Original subtitles

I'm Luke Skywalker. I'm here to rescue you.

[ Man narrating ] It is the most popular space adventure of all time.

"Exciting" is hardly the word I would choose.

It's one of the most groundbreaking sagas in Hollywood history.

There'll be no one to stop us this time.

It captured imaginations with an irresistible force...

You've taken your first step into a larger world.

And catapulted three young performers to superstardom.

- I got him! - Great, kid! Don't get cocky.

[ Man ] My whole life was changed by the opportunities that came to me...

- Through the success of Star Wars. - Yahoo!

It really is a wonderful morality tale.

I'll never turn to the dark side.

It's George’s vision, and he truly is...

A visual man in a profound way.

[ Narrator ] But the Star Wars trilogy...

Didn't just change the way we look at movies.

It changed the way that movies are made.

You must unlearn what you have learned.

There are so many accomplishments that George has done...

That really has changed the business as we know it.

We did it!

[ Narrator ] What began as a galactic fairy tale...

Became a success story beyond one man's wildest dreams.

The force will be with you always.

I expected not to ever make a hit movie. That wasn't my agenda.

I certainly didn't expect Star Wars to be this giant hit.

[ Crowd cheering ]

But it became such a phenomenon.

[ Narrator ] It's hard to remember a time before Star Wars.

The world was different then.

There were no cell phones or personal computers.

The internet was years away.

Even home video had yet to catch on.

The space race was over. That's one small step for man.

Americans felt deeply mired in the present.

It was a time of economic inflation...

And rising oil prices,

and the nation had grown cynical about its heroes and its leaders.

Well, I'm not a crook.

[ Man ] In our country, Watergate tore us apart.

And then we had the Vietnam war on top of that,

which was dividing the nation like nothing else had.

It was a terrible decade of great storm and violence in our history.

[ Narrator ] On the big screen, Hollywood’s view was equally grim.

The films of the early 1970s were gritty and often downbeat,

a reflection of America’s social and political upheaval.

Instead of old-fashioned heroes,

the screen was dominated by hard-nosed antiheroes who broke all the rules.

[ Lucas ] In the late '60s, the Warners, the Zanucks,

all the people that started the studios in the first place,

were retiring, and they were selling the studios to corporations.

They were beverage companies and all kinds of other-- they were in other businesses.

They didn't know at all, uh, how to run a movie studio.

All they know is if the marketing department said people want this, then you make that.

They started marketing pictures and studying demographics and all these kinds of things.

And they realized that there was a market for films made by young people for young people,

'cause the young person was becoming a bigger part of their market.

[ Narrator ] The studio system that lasted for decades...

Had now collapsed.

And Hollywood executives, desperate to connect with younger audiences,

turned to film schools to find the next generation of moviemakers.

- [ Man ] Action. - It was in this atmosphere of change...

That gifted young directors like Francis Ford Coppola,

Brian de Palma, Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg...

Brought a more personal sensibility to the screen.

It was a state of confusion, and a lot of filmmakers...

Got to make projects that they ordinarily wouldn't have gotten to make.

And I got caught right in the middle of it.

George was the kind of maverick from Northern California, an independent filmmaker,

who was always extremely, uh,

proud that he had very few attachments to Hollywood.

[ Narrator ] Born in Modesto, California,

George Lucas grew up reading adventure stories...

And watching movie serials on television.

[ Screams ]

But it wasn't until college that his own dreams of filmmaking began to surface.

In 1963, he left Modesto to attend film classes...

At the University of Southern California.

[ Man ] I was teaching at USC, and George was in one of the seminars.

We talked about some of his early attempts at filmmaking.

And I'll tell you, right from the beginning,

George had a unique vision.

George was a guy that thought out of the box,

as you can certainly see by his student film THX-1138.

THX-1138 4EB. THX-1138 4EB.

This is authority. You will stop where you are.

[ Kazanjian ] He shot a film that was 20 minutes long. It was supposed to be five.

[ Man's voice ] You're going for the emergency switch.

But he got a great deal of recognition...

And opened the eyes of the professors that kids could do something out of the box,

beyond what the restrictions were.

[ Narrator ] Lucas won acclaim for his technical skills...

And imagination as a storyteller.

His interest in mythology and philosophy gave his work an added dimension.

[ Kershner ] George's style was fantastic.

Incredible.

I don't care what he was doing,

it just looked more personal than some of the other work.

[ Narrator ] After graduating from USC,

Lucas joined his friend, Francis ford Coppola, in San Francisco,

where in 1969 Coppola founded American Zoetrope,

an independent film company.

[ Lucas ] I came up with no intention of actually becoming successful.

But I did have a very strong feeling about being able to be in control of my work...

And not having people tamper with it.

[ Narrator ] In 1971, Lucas directed THX-1138,

a theatrical feature based on his student film.

But when Warner brothers executives saw the finished product,

they demanded Coppola return the $300,000...

The studio had advanced to develop THX and other projects.

The fledgling company imploded, and Lucas had to find work elsewhere.

He decided to take matters into his own hands...

And start his own company, Lucasfilm limited.

[ Tires squealing ]

For his first project under this new banner, Lucas chose American Graffiti,

an affectionate look at teenage cruising in the early 1960s.

- I'm a ready teddy. - Well, get bent, turkey.

[ Whooping ]

Produced by Universal Studios,

it was loosely based on his own experiences...

As a car enthusiast growing up in Modesto.

[ Lucas ] I had gone from being extremely experimental and hard-edged...

And then really taking up a challenge that Francis gave me--

"I bet you can't do just a silly comedy,

you know, kind of warm and fuzzy comedy."

I said, "well, okay, I'll try that."

[ Narrator ] The film was shot in just 28 days for under a million dollars.

Coproducing was another USC alumnus, Gary Kurtz.

Toward the end of the postproduction on American Graffiti,

we organized a screening at the Northpoint cinema in San Francisco.

And we felt the reaction to the film was quite positive.

But Ned Tanen from universal was very upset.

He said, "you shouldn't be showing it to an audience at this stage."

And we were totally flabbergasted.

[ Lucas ] My first film they didn't understand,

and they meddled with it after it was all finished.

Same thing with my second film, the corporate entity came in...

And jerry-rigged with it, cut five minutes out.

[ Narrator ] But even before the release of American Graffiti,

George Lucas's imagination was pointed at the stars.

[ Kurtz ] All during this time, he was talking about the fact...

That he would like to do a Flash Gordon kind of 1930s space opera.

And he started working on that in earnest.

[ Lucas ] And people said, "of all things to pick, why in the world would you do that?"

I said, "well, you know, it's fun to make films for young people.

"It's a chance to sort of make an impression on them.

- I wanna do this." - [ Narrator ] With his galactic fairy tale,

Lucas hoped to reinvent a classic genre.

Among his influences were the writings of scholar and educator Joseph Campbell,

in which he explored the origins of myth and world religions.

[ Man ] When Lucas was writing the script of Star Wars,

he was heavily interested in Joseph Campbell.

What Joseph Campbell was interested in was to see the connections...

Between myths-- the myths of different cultures--

to try to find out what were the threads...

That tied all these very disparate cultures together.

[ Lucas ] I did research to try to distill everything to motifs that would be universal.

I attribute most of the success to the psychological underpinnings,

which had been around for thousands of years,

and the people still react the same way to the stories as they always have.

[ Man ] George is nothing if not a good reporter.

And when he sets out to do his work,

he starts reporting from the best sources he can gather.

He brought Campbell into the process...

Of looking at his work on Star Wars...

And saying, "is this right? Am I getting it down?

Is this the right emphasis? Is this the right character?"

Joseph Campbell said to me, the best student he ever had was George Lucas.

[ Narrator ] Like such epics as The Odyssey,

Beowulf and the legend of King Arthur,

Star Wars drew from a shared pool of mythic archetypes.

[ Woman ] You have the youth who's on the adventure...

That you can identify with.

You have the swashbuckler.

And you have the damsel.

She may not sort of have the reactions that are conventional,

however she is in distress.

And you have the wise old man, who you go and you find him.

And you have the funnier characters.

I mean, it really adheres strictly to that form.

[ Lucas ] It's the traditional, ritualistic coming-of-age story.

And when I went into the mythological side of what I wanted to do,

that's a key factor, uh, with heroes.

[ Narrator ] By the summer of 1973,

George Lucas had created a treatment that he felt was ready to shop around.

Whether anyone would be interested, that was another story.

The most successful science fiction film up to that point was 2001.

And successful then was that it made about $24 million or something like that.

Most hit science fiction films would make about $16 million,

which was the Planet of the Apes films and that sort of thing.

But most science fiction films would make under $10 million.

I mean, there's no reason to think that it would do any different.

[ Narrator ] Star Wars was more space fantasy than science fiction,

but its galactic setting made it a tough sell in 1973.

[ Lucas ] When I was pitching the film, all I had was a 14-page story treatment.

It was very vague. Said it was kind of a 1930s,

action adventure, Saturday afternoon serial,

based on the kind of Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers kind of comic book future.

And that's about all they knew about it.

[ Kurtz ] In the '70s, science fiction seemed to be...

All about apocalyptic societies and death and destruction.

Not very inspiring. We were fighting an uphill battle with a science fiction project.

[ Narrator ] George Lucas brought Star Wars to universal and united artists.

Both studios passed on the project.

But the ambitious young filmmaker was secretly relieved.

The last thing he wanted was to hand his dream project to the wrong people.

He didn't care for the studio system.

He used it because there was no other way of doing what he needed to do.

[ Narrator ] Undaunted, Lucas presented Star Wars to Alan Ladd, Jr.,

the new head of creative affairs at 20th Century Fox.

Ladd, a former producer, was able to recognize potential in the filmmaker,

if not necessarily the film.

[ Man ] We had a meeting, and George said,

"well, I've been thinking about this thing called Star Wars."

And he told me about it.

And I said, "that sounds terrific."

I mean, the technology part of the whole thing was completely over my head.

But I just believed in him and his genius.

I sort of recognized off of American Graffiti...

That he really was a genius, so I just flew with it.

He understood what talent was, he respected talent and he was able to say,

"I think this guy's talented. I think we're gonna invest in him."

So, Alan Ladd, Jr. invested in me.

He did not invest in the movie. And it paid off.

[ Narrator ] In 1973, Ladd's investment in George Lucas proved justified.

American Graffiti was finally released to rave reviews...

And became the third-highest grossing picture of the year.

It went on to earn more than $100 million worldwide.

American Graffiti showed a very human center and a huge heart...

That George has always had, by the way.

And I think that surprised a lot of people.

[ Narrator ] With a preliminary deal for Star Wars in place,

Lucas began writing his screenplay in 1974.

It proved more ambitious than he had first imagined.

The filmmaker was able to distill his idea down to its essence--

an epic battle between a heroic rebel alliance...

And an evil galactic empire.

The chief villain, Darth Vader, was there practically from the start.

But it took time to come up with Star Wars's three main heroes--

a plucky young princess named Leia Organa,

the fearless Corellian smuggler known as Han Solo...

And most important, an idealistic farm boy,

whose original name was Luke Starkiller.

Over the course of his adventure,

Luke trains to become a Jedi knight,

deriving his power from a mystical energy known as "the force."

But along the way, the script went through radical changes.

At one point, Luke was a 60-year-old general...

And Han Solo had green skin and gills.

Even the concept of the force had yet to be fully realized.

Instead, there was the Kaiburr crystal,

a sort of galactic holy grail.

[ Kurtz ] The concept of the force was an important one in this story.

And the difficulty is...

Trying to create a religious-spiritual concept...

That works in a very simple way without heavy exposition...

Or without it seeming to pull down the story.

[ Lucas ] It got to be a very fat script, about 200 pages.

And the story had gotten away from me.

So, the only way I could cope with it was to say,

"I'll take the first third-- the first act-- I'll make that into a movie."

But I'd written all this other stuff. I'd spent a year writing this story.

And I said, "well, I'm not gonna just throw away two thirds of my year...

"And say, 'this is all I can afford at this point.

This is the only amount of money I'm gonna get is to do this one movie.'"

so, I put it on the shelf. I said, "by hook or by\ crook, I will finish this movie."

[ Narrator ] But Star Wars wouldn't be cheap.

To get the Fox board of directors to approve the necessary budget,

Lucas needed something dramatic.

He hired Ralph McQuarrie, a conceptual design artist who had worked for Boeing.

[ Lucas ] I'd seen some of his paintings. I thought he was brilliant.

I said, "look. I want you to do some paintings of these scenes that I've done...

So that the studio can get a picture of what it is I'm talking about."

When I turned in the script, I had about five or six drawings that I turned in also.

To say, "this is what it's gonna look like."

He had a concept for a big spectacular visual,

and it didn't come across in the script.

