to hire a simian actor.
• Carrie Fisher slapped Oscar Isaac a lot. Isaac revealed that the scene in which Leia demotes Poe was a difficult one to get right, leading to the late actress slapping the younger star more than 40 times.
• Because changes to the script came in so late, the sound editor on The Rise of Skywalker had to travel to the home of Adam Driver, who played villain Kylo Ren, to record him delivering a few new and necessary lines in a suit closet.
So... now you know... MAY THE FOURTH BE WITH YOU!
If you'll excuse me, the FORCE is summoning me to the bathroom...