So I tried to give it scale,

juxtaposing the tiny little figures...

With the great spectacular backgrounds.

George would say, "don't worry about how we're going to do it.

"We just want to see an impression...

Of what the scenes would look like on the screen."

[ Narrator ] McQuarrie's artwork won over the fox board of directors,

who soon approved a budget of just over $8 million.

With only the first part of his Star Wars saga being made,

Lucas also needed to think about the future.

But his prior dealings with major studios had taught him to be cautious.

When I made the deal for Star Wars,

originally I made the deal before American Graffiti had even come out.

'Cause Alan Ladd had seen the film, American Graffiti, he said, "I'll make a deal."

But he made a very, you know-- "you're gonna make

'x' number of dollars" and this kind of thing.

And it was a very, like, one-page memo.

When it came up to doing the contract for the film, which is about a year later,

I knew that what I really had to do was to protect...

The unwritten part, the other two parts of the script.

[ Ladd ] All of a sudden, Graffiti comes out,

and it's a big huge, smash success.

So his agent came back and said, "hey, look.

"This guy has made this huge successful movie now.

"Don't you think we should get more than a couple hundred thousand dollars...

For writing, directing and producing a movie?"

I said, "yeah. I think he should get more."

I was very careful to say, "I don't want more money. I don't want more points.

I don't want anything financial. But I do want the right to make these sequels."

I was working on the assumption, as every filmmaker works on,

which is the film will be a disaster...

And that it won't be promoted and it'll just die a horrible death.

And it'll be very hard to get these next two movies made.

George said, "I'd like a big slice of the merchandising."

Up until that time, merchandising had been relatively unknown.

[ Lucas ] When I took over the licensing, I simply said,

"I'm gonna be able to make shirts, I'm gonna be able to make posters...

And I'm gonna be able to sell this movie, even though the studio won't."

So, I managed to get control of pretty much everything that was left over...

That the studio didn't really care about.

George was enormously farsighted, and the studio wasn't,

because they didn't know that the world was changing.

George did know the world was changing. I mean, he changed it.

[ Narrator ] With his Star Wars contract completed,

George Lucas now needed a rebel force...

Up to the challenge of production.

In the summer of 1975,

he founded the visual effects company Industrial Light & Magic.

[ Lucas ] There was no special effects companies in those days.

And the studios' special effects department had been disbanded.

Part of that was because of the expense,

and part of it was that the American taste,

the culture had gone toward very realistic-looking films.

[ Kurtz ] We approached the visual effects as a grand experiment, saying,

"can we do this with a lot of people who work on architectural models...

And in commercials and have never made feature films before?"

[ Man ] We were kind of like a weird kind of fraternity...

Of robotic photography nuts or something like that.

I mean, this was a big movie for Fox. We were doing commercials.

We all dreamed about doing a feature,

and this was like the dream come true.

So, Star Wars came along at just the perfect time for us.

[ Man ] We moved into a big empty warehouse in Van Nuys,

right near the Van Nuys airport and basically started from scratch.

I mean, it was empty. In the early days, you used to park your car inside.

There was no camera equipment, no rooms to speak of.

[ Narrator ] Supervising at I.L.M. Was John Dykstra,

an effects cameraman who had worked under Douglas Trumbull...

On films like Silent Running.

[ Man ] I was essentially to be responsible for doing the visual effects for the film.

We took the concept of motion control, which is essentially an old concept...

Of being able to duplicate camera motion through more than one pass...

So that you can generate multiple elements of film...

And we made it production-savvy by tying it into a computer,

which was, at that point, custom-built microprocessors.

There were no P.C.s. You didn't go down and buy a P.C. We built them from scratch.

[ Narrator ] At the same time the camera system was being built,

another team began constructing model spaceships.

[ Man ] I was one of the early hires. They had a small art department.

And there were some concept models made out of cardboard...

And, uh, model kit pieces.

There were some storyboards and some concept illustrations...

That Joe Johnston had done.

There were some paintings that Ralph McQuarrie had done.

[ Man ] Everything came either from my sketches...

Or Ralph’s paintings and drawings.

And any input that George might have, you know.

There wasn't a lot of outside influences on Star Wars.

[ Man ] George wanted it to look like you could actually see the rivets,

so you could see the logic of how it was made.

I was originally hired to work on the death star,

the 40 foot by-- oh, what was it?

40-by-80 feet or 40-by-60 feet or something like that.

Nobody wanted to do the job, 'cause you had to spend a lot of time on your knees.

[ Man ] Everybody sort of could cross-train and work in different techniques.

That was different than the Hollywood system...

That had very strict sort of union rules.

But there was no way that this work could be done that way,

or no way that the Hollywood unions could understand what we were doing.

[ Narrator ] With preproduction gaining momentum,

Lucas next began the process of casting his galactic opus.

He shared the audition stage with his friend, Brian de Palma,

who was seeking actors for the Stephen King shocker Carrie.

[ Lucas ] We were both making these movies and casting at the same time,

so we decided to combine our efforts.

I've made movies with very young people that have no track record,

so I have to kind of go through and discover them.

Pick them and then test them and go through them and have readings.

So it takes a long time. I spent probably six or seven months casting Star Wars.

And that's a long process to sit in a little room and interview people.

And I interviewed thousands of people.

[ Narrator ] In casting the male leads, Luke Starkiller and Han Solo,

Lucas looked for individual screen presence...

As well as chemistry between performers.

[ Man ] Okay, action.

Oh, it checks out again. There's no mistake.

You can't find Organa Major? I found it.

It's just not there.

Oh, I found it. It's just not there.

What's left of it is contaminated.

That's it there. Look at those radiation readouts.

It's impossible. I've never seen anything like it.

The Empire must have gotten here first.

The planet has been completely blown away.

[ Narrator ] For the pivotal role of Luke,

Lucas needed an actor who could project both intelligence and integrity.

She's part of the royal family. They won't get anything out of her.

She knows the power of mind control.

She's part of the royal family. They won't get any information from her.

She knows the art of mind control.

[ Narrator ] Twenty-four-year-old Mark Hamill...

Was a familiar face on television.

A newcomer to films, his wholesome, easygoing manner fit the part perfectly.

[ Hamill ] I can remember a line from the screen test,

which I don't think ever will leave me.

And Luke says, "but we can't turn back. Fear is their greatest defense.

"I doubt if the actual security there is any greater than it was on Aquilae or Sullust,

and what there is is most likely directed towards a large-scale assault."

Fear is their greatest defense.

I doubt if the actual security there...

Is much greater than on Aquilae or Sullust,

and what there is is most likely directed towards a large-scale assault.

I read that line and I thought, "who talks like this?"

So I just did it sincerely.

How many more systems have to get blown away...

Before you have no place to hide and are forced to fight?

Don't you realize what's going on?

[ Ford ] Kid, you take the glory and the good intentions.

I'll take the reward.

[ Narrator ] The role of Han Solo needed someone older...

With a more cynical edge.

What's that little droid carrying that's so blasted important?

What's the little droid carrying that's so important?

[ Narrator ] Harrison Ford had worked with Lucas on American Graffiti.

But because the director initially only wanted new faces,

he was not allowed to audition.

Wait. Do I have to sit up to get in on the right?

Instead, he was brought in to feed lines to the other actors.

[ Ford ] I was given sides and asked if I would help read the other actors.

It became my task to explain to the other actors who were coming along...

Just what it was that these sides, uh,

uh, were meant to be about.

They're gonna follow us. They'll destroy your hidden bases.

They'll destroy the whole system.

Right, and they'll bring the Death Star too.

[ Narrator ] Lucas may have been reluctant to use Ford at first,

but the actor won him over by giving Han a mix of mercenary swagger...

And world-weariness.

Well, what was so clear was what the idea was of the character relationships.

Mark was the callow youth, I was the smart-ass,

and we each had a clear section of turf to explore.

The planet's totally blown away.

It would've taken a thousand ships with more firepower than I've ever seen to do that.

If the empire had a new weapon that could do this, I'd know about it.

I'd have heard something.

Well, you know about it now.

The enemy's on the move. We haven't much time. Wha--

I brought you here. Now what? We've got to find the rebels.

What we're carrying belongs to them.

Their bases are very well hidden, son.

Do you-- all the power of the empire can't find 'em.

Do you know where they are?

No. not anymore.

Well, I'm not gonna take you on an impossible chase across the galaxy!

[ Narrator ] Virtually every young actress in Hollywood...

Tried out for the part of Princess Leia.

Although the character was the same age as Luke,

as a leader of the rebellion Leia needed to project a confidence beyond her years.

The plans and specifications to a battle station...

With enough firepower to destroy an entire system.

Our only hope in destroying it is to find its weakness,

which we will determine from the data I stored in R2.

Now, our only hope in destroying it...

Is to find its weakness,

which we'll do from the data I stored in R2.

Okay? Now, we've captured the plans in a raid on the imperial shipyards.

But we fell under attack before I could get the data to safety,

so I hid it in R2 and sent him off.

When R2 has been safely delivered to my forces, you get your reward.

[ Ford ] Wha-- you have my guarantee.

What's the little droid carrying that's so blasted important?

The plans and specifications...

To a battle station with enough firepower...

To destroy an entire system.

[ Narrator ] One actress in particular...

Seemed tailor-made to play a princess.

As the daughter of actress Debbie Reynolds and singer Eddie Fisher,

Carrie fisher was the product of Hollywood royalty.

She had no trouble conveying the self-assurance needed for Leia Organa.

[ Fisher ] I met with Brian de Palma and George,

and Brian did all the talking,

because George didn't talk then.

There were incredible actresses that were my age...

That were being considered for this role,

so I didn't think I would get it.

But our only hope is to destroy it before it destroys us.

[ Scoffs ]

Hiding is useless now.

With the Death Star, they'll continue to go on destroying systems...

Until they've found us.

We have no alternative but to process the information...

And use it while there's still time.

[ Fisher ] I got it with the proviso that I went to a fat farm...

And that I lose 10 pounds.

I think they were hoping it was gonna come out five here and five here.

My character was someone...

Who was feisty and all of that,

but I felt myself to be a bit of that too,

so it would have been unlikely that I would be cast as a shrinking violet.

He cast us to type, in a way.

[ Narrator ] Lucas's decision to hire unknowns...

Went against the advice of his friend Francis Ford Coppola,

who had cast The Godfather with stage and screen stars.

20th Century Fox was also concerned...

About Lucas's choice of actors.

He came and said, "these are the three unknown people I want to go with."

I figured we've gone down this far in the road, he knows what he's doing.

I'd be lying if I said, "oh, my God. Harrison's perfect,

Carrie is perfect and Mark is fantastic."

No, I was very nervous about the cast.

[ Narrator ] For the important role of aged Jedi master Obi-Wan Kenobi,

Lucas recognized that he needed an established star.

Sir Alec Guinness was a veteran of over 40 films...

And had won an Oscar in 1958...

For his performance in The Bridge on the River Kwai.

The knighted actor had the pedigree and the persona.

The Alec Guinness role...

Required a certain stability and gravitas as a character,

which meant we needed a very strong character actor to play that part.

[ Narrator ] Signing Guinness was a major coup.

But more casting would be done in London,

where Star Wars would be principally produced.

Unlike Lucas's home base of northern California,

London provided access to the kind of massive soundstages...

Needed for Star Wars's ambitious sets.

The location also gave Lucas access to Britain’s top production talents.

The character of Darth Vader demanded someone of commanding physical stature.

To fill Vader’s boots,

Lucas cast champion bodybuilder David Prowse,

whose résumé included roles like Frankenstein's creature...

In Hammer's popular horror movies.

As Vader’s evil accomplice Governor Tarkin,

another Hammer alumnus was cast--

63-year-old Peter Cushing.

Best known as the methodical professor Van Helsing in Dracula,

Cushing was the perfect choice to portray the Death Star's icy chief administrator.

For the part of Chewbacca, Han Solo's towering Wookiee copilot,

Lucas and Kurtz had to look outside normal casting channels.

But at seven feet, three inches tall,

it was no stretch for Peter Mayhew,

who had been working as an orderly at a Yorkshire hospital.

I sat down on one of the sofas...

Waiting for George.

Door opened,

and George walked in with Gary behind him.

So naturally, what did I do?

I'm raised in England.

Soon as someone comes in through the door, I stand up.

George goes, "hmm."

Virtually turned to Gary and said,

"I think we've found him."

[ Narrator ] Finding the right performers to portray robots...

Was even more of a challenge.

Production designers had constructed an assortment of robots and androids...

- To populate the Star Wars universe. - [ Beeps ]

But it would take living, breathing actors to give personality...

To the two main droids, C-3PO and R2-D2.

To operate R2,

Lucas needed a performer small in stature,

but with a big imagination.

Enter 3-foot-5-inch stage comedian Kenny Baker.

[ Baker ] They couldn't find anyone that would fit inside this robot...

To make it move,

and they couldn't use kids 'cause it was quite a heavy machine, you know.

It weighed about 80 pounds.

I'd had a lot of experience inside costumes...

And inside cats and dogs and goodness knows what else.

So when I got into the robot, he said, "look happy."

So I'd go--

inside. Nobody could see my expressions, obviously.

But it just-- you have to do something to get the feel of the thing.

[ Narrator ] Actor Anthony Daniels...

Not only had the slender build needed for C-3PO,

but training as a mime artist.

[ Daniels ] He'd been seeing people every five minutes.

I was there for a while and thinking, "well, nearly time to go, I guess."

And then, kind of over George’s shoulder, I saw a painting,

and the most extraordinary thing happened.

It just struck me, because I kind of looked at this face,

and the face looked back at me, and we had this extraordinary eye contact.

He's looking right out of the picture, and he seemed to be saying,

"come. Come. Be with me."

And the vulnerability in his face...

Made me want to help him.

Isn't that weird? He just looks utterly vulnerable.

That painting completely changed my attitude to the whole project.

Years later I was able to go to Ralph McQuarrie and say,

"you realize this is all your fault." [ Laughs ]

[ Narrator ] In March 1976, with casting completed,

George Lucas and company arrived in north Africa.

It was a strange caravan of British and American filmmakers...

Working in a French-speaking nation on a script few people believed in.

[ Man ] The overriding thing for me, really, at that stage was...

The amount of work that we had to do,

the amount of stuff there was to achieve,

and we had grave doubts about getting it done in time.

[ Narrator ] But the trial by fire had yet to begin.

It was now up to Lucas to make his movie.

Just one day into filming,

the Sahara was pelted with its first major rainfall in 50 years.

[ Man ] We were going out there to shoot on the salt flat.

I came out in the morning and the rain was going horizontally down the street. This way.

I thought, "my God--"

I just called a rest day on the crew, told them all to go back to bed,

because there was no way we were gonna shoot on that.

[ Lucas ] The first two weeks of shooting we'd run into a lot of weather problems.

The sets had blown down, I didn't get everything shot.

It was a disaster.

At that point I was pretty depressed, saying,

"boy, I've gotten myself in way over my head. I don't know what I'm gonna do."

You must do what you feel is right, of course.

[ Narrator ] With temperatures topping 100 degrees by midmorning,

Tunisia was anything but fun in the sun.

[ Woman ] Luke! Luke!

Baking for hours in heavy costume,

even the film's stunt coordinator, Peter Diamond,

found the conditions physically exhausting.

[ Diamond ] I was the only stuntperson on the picture in Tunisia.

I became a Tusken raider, or a sandperson.

I'm not a sun merchant. I don't like the sun. I just burn.

So I just died with the heat of it.

I couldn't stand it anymore, it was so hot.

There were so many problems. It just was not a good location.

We seem to be made to suffer.

It's our lot in life.

C-3PO was finally...

Put together for the very first time...

The day before we started shooting.

R2-D2 didn't really function that well.

He could run along in the three-legged position,

but he couldn't turn his head at the same time.

[ Baker ] There were wires everywhere.

The head was on a track of ball bearings.

I used to grab whatever I could grab ahold of and turn it that way and that way.

Not very far.

Because if I went too far the wires would go around my neck.

Then they'd say, "cut! All right, break for lunch."

And everybody'd just walk away and leave me.

Then they'd remember me eventually.

That happened many times.

[ Daniels ] It was bad enough putting on the costume for the first time,

and within two paces the left leg had shattered down...

Onto the plastic of the left foot...

And was gently, but forcibly and persistently,

knifing it into the-- [ Laughing ]

The soft part of my foot.

So we took it off and I limped to the set with one foot.

It was then I began to panic about the days to come.

[ Narrator ] As the actors and crew began to grumble about the adverse conditions,

it was sir Alec Guinness who served as a role model of professionalism.

[ Ford ] It was, for me, fascinating to watch Alec Guinness.

He was always prepared, always professional,

always very kind to the other actors.

He had a very clear head about how to serve the story.

[ Hamill ] He was the person who sort of brought it some legitimacy.

I asked him why he wanted to do it.

He loved the idea of playing a mentor or a wizard...

In a morality play...

Where good and evil are so clearly defined.

[ Man ] Action!

- How long have you had these droids? - Three or four seasons.

They're up for sale if you want them.

Let me see your identification.

You don't need to see his identification.

I don't need to see your identification.

These aren't the droids you're looking for.

These aren't the droids we're looking for.

He can go about his business.

You can go about your business.

Move along.

[ Narrator ] Lucas, meanwhile,

was up to his neck in malfunctioning props, electronic breakdowns...

And other production woes.

Star Wars was already struggling to stay on schedule.

The only silver lining was that after Tunisia...

The production would be moving to a more controlled environment--

Elstree Studios outside London.

The stages at Elstree were among the largest in the world,

and the sets, now finished after months of construction, were just as impressive.

For the first time, the entire Star Wars cast was together.

[ Hamill ] That was almost like a whole separate movie.

It was like getting a whole, fresh start.

It was all new, really.

[ Fisher ] We were all very different ages.

I was 19, Harrison was 33.

He was sort of the big man on campus.

Meeting him, you sort of felt, "well, he'll be a movie star."

[ Narrator ] Costumes, makeup, robots and aliens...

Were all ready to go.

[ Mayhew ] I put that mask on...

And Chewie transformed me.

I transformed. The attitude was different.

The walk was different. Chewie turned on.

Do the scenes, come back, take the mask off,

Peter was back.

[ Man ] Action.

That old man's mad.

You said it, Chewie. Boy, where did you dig up that old fossil?

Ben is a great man. Yeah, great at getting us into trouble.

I didn't hear you give any ideas.

[ Man ] Okay, cut.

[ Narrator ] But working at Elstree Studios...

Didn't mean the production was free from problems...

Or strict British union regulations.

[ Lucas ] At 5:30 we had to stop,

unless we were in the middle of a shot.

Uh, I could ask the crew for an extra 15 minutes,

but they always voted me down.

I'm not putting down the British crew, but there was an attitude like "what is this?"

[ Narrator ] It didn't help that most of the crew thought Star Wars...

Was just a children's film.

At times even the actors were hard-pressed to take the work seriously.

[ Baker ] Didn't think it was gonna be any good. At least I didn't.

I thought, "this is a bit strange."

I can remember this lighting man--

he said, "what is all this about? It's a load of rubbish."

And we all thought the same at the time-- "yeah, it's a bit strange."

[ Man ] Action!

[ Ford ] It was a princess with her hair in weird buns on the side...

And a giant in a monkey suit or something.

I mean, it was weird. It was very, very weird.

No more adventures! I'm not getting involved!

Don't you call me a mindless philosopher,

you overweight glob of grease!

[ Man shouts ] Bang!

I'm going to regret this.

[ Fisher ] It was tough dialogue to say.

So I got, "governor Tarkin, I thought I recognized your foul stench."

Which, I don't know about you, but I'm always talking like that.

Governor Tarkin.

I should have expected

to find you holding Vader’s leash.

I recognized your foul stench

when I was brought on board.

Charming to the last.

We used to say, "you can type this stuff, but you can't say it."

[ Kurtz ] George didn't really like being in London,

I suppose, is the best way to say it.

He doesn't like being away from home.

He's not the most gregarious person in the world.

He had some clashes with the cameraman.

Gil Taylor was a very old-school cameraman-- very crotchety.

George, coming out of low-budget filmmaking...

Was used to, um, doing a lot of things himself.

So George would say things like, "well, put a light here."

And Gil took offense at that kind of thing.

He says, "that's not your job, son." [ Laughs ]

"You tell me what you want to see, and I'll do it...

The way I think is best to create what you want to see."

It was a clash of style of working.

Slate 327, take four.

We're coming up on Alderaan.

You know, I did feel something.

I could almost see the remote.

That's good.

You've taken your first step

into a larger world.

[ Narrator ] Lucas also became frustrated...

That the costumes, sets and other production elements...

Weren't living up to his vision for Star Wars.

The compromises required due to the film's budget...

Plagued him on an almost daily basis.

What was disappointing would be the cantina sequence.

It was really imaginatively described,

and then you go in there...

And it looks like the nutcracker suite.

You know, there's a frog guy and a mouse girl...

And a giant cricket at the bar.

It was just-- it was really disappointing.

But George says, "don't worry, don't worry. We're gonna fix all of this."

We didn't see anything of what ended up on the screen.

So when they blew my planet up,

I was looking at a guy going like this against a board with a circle on it.

I mean, it was funny.

Proceed with the operation. You may fire when ready.

What?

Dantooine is too remote

to make an effective demonstration.

We will deal with your rebel friends soon enough.

No!

[ Man ] Bang!

[ Leia ] And you call yourselves humans.

[ Fisher ] George never talked.

We felt he wanted us to hit our marks...

And magically accommodate our dialogue.

He lost his voice at one point. We didn't know that for days.

And we wanted to get him a little board that said, "faster and more intense."

That was his main direction.

He just wanted us to speed through it.

[ Daniels ] George is notorious for saying, after a take,

"do it again. Faster, more intensity."

He certainly said to me, "terrific, Tony. Can you do it again, faster?"

But I didn't get "more intensity."

I didn't think 3PO with more intensity would be bearable. Do you? Hmm.

I said all systems have been alerted to your presence, sir.

The main entrance seems to be the only way in or out.

We all had to fill in a lot of the blanks.

It was more a matter of, if we did something he didn't like he'd tell us,

rather than telling us what to do.

I think George likes people.

I think George is a warmhearted person.

But he-- yeah, he's a little impatient with the process of acting,

of finding something, you know.

He thinks it's there.

"It's right there. I wrote it down." You know?

"Do that." You know? And sometimes you can't just "do that" and make it work.

[ Hamill ] He's really focused on what he's trying to do and get everything right.

Is the smoke right? Did the squibs go off right?

And we were just taunting him mercilessly.

[ Mayhew ] Carrie and mark have wicked sense of humors.

Carrie was very young,

and Mark was very young,

so they were the junior division,

and they were always lurking about on set.

So it kept us in stitches.

[ Fisher ] I got one outfit for the first movie,

and as George taught me,

there is no underwear in space.

Instead of that, there is, um, gaffer tape.

So I was taped down.

And I used to say, we should just make up a contest on the call sheet...

As to who's gonna rip it off.

But we didn't do that.

[ Hamill ] We were all goofing around and trying to make George crack,

'cause he really looked like he was ready to burst into tears...

And you'd try and cheer him up.

[ Man ] Go.

[ Lucas ] Okay, cut. Cut it.

[ Ford ] And? And? And? [ Hamill ] And? And?

[ Man ] Carrie and Mark bumped in to, uh--

ohh! Ohh!

[ Crew laughing ] [ Man ] uh, the mike was in frame.

The mike was in picture.

The mike was in picture! Ohh!

The mike was in picture!

[ Man ] Back to first positions. [ Fisher ] Whoo!

The sound department has to pay up.

[ Hamill ] That, to him, was really inappropriate humor at the time,

because I'm sure he's in the zone and seeing what he wants to do...

And we're just actors trying to stave off boredom...

Because we've been in the trash compactor all morning.

[ Man ] Ready? And action!

[ Leia ] What happened? I don't know!

It just disappeared!

I got a really bad feeling about this.

But it is amazing what you can do when you have a vision, an ambition...

And when you can bend other people's will to your desire.

The thing that kept it focused towards the ambitions...

Was George’s vision and his passion for the idea.

[ Narrator ] Perhaps the most memorable stunt in Star Wars...

Was actually performed by Mark Hamill and Carrie fisher--

the nick-of-time escape of Luke and Leia...

Across a yawning chasm in the Death Star.

Mark Hamill wanted to do as much as he could himself.

I had times when I had to keep him back 'cause he was too enthusiastic, actually.

He could've got hurt.

Princess Leia and Luke Skywalker had to swing over this void.

We couldn't afford doubles, so I said, "I can teach them to do this, and it'll be safe."

My buddy and I, we put the harnesses on, we put the wires on.

Everyone down below-- remember, we are about 20 meters up,

looking down on them, right?

And as we swang across, there was a terrible tear, and my buddy said to me,

"peter, your harness has snapped."

Mark said, "I'm not going in that. It's too dangerous."

This is where I discovered you had to be a good liar.

I said, "there's nothing wrong with the harness. I split my trousers as I landed."

He said, "oh, I thought that was the harness."

I said, "Mark, I wouldn't let you go on this if it was dangerous."

[ Man ] Action!

They did it in one take, and that's how we got it.

For luck.

That was really early on in the shoot,

when I was still worried about my weight.

I thought we were gonna miss and I'd hit the wall...

And they will say, "ah, still too tubby. Let's bring in Jodie foster."

[ Narrator ] Another of Peter Diamond's tasks...

Was choreographing the dramatic lightsaber battle...

Between Darth Vader and Obi-Wan Kenobi.

You can't win, Darth.

If my blade should find its mark, you will cease to exist.

But I warn you, if you strike me down,

I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.

[ Diamond ] George wanted a broadsword type of fight with a touch of Japanese behind it.

But instead of becoming samurai moves with one hand,

I kept it with two hands,

so all the moves were two hands, completely like that.

The first swords were bits of wood...

With front-projection material wrapped around them.

Now, the hardest thing for me on the first fights--

Darth Vader was a very heavy man,

Obi-Wan Kenobi was a gentleman, right,

who had done some fencing in the theater.

I had to teach them, if that was the sword,

to stop before they touched, 'cause the blades were breaking.

We bloke-- broke so many blades. They just kept snapping.

[ Man ] Cut. [ Man #2 ] cut it!

[ Narrator ] Across the Atlantic, Fox's head of production, Alan Ladd, Jr.,

continued to offer Lucas his main,

if not his only, support from the studio.

[ Ladd ] There was a lot of problems, yes.

I mean, every board meeting I attended,

the subject was always about Star Wars.

"Well, the costs are rising. It's this, it's that.

Look, we've read drafts of scripts that make no sense to us in any way, shape or form."

It was rather unpleasant.

[ Man ] The things that stick in my mind that made me laugh were, like,

memos worried about whether or not the wookiee should have pants.

They're looking at this thing and saying,

"couldn't he have some lederhosen?"

[ Chuckling ] And I thought, "isn't this great?

"You know, of all the things to worry about.

The wookiee has no pants."

Argh!

[ Lucas ] I think we were like two weeks over schedule.

At that point, the board of directors at Fox...

Started to panic and tell Alan Ladd, Jr....

That he had to shut that film down regardless.

And so he came to me and said,

"look, you've gotta finish in the next week...

"Because I've got another board meeting,

and I can't go in there and say we're still shooting."

[ Kurtz ] I kept going on the phone to their production department,

saying, "this is insane.

"If we put on a second crew to do this, it costs us more...

Than going an extra week."

They said, "it doesn't matter. The studio's opinion...

Is that the day deadline is more important than the money you spend."

[ Narrator ] The final scenes were filmed at breakneck speed,

with Lucas frantically bicycling...

From one soundstage to another.

[ Watts ] Well, I think George suffered...

A lot more than I was aware of at the time.

But I was very focused on what I was doing,

'cause this was a very busy movie, just nonstop dawn to dusk.

We did go over at the end,

and we split into three units right at the end.

Gary directed the second unit,

and I had the distinction of directing...

The third unit of Star Wars.

My shots were things like close-up...

Of R2-D2's third foot going down.

[ Chuckling ] Nothing too dramatic.

But that's how we finished it.

Come on!

[ Man ] Okay, cut. Time up. Cut.

I hope that old man got the tractor beam out of commission,

or this is gonna be a real short trip. O.K. Hit it!

[ Narrator ] Fox originally slated Star Wars for a Christmas release in 1976.

- Schmuck. - 463, take one.

[ Narrator ] But the difficult shoot had put the film severely behind schedule.

[ Man ] Action!

- Didn't we just leave this party? - [ Man ] Give us a growl.

[ No audible dialogue ]

What kept you? We ran into some old friends.

Is the ship all right? Seems okay.

If we can get to it. I just hope the old man...

Got the tractor beam out of commission. Look!

Now's our chance. Go!

[ Narrator ] With barely six months to go,

there was almost no chance of delivering the project on time.

[ Man ] Okay, cut! Cut it!

I had just finished shooting the movie, and I was exhausted, basically,

but I had to go right from the shooting into the finishing...

Without a break.

[ Narrator ] Already anxious about meeting his deadline,

Lucas was shocked when he saw the first assembly of his edited film that spring.

Sir, the groiters are losing power!

All right. I'll get it.

[ Narrator ] The first cut of Star Wars was an unmitigated disaster.

How's that? Yes, that's much better.

[ Lucas ] I'd started to see things cut together. I wasn't happy with it.

I'd come in on weekends, and I'd recut the film on my own.

Cut. Cut!

And I tried to get the editor to cut it my way,

and he didn't really want to, and so I had to let the editor go.

So I had no editor. I was behind schedule.

I had to race to finish the movie.

[ Man ] 177, take two.

[ Narrator ] Lucas realized his only hope was to start from scratch.

And I am C-3PO, human-cyborg relations.

And this is my counterpart-- R2-D2.

Oh, hello. [ Man ] Okay, cut.

[ Narrator ] To recut the movie, he hired Paul Hirsch and Richard chew,

and for several months he was able to borrow his wife, Marcia,

who was editing New York, New York with Martin Scorsese.

Slate 250, take seven. [ Man ] Action.

You must do what you feel is right, of course.

[ Sighs ]

Right now I don't feel too good.

[ Narrator ] On Star Wars, the trio's first task...

Was to give the film an energy and pace that was sorely lacking.

[ Man ] Cut.

[ Man #2 ] It was cut in a very traditional manner...

Of just playing things out in masters...

And then going into the coverage...

And let the actors' rhythms dictate the cuts,

rather than having the cuts...

Kind of, uh, drive the rhythm of the scenes.

211, take three. Guide track.

Action!

[ Chew ] So, consequently, there wasn't any excitement...

In the footage the way that it had been put together.

- Cut. - Cut!

Richard and I would sort of leapfrog. If he was on reel one,

I would grab reel two, and then whoever finished that...

Would grab reel three and then so forth.

Aah!

[ Hirsch ] We used shots up until the very last frame.

[ Man ] Cut. [ Woman ] Can I take another one?

Very often, the very next frame would be the-- the flash of the camera stop.

For instance, there's a shot of one of the sandpeople...

Who knocks Luke down, and then he holds his weapon up over his head.

He just did it once, and we rocked it back and forth so he did it a number of times.

The only things that are there is what's presentable,

and everything behind the scenes is a mess.

[ Narrator ] With no chance of being ready by Christmas,

a new release date was set for summer, 1977.

Some doubted that the movie would ever reach theaters.

But as bad as things had been with the editing,

the situation at I.L.M. was even worse.

The company was trying to create effects that had never been done before.

They knew what they wanted to accomplish,

but they had yet to create anything usable for the film.

[ Lucas ] They had spent half their budget,

and ultimately I had about four shots,

none of which I would accept; They were just not good.

That was pretty much of a low point.

I had no special effects.

I didn't even know whether we were gonna get the ships to work.

So it was a pretty desperate time.

And we'd spent half the budget building the motion-control cameras, setting the shop up.

It was a disaster, uh, to say the least.

[ Huston ] The factory has to be built...

Before the first can of peas can be sent to the supermarket.

And I think it was a year or more...

Without any film coming out, without-- without one shot being finished.

'Cause they were building optical printers, they were building cameras,

we were building models.

I know that George was disappointed in the work,

and I'm-- and I'm disappointed that he was disappointed.

But there's a certain subjectivity to some of that stuff.

I wish he'd been happier, but I also think that ultimately...

The work did the job.

[ Narrator ] When word of the various postproduction problems...

Reached the Fox board of directors,

they decided they'd had enough of George Lucas and "that science movie."

[ Ladd ] I just sat in one executive committee meeting...

Where they're hauling me over the coals.

I just said, "it's the greatest picture ever made."

That ended the conversation.

They were afraid to say, "well, you're stupid and you're wrong,

and we want you out of this building by 5:00 this afternoon."

So, uh, there were some tense moments there.

[ Narrator ] With the dismal early cut of the film,

I.L.M. in chaos and growing pressure from the studio,

Lucas was facing almost unbearable battles on a daily basis.

After an especially tense trip to I.L.M.,

Lucas felt sharp chest pains.

Fearing a heart attack, the director checked into a Marin county hospital.

He was diagnosed with hypertension and exhaustion...

And was warned to reduce his stress level.

At that point, I really felt that I'd, uh,

gotten myself into a real mess, and I didn't know whether I was gonna get out.

[ Narrator ] Lucas doubled his efforts to save Star Wars.

The situation at I.L.M. required drastic measures.

To get the film's crucial special effects back on track,

Lucas had no choice but to step in personally.

[ Lucas ] We put a production department in at the special effects company,

I went down there twice a week.

[ Kurtz ] There was a certain amount of resentment at first...

Because they-- they felt that they're--

they were being challenged a bit on how they had set it up.

We felt that there was a certain quasi-hippie mentality...

That some of them had about the schedule.

Ultimately, I guess we were known as a country club.

[ Muren ] I think it looked to those guys that there needed to be...

A really strong production force in there...

That was going to meet some sort of quota.

[ Narrator ] With hundreds of shots left to be completed,

I.L.M. would have to do a year's worth of work in just six months.

But Lucas and Kurtz were determined to turn the situation around.

[ Edlund ] Gary was a gearhead, so he could understand our problems.

And-- and George is a storyteller, you know,

and so we have to serve his needs because he's the one that's telling the story.

But we had to build these incredible contraptions in order to do it.

[ Man ] George was our general.

We're his soldiers. And we're all fighting this single battle...

To get this film out.

We were going on the front lines here,

and that gave us also kind of a feeling of being special...

And fighting this great battle to get this thing done, whatever it is.

[ Biggs ] Luke, pull up!

[ Narrator ] To help inspire the effects team at I.L.M.,

Lucas had spliced together aerial dogfights from old war movies.

[ Ralston ] That would be like the first animatic, which you do in the computer now,

and we matched frame to frame and did the action on that as close as we could.

Ha ha!

[ Ralston ] And it was hugely helpful.

- [ Luke ] I got him! - Great, kid! Don't get cocky.

To describe that abstract world of a battle is impossible.

Storyboards don't do it, as far as the pacing, the rhythms that he needed.

Thanks, Wedge.

That was a great thing.

[ Narrator ] As fall turned to winter, Star Wars finally started to take shape.

That's it! We did it!

We did it!

[ Narrator ] Working from the raw production tracks,

sound designer Ben Burtt...

Would add a critical new layer to the film.

Burtt had spent a year building a catalog of sounds...

For things that didn't exist in our galaxy.

[ Laser blast sounds ]

George introduced the idea of what he called an "organic sound track."

George thought that Chewbacca might be made up...

From recordings of dogs or maybe even bears.

In addition, I recorded some lions and tigers and even some walruses.

- [ Growling ] - [ Growling ]

I would begin editing them together...

And making little phrases out of the noises.

I would take the recordings and edit the best pieces.

- [ Roaring ] - Argh!

You know, the bear might make a sound that sounded angry.

Grrr!

Or they might make a sound that was cute--

[ growling ]

Argh.

Or a sound that sounded like a sentence, a "wah-wah-wah" kind of a sound.

Argh argh argh!

You said it, Chewie.

The voice of R2 turned out to be the most difficult problem to solve...

In the sound design of the first movie...

Because R2 had to act alongside of the other actors.

And the script only said...

That R2 made a sound, or maybe R2 beeped. [Beep]

I had a small electronic synthesizer,

and I did some patches with it and made up some electronic sounds.

But that didn't sound alive.

At one point we talked about R2's personality,

and we felt he was developing kind of as a-- as a toddler.

[Beep beep]

So I did a lot of baby recordings,

and eventually we found that we-- in the discussion of R2's voice,

we were making the sounds ourselves.

[Beep whistle]

A few experiments led to the combination of using my voice...

Doing baby talk-- beeps and "boops."

[Bleep blip]

With the electronic synthesizer. So R2 is sort of 50% machine and 50% organic,

coming out of, you know, the performance of a person.

The breathing for Vader was recorded...

By putting a little tiny microphone down inside...

A regulator on a scuba tank. [ Mechanical breathing ]

I breathed through the mask itself, and it breathed in and out,

and out of that came the various, you know, paces of Vader breathing.

[ Mechanical breathing ]

And that sound worked out pretty successfully.

[ Narrator ] Finding the right voice for Darth Vader...

Was another challenge.

[ Man ] And action!

[ Narrator ] Lucas had never intended to use...

The on-set vocal performance of David Prowse.

[ British accent, muffled ] Start tearing this ship apart, piece by piece,

until you find those tapes!

Find the passengers of this vessel! I want them alive!

[ Ralston ] I can still hear David Prowse's accent...

In the Darth Vader mask muffled, 'cause he would do the real dialogue,

in trying to curse Carrie fisher or something.

I don't know what you're talking about.

I'm a member of the Imperial Senate on a diplomatic mission--

you are part of the rebel alliance and a traitor. Take her away!

It was hilarious and terrifying at the same time,

'cause we didn't know what Darth sounded like.

That was the first time we heard him. We were like, "is that it?

Is he gonna be some Scottish guy, or what is this?"

[ Narrator ] Prowse's voice would later be replaced...

With a more menacing performance-- [ Man ] Cut it.

Provided by classically trained stage and film actor James Earl Jones.

[ Jones ] George had hired David Prowse,

but he said he wanted a so-called "darker" voice.

Not-- not in terms of ethnic, but in terms of timbre.

And the rumor is that he thought of Orson Welles,

and then probably thought that Orson might be too recognizable.

So what he ends up is picking a voice that was born in Mississippi,

raised in Michigan and was a stutterer.

And, uh, that happened to be my voice.

I want to know what happened to the plans they sent you.

I don't know what you're talking about.

I'm a member of the Imperial Senate

on a diplomatic mission to Alderaan.

You are part of the rebel alliance and a traitor.

Take her away!

C-3PO's voice struck us all as, you know,

"well, we've got to do something about that."

Thirty-four, take three.

[ Daniels, muffled ] We seem to be made to suffer. It's our lot in life.

It was mentioned a number of times...

That C-3PO might sound like a used car salesman.

Not the English butler type.

[ British accent, muffled ] I'm sorry, sir. I must have fallen over.

I just came up with this voice, um,

of an over-the-top British butler.

Um, British because that would be my natural mode of thinking.

A butler because that was his-- his role in life.

Nervous because that was his feeling in life.

And it came as, "C-3PO, human-cyborg relations."

This is my counterpart-- R2-D2.

Hello.

[Beep beep blip]

A few people were brought in to record,

and an attempt was made to see how 3PO would be...

With different kinds of voices.

I believe 30 actors coming-- and some really quite impressive names.

Stan Freberg and a few others were auditioned.

Apparently one of them was a major cartoon actor,

a man of literally a thousand voices, who eventually said,

"you know something, George, Tony's voice is pretty good for the character.

Why don't you just use his voice?"

And eventually the discussion just quieted down,

and it was an excellent performance.

It synchronized with his body motions.

It was a total character which he created.

He was-- his track was left in the movie.

Hey! We don't serve their kind here.

What?

Your droids, they'll have to wait outside.

We don't want them here.

Why don't you wait out by the speeder?

We don't want any trouble.

I heartily agree with you, sir.

[ Man ] Cut.

428, take seven. Action!

Here we go. Cut in the sublight engines.

What the--

[ Narrator ] At long last, the editing, sound...

And visual effects were taking shape.

But a private screening of the film for Lucas's closest friends...

Didn't do much to bolster his confidence.

No!

It was an early stage--

you know, sort of a second or third cut.

I had a couple of my friends come up to see it.

Brian de Palma was in town. Steven came.

Some other friends came to see it.

[ Spielberg ] The human characters and the sets were there,

but, of course, all the spectacular--

you know, the-- the Death Star fight...

And the battle inside the trench,

and all that was just, um, not even there to be seen.

So, the reaction was not a good one. I loved the movie.

I was one of the only people in the audience that liked the movie.

[ Lucas ] All my friends were very honest-- "I don't get it. What are you doing here?"

So that was basically the tenor of the whole thing.

On the other hand, the studio--

when Laddie and his little group saw the film, they loved it.

It was the first time I've actually shown a film, um,

and one of the executives even cried at the screening.

It was, like, very emotional for him.

[ Wigan ] I sat my family round the kitchen table in my house,

and I said, "the most extraordinary day of my life has just taken place.

"I want you to remember this day.

"Because this is what I never dreamed-- or maybe I dreamed--

"but I never thought I would have a day's experience...

Like the day I've had today in seeing this film."

You know, I couldn't even believe it, 'cause I'm used to studios--

at that point I was used to studio chiefs saying, "this is terrible.

You shouldn't show this to an audience. Embarrassing."

So, for me it was a very rewarding thing...

To show it to people, even though it was in bad shape.

[ Narrator ] It didn't help that one critical element in Star Wars was still missing.

- There's no lock. - [ No orchestral sound track ]

The musical score.

That oughta hold them for a while.

Quick! We've got to get across.

Find the controls that extend the bridge.

I think I just blasted it.

They're coming through!

I remember bugging George, like,

"when can we hear the score? When can we hear the score?"

[ Narrator ] Fortunately, Lucas was able to recruit...

One of the industry's most accomplished composers, John Williams.

Williams had recently won an Oscar...

For Steven Spielberg’s Jaws,

and his résumé included countless film and television scores,

including music for the original Lost in Space television series.

I do remember George talking about the fact...

That what we were going to see in the film...

Represents worlds that we hadn't seen,

but that the music should give us some kind of an emotional anchor.

♪♪ [ Soft orchestral ]

We heard a romantic melody for princess Leia.

We heard, uh, bellicose music for the battle scenes.

♪♪ [ Rousing orchestral ]

And some very heavy declamatory thing for Darth Vader.

♪♪ [ Grim orchestral ]

[ Narrator ] In March, 1977,

John Williams led the London Symphony Orchestra...

In the performance of the Star Wars sound track.

Recorded over 12 days, it was a sweeping symphonic masterpiece,

one of the few things to actually exceed Lucas's expectations.

♪♪ [ Symphonic ]

[ Lucas ] To hear Johnny play the music for the first time...

Was a thrill beyond anything I can describe.

[ Williams ] It was my first opportunity to work with the London Symphony Orchestra,

which was a thrill to me.

This is red five. I'm going in.

[ Narrator ] Like Star Wars itself,

the music in the film defied conventional wisdom.

At a time when disco was burning up the charts,

having a traditional symphonic sound track...

Was another huge risk on Lucas's part.

He really understood the genre that I was talking about.

It's a group of composers that weren't that well looked upon in the '70s.

There was a different attitude toward the old-fashioned symphonic scores.

And I had a lot of music in the movie.

[ Man announcing ] Somewhere in space,

this may all be happening right now.

- Here they come. - Fox said they wanted a trailer out...

For the Christmas films, before the summer release.

They're coming in too fast!

We didn't have any visual effects shots ready then.

So we said, "well, it's going to be limiting in what the footage can be."

Grrr!

[ Announcer ] It's a big, sprawling space saga...

Of rebellion and romance.

What was really cool about the trailer was that we were still working on the movie.

It's an epic of heroes...

And villains...

And aliens from a thousand worlds.

[ Yelling ]

It was more about the spirit of it.

It introduced a lot of different characters-- the robots.

One thing they did have...

Was a couple of the very early lightsabers.

Star wars, a billion years in the making,

and it's coming to your galaxy this summer.

It was fun.

[ Narrators ] Industry insiders had been predicting doom for Star Wars,

but a small army of fans had been building...

Thanks to the foresight of Lucasfilm.

Charles Lippincott was brought in as a marketing director.

He was a science fiction fan. He had contacts with the fan base...

That was critical, we felt.

Science fiction fans were going to be the big supporter of this film,

regardless of its popularity with any other audience.

So that was the key target audience to start with.

[ Narrator ] Aside from licensing posters and t-shirts,

there was little support outside of Lucasfilm's marketing efforts...

To promote Star Wars.

Fortunately, Charles Lippincott was able to secure a comic book deal...

With Stan Lee and Marvel Comics.

He also convinced Del Rey to publish a novelized version...

Of George Lucas's screenplay in November, 1976.

By February the next year, half a million copies had completely sold out.

Fearing Star Wars would get crushed by other summer movies,

like Smokey and the Bandit,

Fox moved its release to the Wednesday before Memorial Day,

but fewer than 40 theaters agreed to show it.

[ Wigan ] Nobody wanted to book it. That same summer of 1977,

Fox released a film called The Other Side of Midnight,

which was based on an enormously successful best seller.

It wasn't a very good film, but it was a very, very much-expected book.

And in order to exhibit The Other Side of Midnight,

you had to exhibit...

Star Wars.

[ Ladd ] We sent out a beautiful book,

and that didn't seem to make an impact on 'em at all.

We had very few bookings.

Also it wasn't that there had been Time or Newsweek,

or any of that stuff preceding this.

Hadn't been screened and hadn't gotten the reviews.

[ Narrator ] On the eve of Star Wars's release,

20th Century Fox, George Lucas and the cast and crew...

Braced themselves for the worst.

One way or another, May 25, 1977,

would be a day they'd never forget.

Opening shot was one of the most important shots in the movie for the visual effects.

Because if the audience bought that shot, you had them.

[ Peterson ] The combined chest of everybody just went-- [ Gasps ]

Air was sucked out of the place.

And then when the white stardestroyer came overhead, I teared up.

It was so powerful.

I had seen that scene,

but without music, without context,

it's not the same thing.

We're doomed.

Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi.

There was this sort of weird electric kind of reaction.

One had never seen anything like it.

[Alien lounge music plays]

I'm gonna make the jump to light speed.

I had never experienced special effects that were so real.

I was-- I was-- I was dazzled.

I'm Luke Skywalker. I'm here to rescue you.

This is some rescue!

I loved it, because I loved the story and I loved the characters.

Will somebody get this big walking carpet out of my way?

Argh!

For luck.

I thought that it was revolutionary.

This is a work of genius.

The force will be with you always.

No!

We were in shock. I felt like we were blasted in the back of our seats.

I said, "man, who worked on this?"

I'm going in.

Use the force, Luke.

I have you now.

- What? - Yahoo!

[ McQuarrie ] The theater was jammed full of people,

and there was a lot of hollering and cheering going on.

You're all clear, kid! Now let's blow this thing and go home!

After it was over, everyone was on cloud nine.

Just kind of in shock. We had no clue what we were on.

It was wonderful.

[ Johnston ] I remember leaving the theater...

And having these kids ask us for our autograph.

"No, you don't want our autograph. We're model-builders."

"No, no. We want you to sign this." So we were thinking,

"Wow. This must mean something. People are asking for our autograph."

[ Ladd ] Everybody was standing up and applauding. Never seen it before in my life.

And I'll never see it again.

[Beep beep]

[ Ladd ] We released it, I think, in 37 theaters initially...

And broke 36 house records.

I was completely shocked.

It got an amazing response.

I used to drive by and look at the lines and think, "what?"

I mean, it was the first sort of blockbuster.

[ Cronkite ] George Lucas's Star Wars...

Lifted us out of our...

Sort of depression of the '70s...

And into an awareness and a focus...

On space and its possible future.

This movie stood by itself.

[ Moyers ] Timing is everything in art.

You bring out Star Wars too early, and it's Buck Rogers.

You bring it out too late,

and it doesn't fit our imagination.

You bring it out just as the war in Vietnam is ending,

when America feels uncertain of itself,

when the old stories have died--

and you bring it out at that time, and suddenly it's a new game.

Also, it's a lot of fun.

It's a lot of fun to watch Star Wars.

[ Braudy ] People started seeing the world in the terms that Star Wars had laid down.

People would say, "may the force be with you."

It was a kind of code, almost,

that proved that you were one of the people who had seen the film...

And you were connecting with other people who had seen the film.

Star Wars became like a kind of handshake.

[ Narrator ] In the wake of Star Wars, everyone's careers were changed.

Overnight, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford...

Had become household names.

I felt like this.

"Great. Terrific. Now I can go to work."

Now I have an opportunity to take advantage of the success of this film...

And-- and, uh, go to work.

And as much as life changed for us, it changed for George as well.

About a month after it was released, I said, "okay, it's a hit.

I can now go ahead. I can make my other movies. I'm gonna do this."

[ Narrator ] Ironically, the independent filmmaker...

Who wanted nothing to do with corporate Hollywood...

Was now credited with reinvigorating it.

In three weeks, Fox's stock price doubled to a record high.

A bunch of the guys at that point ran out and bought a bunch of stock in Fox.

I wasn't smart enough.

The greatest profit...

That 20th Century Fox had ever made in a single year...

Was $37 million.

And in 19-- whatever that year-- '77, '78,

whatever that year was, they made a profit of $79 million.

That was Star Wars.

[ Narrator ] The cultural impact of Lucas's outer space story...

Was greater than anything even he could've imagined--

not just in the United States but around the globe.

[ Cronkite ] It wasn't a story of cultures, wasn't a story of nationalities.

It wasn't a story of geography.

It was a story of mankind escaping his environment...

To a life which everybody expects to happen...

But George Lucas was able to illustrate for us.

This was what made it a success worldwide.

[ Narrator ] The movie did spectacular business across Europe,

but when Alan Ladd, Jr. attended the premiere in Japan one year later,

he feared that the silence which followed the screening...

Indicated that Star Wars would be a flop.

He was relieved when he later found out...

That silence was the greatest compliment...

A Japanese audience could give a film.

[ All clamoring ]

[ Cheering ]

We had the footprint ceremony in the Chinese theater.

R2-D2, hurry up.

[Beep beep]

[ Kurtz ] Thousands of people showed up,

so we were sure by then that there was...

Much more to it than just the science fiction audience.

[ Man over P.A. ] R2-D2 goes in.

He made about a seven-inch impression.

[Beep beep]

And the crowd is chanting for Darth Vader!

[ Narrator ] Not surprisingly, Star Wars's greatest fans were children.

They thrilled to the fantasy adventures of Luke Skywalker,

Han Solo and Princess Leia.

And they were eager to bring the experience of the movie home with them.

But little Star Wars merchandise was available...

For the first few months after its premiere.

To help promote the movie, Lucasfilm's Charles Lippincott...

Had tried to attract potential licensees before the film opened.

But prior to Star Wars, there had been few...

Successful motion picture licensing campaigns,

and Lippincott's attempts were flatly rejected.

Just one company-- Kenner Toys--

signed on shortly before Star Wars opened.

Kenner didn't believe the film would be a hit,

but they were interested in creating a modest line of colorful space toys.

When Star Wars became a smash,

they were caught completely off guard.

Unable to produce toys in time for Christmas orders,

Kenner resorted to selling boxed vouchers for Star Wars action figures.

[ Kurtz ] There wasn't anything available when the film came out.

There wasn't even anything available for the following Christmas of '77.

That was the infamous empty-box campaign,

where the idea proposed by Kenner was that...

There'd be these wonderful boxes with all the Star Wars illustrations on them,

and the kid would get this for Christmas and open it up,

and there'd be a certificate in there saying, "you can get this toy in March."

[ Man announcing ] The Star Wars early-bird certificate package--

new from Kenner.

[Alien lounge music plays]

I lit up when I found out...

That they were gonna make my face a mask on a box of cereal...

With little dots where to cut my eyes out.

The idea of me being on bubble-gum cards--

I thought you had to have athletic ability to be a bubble-gum card.

So I enjoyed the merchandising aspect of it.

[ Fisher ] We signed away our likeness,

so when I look in the mirror...

I have to pay George a couple of bucks.

You're not really famous until you're a Pez dispenser.

But, you know, you sort of realize, "I'm not really famous.

Princess Leia is. And I look like her."

And owe George a couple of bucks.

[ Narrator ] For Lucas, protecting the quality and integrity of his vision...

Became as important as gaining his financial independence from Hollywood studios.

Merchandising offered a means to an end,

one that helped fuel support for more Star Wars films...

As well as other important projects.

[ Man ] In the world of merchandising-- oh, goodness gracious,

people came to us with ideas all the time, every day,

day and night, from all over the world...

For Star Wars merchandise.

We were the ones in those days to say,

"no. Sorry. That doesn't fit into our plan."

[ Narrator ] At the 1978 academy awards,

Star Wars earned an impressive 10 Oscar nominations...

And took home seven, including statues for best visual effects,

sound, editing and production design.

It was... terrific. I don't know.

It was great. It was like a dream come true. It's the American dream.

I wound up winning the Academy Award for Star Wars...

Before I'd even started thinking about winning Academy Awards.

My goal was to get another job.

[ Narrator ] While it didn't win for best picture,

its nomination was quite an achievement for George Lucas...

And his kids' movie.

In addition to industry acclaim,

Star Wars earned more money than any movie in history.

After years of fighting uphill battles,

Lucas could finally call his own shots with the studios.

When Fox approached him about doing the inevitable sequel,

it was the moment the filmmaker had long been waiting for.

[ Lucas ] This was the perfect opportunity...

To become independent of the Hollywood system.

I didn't mind releasing it through them.

But it was really going to them for the money and them saying,

"I like the script, but I want a change,"

or, "the film is good, but we want to make these changes."

That's the part I wanted to avoid.

I decided I was gonna finance the film myself,

that I was gonna make it completely independently.

The rule in Hollywood is never put your own money in any film.

Even your own film.

But George was self-financing The Empire Strikes Back,

but he was doing it through the bank, and we were talking about...

Close to a $30 million film at the time.

But, because of the huge success of the first picture...

And of the revenues that were still rolling in--

merchandising was very strong--

it was a gamble, but a gamble that he knew would pay off.

[ Narrator ] With his earnings from Star Wars,

Lucas was able to secure a bank loan for The Empire Strikes Back.

Empire's original budget was $25 million,

more than twice that of the first film.

[ Kazanjian ] We would meet at Medway, which was George’s San Francisco office,

and look at the illustrations...

While George was writing the script.

And Gary Kurtz would fly in occasionally...

From London,

and Ralph McQuarrie would send down drawings,

conceptual designs, as well as Joe Johnston.

[ Narrator ] The Empire Strikes Back would reunite...

Much of the Star Wars cast.

It would also move the story in new directions,

digging more deeply into the emotions of the characters.

George had been given enormous license by the success of Star Wars.

And so when he started talking to me about...

The Empire script that didn't exist,

he knew what had to happen in the story, and it was very dark stuff.

I was delighted...

That it was not gonna be a rehash of Star Wars.

But in fact, after having set the whole thing up...

And gotten a rousing start,

you launch into the second act in which everything goes to hell.

And that's usually the best act in a play.

[ Narrator ] Empire would also open the door...

To a romance between Han Solo and Princess Leia.

But this time, George Lucas wasn't getting in the director's chair.

It was just too hard to set up a company,

get the money, get the film made,

and also be down there on the set every day trying to direct it.

Um, so I decided I'd hire a director.

[ Kershner ] I was asked by George to come to lunch at Universal.

And he said, "how would you like to do the second Star Wars?"

We had no title for it at that point.

And I said, "gee, George, I don't think so."

It's a phenomenal hit as a picture.

A second one can only be a second one.

It can't be as good...

Because the first one is the breakthrough.

And I told my agent about the meeting,

and he said, "are you crazy? Do it!"

There were approximately 64 sets on this picture,

which is much bigger than Star Wars.

George says, "the film has to be much better...

"And much bigger and much more complex than Star Wars.

"Because if the second one doesn't work,

"it's the end of Star Wars.

"If it does work,

then I can continue making more of them."

I said, "it doesn't put me in a very comfortable position.

It's a hell of a responsibility."

[ Narrator ] Known for smaller, character-driven films...

Like Up the Sandbox and Eyes of Laura Mars,

Irvin Kershner had never directed a blockbuster.

But emphasis on character was just what this middle chapter needed.

[ Kershner ] The story line was much more difficult.

I felt I needed humor in the picture.

And yet, I couldn't have gags.

I felt I needed a love story,

and yet I couldn't have a lot of smooching...

And kissing and all that stuff.

And it had to all be more implied.

I knew I needed something powerful going on...

Inside Luke’s soul.

And he really carries the picture, of course.

So I didn't know quite how I was gonna do this.

[ Narrator ] In the year since the release of the first Star Wars,

now dubbed Episode IV: A New Hope,

I.L.M. had come a long way.

The company was no longer a fledgling operation...

Struggling to get by.

[ Johnston ] At the end of Star Wars,

George invited the core group to northern California...

To start this whole new facility.

There were 10 of us, and I was the only one that immediately came up.

I said, "are you kidding? Stay here in Van Nuys...

"In this crummy part of town...

"In this dumpy building, you know,

"that was inadequate from the very beginning,

"or move to Marin County,

"have a new building and have a new film to work on...

In this great environment?"

It was like a no-brainer.

I remember George saying, "this time we got some money."

And so that was kind of nice.

We talked about, "should we top ourselves?"

Or "are we gonna top ourselves?"

And I think it was more of, "let's just make it look cool. Have some fun with it."

And George came up with some great story stuff.

[ Peterson ] We started on the walker,

but we also had to build the probot,

which is the probe that is sent down by Darth Vader...

That lands on the snow planet's surface...

That then goes and looks for human life-forms.

Joe had already drawn the drawings. George liked that.

But they were going to go to Norway to shoot all those scenes,

and they needed a prop.

They needed one that was, like, nine feet tall or something like that...

In scale to have out in the distance.

[ Kurtz ] The making of Empire was a whole set of problems...

That we didn't anticipate.

The picture was a much bigger undertaking than originally conceived.

The budget was quite a bit more.

Everybody who's dealt with visual effects said, "never do snow,

because you can't maintain the color."

We ignored all those warnings and decided to shoot in the snow anyway.

But it was a very time-consuming process.

And again, just like in Tunisia,

we were in Norway shooting on this glacier,

and we had the worst winter in Scandinavia...

That they'd had in 50 years--

20 below zero, 18 feet of snow.

[ Wind howling ]

[ Watts ] It was a miserable location,

'cause we were across this frozen thing up on this glacier...

With these tracked vehicles to get there.

We had sort of like stakes-- like big twigs, almost-- in the ground...

About every six feet.

Because if it started snowing, you get a whiteout. You can't tell where you're going.

And it did one night. I drove one of the tracked vehicles.

And without these, I never would've found my way back.

[ Kershner ] We get to Norway,

and I couldn't get out of the hotel to shoot...

Because there was a wall of snow...

That was blown in that night.

So we put the camera in the doorway of the hotel,

going out the back door.

The crew was all inside, toasty warm,

and Mark had to go out into the snow...

And go running away from the ice creature.

And we never left the doorway! [ Laughing ]

And he froze to death, and we were fine.

We finally shot all the scenes...

Knowing where the special effects--

where this thing would come down,

the foot would come down and all this stuff.

[ Tippett ] It was really tricky stuff--

animating these things on these snowy sets.

So initially, I think, the intent was...

To try and set up...

Scenes that would be bluescreen comped...

Into background plates that were shot on location.

But this kid showed up at I.L.M....

Who was this, like, amazing painter,

and so most of the work of the snow walkers and the tauntauns...

Were done...

Against these painted backdrops that Mike made.

[ Huston ] I like the snow walkers. I think that's just a great idea.

And I think that the compositing got a lot better,

but it was better than it was in Star Wars.

And so it's a little bit more believable.

[ Narrator ] The cast and crew of The Empire Strikes Back...

Were determined to make the second installment of Star Wars...

Worth three years of waiting by fans.

Echo station five-seven. We're on our way.

All right, boys, keep tight now.

Luke, I have no approach vector. I'm not set.

Steady, Dak.

Attack pattern delta. Go now.

[ Narrator ] As with the first film,

principal photography for The Empire Strikes Back...

Was done at Elstree Studios in London.

Here, members of the original cast...

Would be introduced to a new principal character--

Lando Calrissian, played by Billy Dee Williams.

Why, you slimy,

double-crossing, no-good swindler.

You've got a lot of guts coming here

after what you pulled.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

How you doin', you old pirate? So good to see you!

Well, he seems very friendly.

Yes.

Very friendly.

It's always interesting to create a character that has--

you know, is a sort of dual character.

You know, you're not quite sure about him.

Especially if he's cute. And I was really kind of cute.

Hello. What have we here?

Welcome, I'm Lando Calrissian.

I'm the administrator of this facility.

And who might you be?

Leia.

Welcome, Leia.

All right, all right, you old smoothie.

[ Narrator ] The Empire Strikes Back also introduced...

A new villain to the saga--

the calculating, cold-blooded bounty hunter Boba Fett.

What's going on,

buddy?

You're being put into carbon freeze.

What if he doesn't survive? He's worth a lot to me.

The Empire will compensate you

if he dies.

Put him in.

We looked at the scene...

Where Han Solo goes into the freezing chamber.

[ Ford ] George had scripted...

An exchange between Princess Leia and Han Solo,

which went like this:

She said, "I love you," and Han Solo said, "I love you too."

And it kind of, uh, seemed to me...

That we weren't taking advantage of the character that we'd established for Han Solo.

[ Kershner ] We tried take after take after take.

Nothing satisfied me. And finally...

I said, "Harrison--

don't think about it. Don't think about it. Let's shoot it. Okay, action!"

I love you.

I know.

And he dropped in, and I said, "cut."

I said, "yeah, that's a great line. That's Han Solo."

[ Narrator ] Ironically, the most talked-about new character...

Wasn't a human at all,

but a two-foot-tall puppet called Yoda.

Designed by Stuart Freeborn...

And operated by muppeteer Frank Oz,

the tiny creature was a fully realized character...

And a unique achievement in movie puppetry.

[ Man ] George showed me a few original sketches,

and I thought, "well, that's interesting,

but I want something in more depth," you see?

And so I looked in the mirror...

And I thought, "well,

something perhaps a little bit amusing about my face."

So I modeled something of myself.

Now I've got to make him look intelligent.

I got this photograph of Einstein and put the Einstein wrinkles in all around.

I did a lot of thinking about it...

Because he's got to be full of subtle action and movements,

especially in the face and the body.

And I put it all in, what was necessary, and finally it all worked.

[ Man ] I remember Stuart was under the gun.

And it was very tense. Very tense.

We had to get this thing done. We've got to start shooting with Yoda.

And so-- [ Laughs ]

While we were talking to him, I just had Yoda’s head, and I was just playing with it,

and I dropped it and it cracked.

So here we are--

and then Stuart said, "I need a drink."

So it was terrible, because we were pressing so much and I'm the one who screwed it up.

[ Kershner ] In order to shoot the puppet moving,

the set had to be built about five feet...

Above the floor of the stage.

And we would put holes or ridges...

Where it would stand on top of it...

And he could move it along in a certain direction.

So it had to be predetermined.

On top of the stage were trees,

rocks, caves, everything.

Now, they couldn't hear above,

and Mark couldn't hear Frank Oz.

How do you do a scene? You can't hear each other.

I-- I give Mark a lot of credit for this.

[ Reynolds ] I can remember he actually--

this little voice called over to me-- "Norman, Norman," he said.

And I actually-- I actually blushed...

Because it seemed so real, this weird, weird little thing.

[ Oz ] It was tremendously difficult physical work.

The whole floor was about three-and-a-half, four feet high,

so I could be underneath the floor,

and then I would hold my hand up and, uh-- through a hole or whatever.

And I remember Kersh was talking to me--

but he sometimes talked to Yoda. I'm saying,

"Kersh, I can't hear you. I'm down here under the floor."

[ Man ] Look a bit more towards the lens.

Uh, the other way.

[ Oz ] But the pressure was extreme because I was taking too much time.

The reason I was taking too much time is this was the first time this has ever been done.

You know, I had somebody doing the cables for the ears,

and somebody else was doing the eyes, and somebody was doing the left hand.

I had me and three other people trying to bring one character to life.

[ Oz ] Center those eyes a bit. Yeah, just one second.

[ Man #1 ] The eyes-- this way. [ Oz ] there.

[ Man #2 ] That's a bit too far. [ Man #1 ] there. That's it.

[ Oz ] That's good, Graham. Okay. We'll go back into that. Ready.

[ Man ] All right. Action.

- [ Luke ] I followed my feelings. - You are reckless.

So was I, if you remember.

He is too old.

Yes, too old to begin the training.

I'm not afraid.

Oh...

You will be.

You will be.

[ Oz ] Sorry. Um, problems. [ Man ] Cut.

That was like a real leap,

because if that puppet had not worked,

the whole film would have been down the tubes.

It just would have been a disaster if it'd been a silly little muppet--

if it'd been Kermit running around in that movie,

the whole movie would've collapsed under the weight of it.

340E, take two, "A" and "B" cameras. [ Panting ]

[ Narrator ] While many individuals helped bring Yoda to life,

it was Mark Hamill’s believable performance that made audiences accept the character.

Is the dark side stronger?

No, no.

No.

Quicker, easier, more seductive.

How do I know the good side from the bad?

You will know when you are calm, at peace.

[ Narrator ] For Hamill, playing a Jedi-in-training...

Was more than just a physical challenge.

It was also an emotional one.

I was the only human being on the call sheet for months.

It would say, "Actor: Mark Hamill. Part: Luke.

"Props: Snakes, lizards, robots,

smoke machines, gila monsters."

- [ Man #1 ] This is it.

- [ Man #2 ] If you choose the quick and easy path,

as Vader did, you will become an agent of evil,

and the galaxy will be plunged deeper... Ow!

Into the abyss of hate and despair. He bit me.

[ Man #3 ] You're standing in the light.

[ Kershner ] He bit you? Yeah!

Didn't he bite me? He just took a-- it was a little love nip.

[ Hamill ] Frank Oz and his crew were there,

but they'd get buried down underneath the ground.

I had an earpiece where I could hear,

[ imitating Yoda ] "Many years have you-- [ Mumbles ]"

And then if you turned your head the wrong way, you'd pick up radio 1,

and it was the Rolling Stones singing "Fool to Cry."

I remember I reacted to that...

And went, "hey, I got the Stones!"

And Kershner goes, "cut!"

And he's way across the bog saying,

"you know, if that happens again, just pretend like you don't hear it," because...

With all the elements of that set--

"is the smoke good? Is the snake--

poke the snake. Get the snake to move. He's just lying there."

So you felt, "let's get our priorities straight."

'Cause I'm concerned about how did I come off in the scene.

They were looking at everything but me.

[Beep blip beep beep]

[ Reynolds ] I have to say, it was-- you wouldn't wanna fall in that pool.

By the time you finished shooting, it's full of all sorts of wildlife and bugs.

It was absolutely foul after all those weeks of being in there-- stagnant water.

I don't...

I don't believe it.

That is why you fail.

[ Narrator ] As elaborately detailed as the sets were at Elstree Studios,

equally impressive was the work done in California.

I.L.M. was able to produce special effects...

That were light-years ahead of those seen in the first Star Wars.

If you look at Star Wars, you're either kind of in space, and they're all--

maybe the Death Star's back there, maybe it isn't,

and you have a number of shots on different planets.

But you look at Empire, and it's broad.

You've got a speeder sequence and two or three big dogfights.

You've got the whole Cloud City and all the interiors of different landscapes...

That are way beyond what we'd done before.

So I think it was the breadth of the work that differentiates that from the first show.

And each one of those sequences required different problem-solving skills.

[ Gawley ] We did this incredible chase through the asteroid field.

Designing asteroids is not as easy as you think,

and I remember many of us in the model shop...

Tried and tried to come up with something that would look good.

And I think for some of the very far ones, we had, um, used potatoes.

The biggest problem I had is it wasn't going fast enough, and I was running out of money.

Irvin Kershner's an extremely good director,

but the film went over budget, went over schedule,

and all the money I had in Star Wars was committed to this film, plus more.

We shot several scenes in Empire over again.

There's a scene in Cloud City where Han Solo character is kind of pacing up and down...

And Princess Leia comes in, and he reacts to the way she looks...

'Cause she's dressed differently than she has in the entire rest of the film.

You look beautiful.

You should wear girls' clothes all the time.

We looked at the dailies and weren't happy with anything.

Um, the attitude of the actors was too obvious.

Sit down.

Come on. Talk to me.

And we could have let that go, but it just didn't feel right.

- Retake. - [ Man ] Action.

I hope Luke made it to the fleet all right.

I'm sure he's fine.

He's probably sittin' around wondering what we're up to right now.

You know, your friend Lando's very charming, but I don't trust him.

Trust him. He's an old friend of mine.

- End slate. - So we shot it in a more subtle fashion,

which is the way it's in the film now.

I don't trust Lando.

Well, I don't trust him either.

But he is my friend. Besides...

We'll soon be gone.

Then you're as good as gone, aren't you?

[ Narrator ] Although most production challenges had been anticipated...

And expectations were understandably high,

when Empire went over budget by $10 million,

Lucasfilm suddenly found itself in a fiscal crisis.

The force is with you, young Skywalker.

But you are not a Jedi yet.

[ Man ] Three of the top executives of Bank of America Entertainment...

Walked into my office saying, "we have to pull your loan."

And I said, "how can the largest bank in the entertainment business...

With the sequel to the most successful movie ever out be wanting to pull my loan?"

He said, "well, we have a new credit manager, and he just has a rule:

Budget doubles, he pulls the loan."

One of the bankers quit over it. They knew it was a big mistake,

but, you know, I was stuck with trying to make a million-dollar payroll by Friday.

Release your anger.

Only your hatred can destroy me.

That was the big difference between the studio system...

And the independent view of filmmaking.

The studios have a large resource to draw on for what they do,

and independents don't,

so it's a much tighter situation.

[ Lucas ] I was just hoping the bank to allow me to finish...

Without going back to 20th Century Fox and giving away all my rights,

because that's ultimately what my other choice was,

was to just simply let them own it and lose my independence.

But I wanted my independence so badly,

we managed to do it in a way that I paid them just a little bit more money,

but they didn't get any of the licensing, and they didn't get any of the sequels.

That was what I was trying to hold on to.

If I had to pay a few extra points to get them to guarantee a loan with the bank,

I could do that.

I think Fox was just as concerned that the movie get finished as we were.

[ Narrator ] While Empire's budget may have been tight,

security during the production was even tighter.

Only Lucas, Kershner and the film's producers knew the real story.

[ Kershner ] At the time, I knew that Mark had a father and that it was Darth Vader,

but this was not in the script.

There was a false page inserted, and I had the knowledge.

The actors didn't even have it.

No one had it. It was a total secret.

[ Ganis ] The script was under lock and key, the models were under lock and key,

I.L.M. was under lock and key and shrouded from the rest of the world.

The story line of the movie was under lock and key.

You are beaten.

It is useless to resist.

[ Narrator ] The film's shocking climax,

in which Darth Vader reveals Luke Skywalker's true parentage,

was kept a secret from nearly everyone,

even David Prowse and Mark Hamill.

Hamill was told privately, just moments before the cameras rolled.

[ Kershner ] I met with mark and said,

"you know that Darth Vader’s your father."

"Wha--"

they had taken me aside and said, "this is what he's really going to say."

"And we're gonna do the scene.

"And Darth Vader will be saying stuff that doesn't count. Forget it.

Use your own rhythm compared to what he's doing."

Aah!

There is no escape.

Don't make me destroy you.

We did a few takes, and he finally got into it.

Join me,

and I will complete your training.

[ Kershner ] And here is Darth Vader, who had his dialogue, by the way,

and he's speaking the dialogue.

He thinks it's being recorded, you see.

It's not being recorded. What's being recorded is this, this, this.

He said, "you don't know the truth. Obi-wan killed your father."

And then, of course, we rerecorded everything.

I'll never join you!

If you only knew the power

of the dark side.

[ Jones ] When I first saw the dialogue that said,

"Luke, I am your father,"

I said to myself, "he's lying.

I wonder how they're gonna play that lie out."

Obi-wan never told you

what happened to your father.

He told me enough.

He told me you killed him.

No.

I am your father.

And I scream, "no!" Just as it was meant to be.

No!

No!

Join me, and together we can rule the galaxy

as father and son.

[ Kershner ] I think that it went beyond Star Wars.

You got to know the characters a little better, you had some humor.

Laugh it up, fuzzball.

[ Kershner ] I thought of the film as the second movement of a symphony.

That's why I wanted some of the things slower.

And it-- it ends in a way...

That you can't wait to see,

to hear the vivace, the next movie, the allegretto.

I didn't have a climax at the end. I had an emotional climax.

[ Narrator ] As Empire's premiere date approached,

the producers once again held their collective breath.

When The Empire Strikes Back finally opened on May 21, 1980,

it didn't meet expectations-- it surpassed them.

Within three months, George Lucas had recovered his $33 million investment.

[ Muren ] There was something about Empire that immediately just clicked when I saw it.

I didn't know how all the romance was gonna work and the adventure,

and was it too serious and all this sort of stuff.

Uh, but it really came together.

[ Narrator ] Until its premiere, cases of

lightning striking twice were rare in Hollywood.

Sequels were almost always a letdown.

But in the Star Wars universe, different laws applied.

And George Lucas, the world's most successful independent filmmaker,

was fast becoming a law unto himself.

In a radical move by Hollywood standards,

he shared Empire's profits with every one of his employees,

handing out over five million dollars in bonuses in 1980.

The profits from the two Star Wars films...

Also helped fuel Lucas's rapidly expanding business enterprises.

We did have some money, but it was still a start-up company.

We could have messed it up as much as we did it right.

But his ability to make successful movies...

Is what drove the financial success of the company.

But how we used those funds to grow the company

and why he has a net worth the way he does,

he was smart enough to understand all the rights, all the ancillaries.

[ Narrator ] By financing The Empire Strikes Back with his own money,

George Lucas had bet the farm and won.

In fact, he was in a position to build his own kind of farm--

Skywalker ranch, in Marin County, California.

Lucas had long imagined a visually inspiring setting...

Where his employees could work in a creative atmosphere...

And where friends like Steven Spielberg, Robert Redford and Francis Ford Coppola...

Could enjoy working at a state-of-the-art facility.

[ Kazanjian ] George was debating on two different parcels of land--

one was on Lucas Valley Road.

[ Laughs ] And I said, "well, that's the one you have to pick!"

The company structure supported multimovies in all areas--

merchandising, special effects, ancillaries.

And so all the little companies had to be started and operated...

And have all these systems put in place.

[ Narrator ] Lucasarts, THX,

Skywalker Sound, Industrial Light & Magic.

Each subsidiary of Lucasfilm would serve George Lucas's creative vision.

In turn, they revolutionized a film industry...

That had for too long been plagued by complacency.

[ Weber ] It was an idea of one person and successfully implemented.

George has one of the more successful companies in the world.

And you can't measure it just by size,

uh, because he doesn't need the size of a Fox or a Warners...

To accomplish the same thing he's accomplishing in putting out his films.

[ Narrator ] As the sole owner of the most successful franchise in movie history,

Lucas had gained the financial means and the

creative freedom to produce anything he wanted.

[ Spielberg ] George's greatest strength as a filmmaker is that he's a great storyteller.

George has a vision. There are filmmakers down

through history, like Capra and John Ford,

and they made John Ford pictures and Frank Capra pictures, and they made--

and Hitchcock made Hitchcock films, and George Lucas makes George Lucas pictures.

[ Narrator ] George Lucas had helped turn the tide of Hollywood’s downbeat realism...

And brought back a sense of fantasy and wonder.

Movies were fun again.

But in the wake of Empire,

the filmmaker found himself unexpectedly mired in Hollywood politics.

To preserve the dramatic opening sequences of his films,

Lucas wanted the screen credits to come at the end of the movies.

It was a highly unusual choice.

And for the first Star Wars, the Writers Guild and Directors Guild had allowed it.

But when Lucas did the same for the sequel,

they fined him over a quarter of a million dollars...

And even attempted to pull Empire from theaters.

Next, the D.G.A. went after Irvin Kershner.

To protect his director, Lucas paid all the fines to the guilds,

but the situation left him feeling frustrated and persecuted.

[ Kazanjian ] Lucas was so upset that he dropped out of the Directors Guild,

the Writers Guild and the Motion Picture Association.

[ Narrator ] Another unfortunate casualty in the wake of Empire...

Was Alan Ladd, Jr., Lucas's most vocal supporter at 20th Century Fox.

The criticism over the deal is what ended my tenure at Fox, really,

'cause people were very angry and irritated,

even though they made millions of dollars off it.

And, uh, had a big fight, stomped out of the boardroom,

and said, "I quit."

That was it.

[ Narrator ] 20th Century Fox ultimately paid a heavy price for Ladd's departure.

With his longtime ally gone from the studio,

Lucas decided to go to Paramount with his latest movie idea,

an action-adventure yarn called Raiders of the Lost Ark.

[ Narrator ] George Lucas had fought and won the battle...

To gain his independence as a filmmaker,

but the war between his rebel alliance and the galactic empire was far from over.

As he began production on the final chapter of his Star Wars saga,

he knew expectations among fans and critics would be greater than ever before.

The project was a high-stakes gamble,

with Lucas once again putting up every dollar himself.

Nothing about the film, not even the smallest detail, could be taken for granted.

[ Kazanjian ] George came to me, and he said, "the title of episode... VI...

Is, uh, Return of the Jedi."

And I said, um, "I think it's a weak title."

And he came back one or two days later, and he says,

"we're calling it Revenge of the Jedi."

[ Narrator ] Choosing the film's title was just the beginning.

Jedi would require thousands of production decisions on both sides of the globe.

[ Kazanjian ] We were constructing, really, in two places in California,

shooting at I.L.M.-- That's three--

and of course working and shooting in London at the same time.

[ Narrator ] As Lucas discovered, independence was a double-edged sword.

Quitting the directors guild made it impossible for him to hire his first choice,

Steven Spielberg.

Instead Lucas chose Welshman Richard Marquand,

best known for the World War II thriller, Eye of the Needle.

As the two met with Lawrence Kasdan to discuss Jedi’s script,

a key issue was whether Harrison Ford,

who was now equally famous for the role of Indiana Jones,

would return as Han Solo.

The other actors after Star Wars had signed on to do two more,

'cause I wanted to finish the whole thing.

Harrison did not. He had the idea, "why don't you kill him off?

Why don't you kill him off?"

[ Ford ] I thought Han Solo should die.

I thought he ought to sacrifice himself, uh, for the other two characters.

I also felt someone had to go.

You know, I felt someone had to die.

I said, "he's got no mama, he's got no papa, he's got no future,

"he has no, um, story responsibilities at this point,

so let's allow him to commit self-sacrifice."

And I thought it should happen very early in the last act,

so that you would begin to worry about everybody.

We should sacrifice somebody.

And, uh, George was against it,

and George knew what he wanted, and he got what he wanted.

Hey, it's me.

[ Narrator ] Once production began, Lucas was determined...

Not to let the budget escalate as it had on Empire.

Good luck.

You're going to need it.

[ Narrator ] It wasn't easy, given that the rest of the world...

Assumed money was no object.

[ Bloom ] Anytime you would try and negotiate for production facilities,

people would say, "well, that'll cost two dollars,"

when it might normally cost a dollar.

So I had the suggestion that we change the name of the picture.

It was called Blue Harvest, and the sub line behind it was "horror beyond imagination."

- "B" camera. - The idea behind it was to have a title...

That would instill absolutely no interest whatsoever in what you were doing.

It was like, "well, what-- what is Blue Harvest?" It's like, "well, who cares?"

It worked until Han and Luke and Leia showed up to come to work,

and everybody went, "oh, I guess this really isn't 'horror beyond imagination.'

I guess this is really the next Star Wars movie."

[ Narrator ] Revenge of the Jedi would again reunite the Star Wars cast and crew,

who after six years and two record-breaking motion pictures...

Had formed a lasting bond.

We were the same crew for all three films, for the most part,

so it was, you know, a family.

[ Crew chattering ]

I'm walking along by myself rehearsing, going something like, um,

"Lando Calrissian never returned from this awful place--" and so on and so on.

Lando Calrissian and poor Chewbacca

never returned from this awful place.

[Beep beep whistle] [ Daniels ] Suddenly I hear, "beep, beep,"

and I turn around, and-- and George is--

George is now crouched behind me, waddling along,

sort of on his haunches, going, "beep, beep, beep, beep."

It was a joyous moment. [Beep whistle]

[ Narrator ] Like its predecessor, Jedi continued...

To expand the cast of characters in the Star Wars saga.

Ho ho ho ho ho!

What's that?

[ Narrator ] One of the biggest was intergalactic gangster--

I know that laugh. Jabba the Hutt.

[Speaking Huttese]

[ Chattering ] [ Tippett ] George said, "I need something...

"That's, you know, alien and grotesque,

that's like, uh-- like Sydney Greenstreet."

[ Laughs ] And I went, "oh, okay."

When I had kind of gotten this idea down to this big slug-like thing...

That is just this big pulsating mass of flesh.

At one point, I did put-- I had a fez on one of the characters, like Sidney Greenstreet.

And then, uh, Stuart Freeborn in England’s job was to fabricate the thing.

And that was operated with, uh-- with one puppeteer for each arm--

two puppeteers for the arms, another guy doing the head,

another guy-- radio control guy-- doing the eyes.

It was like a couple of little people in it,

you know, pulling things to make the tail move around.

It was quite a thing.

[ Freeborn ] And I had my little dwarf sittin' inside.

I had a little seat made for him in the tail here,

and-- and he operated it all.

And he was sitting there for quite a few days doing this.

And if he operated the first one,

it made-- whichever way he pulled it--

it would either lift it upwards or sideways, you see,

so as he could make that move in any direction.

[ Man ] And action.

A chunoh ayo ahtot.

At last! Master Luke’s come to rescue me.

[Speaking Huttese]

I must be allowed to speak.

Eee! Ah!

[Speaking Huttese]

You will bring Captain Solo and the wookiee to me.

Ho ho ho ho ho!

[C-3PO] Master Luke, you're standing on--

[Jabba speaking Huttese]

[Speaking Huttese]

Grr!

Jabba has to pull the rug out from under Luke and he falls into the pit,

and there's this big rancor pit monster.

Grr!

George was really adamant that we were going to do it as a man in a suit.

It was gonna be like a really cool Godzilla.

Tony McVey, one of the sculptors, fabricated this big rancor suit,

and, uh-- based on my design.

He designed this thing that I call kind of a cross between a bear and a potato.

It was just this-- blah!-- This big-- [ Grunts ] Dumb thing.

But it never looked that great, no matter what we did.

So, uh, at some point, George said, "let's do it some other way."

And so Dennis thought, well, let's try and do it as a high-speed puppet.

We designed the skeleton for rancor.

Tom St. Amand and Dave Sosalla and I puppeteered the thing.

It was a crazy, you know, way of working,

because this thing, it has to walk into a room and turn around and roar,

and it's like a four-second shot and you're shooting at 90 frames a second.

You've got a second to shoot it.

[ Narrator ] I.L.M.'s creatures might have been puppets,

but they could still elicit an emotional reaction from their human costars.

One even triggered a panic attack.

Oh! Ah ha ha ha!

I'd got claustrophobia once. I didn't even have the whole suit on.

I was lying on the floor, the camera's about that far away from me.

Uh, salacious crumb-- the wonderful salacious crumb, animated by Tim Rose--

[ imitates bird cry ] And he's pulling out my eye--

[ Man ] 34-A, take two. Action!

[ Daniels ] And something went in my mind-- I didn't catch a breath--

and I suddenly could feel panic just absorbing into my body.

Not my eyes! R2, help!

And I was thinking, "get me out! Get me out! Get me out! Get me out!"

And I just kept repeating it until they managed to whiz the head off. [ Exhales ]

And cut.

[ Narrator ] Daniels may have lost his head as 3PO,

but when it came to risking life and limb,

the production now had a team of trained stunt professionals.

For the execution scene on Jabba's barge,

stunt performers dropped in on the most ravenous monster yet-- the sarlacc.

[ Man ] Action!

[ Man ] Cut.

It wasn't edited that way, but I was the first guy to come off the skiff...

Into the pit.

I had to make sure it would work and everybody was gonna be all right.

I had a lot of sand coming on top of me.

But I was able to say to the guys, if you go in,

shut your eyes, keep your mouths closed, right?

Put some cotton wool up your nose, otherwise you'll be sniffing up sand.

Three people went in one after the other.

As one went in, they pulled him out. The other went in, they pulled him out.

So, I mean, what was happening down below is a comedy film of its own, quite honestly.

But these are the things the public don't see.

Chewie, you're hit? Where is it?

Slate three-three, take one.

Boba Fett? Where?

Eeyaah!

Uhh!

[Burp]

[ Williams ] I was hanging on a rope with Han Solo,

and he was trying to save me, and one of the squibs went right through my toe.

I'm screaming to Han, "stop, stop!" He's so busy acting-- [ Laughs ]

And I'm in pain, and all of a sudden he realized that I got hurt.

Wait! I thought you were blind!

It's all right! I can see a lot better!

Don't move!

A little higher! Just a little higher!

[ Williams ] Harrison, he's one of those actors-- he's very intense.

- Chewie, pull us up! - Really gets into what he's doing, you know?

So, uh, he was really into it. [ Chuckles ]

[ Narrator ] For Carrie Fisher, getting into the role of Leia this time...

Meant fitting into a skimpy slave-girl costume.

I got to kill Jabba the Hutt, but I was still much more concerned about...

The slave-girl outfit and what I was gonna do about exercise.

31-C, take two. "A" and "B" cameras.

[ Man ] Wave your arm around. Action!

And then George Lucas said, "oh, instead of attacking Jabba from the front...

And be getting angry with him and whacking him, I want Carrie to jump on his back"--

and then she's got her high-heel shoes on, and it happened to be that...

My little fellow inside-- it was only foam rubber-- and it went right into his head.

He screamed his head off, so we had to stop, cut.

[ Man ] And cut. [ Man #2 ] All right. Hold it.

Before they could do the shot again, I had to build...

A firm bit over the top of his head so she could get up there.

Take three, pickup. "A" and "B" camera.

[ Man #1 ] Background. Go. [ Man #2 ] Okay, and action!

Augghh!

[Death rattle]

That was a great relief. He was an unpleasant... thing,

with mong in the corner of the mouth, and I never really liked that.

Let's go.

And don't forget the droids.

We're on our way.

[ Narrator ] For the veteran cast members,

bringing something fresh to their characters was often difficult.

Don't move!

I love you.

I know.

Stand up!

[ Narrator ] Another challenge on the set was Richard Marquand's...

Relative inexperience with special effects.

[ Fisher ] It's a difficult thing to do, you know,

work on the one hand with, you know, the special effects,

and on the other hand, with a story line with actors,

you know, and making those two things marry.

[ Lucas ] I hadn't realized that, you know, ultimately,

it was probably easier for me to do these things than to farm them out.

Because it was even more complex than the last one,

I really did have to end up being there every day on the set...

And working very closely with Richard and shooting second unit.

There was really more work than I thought it was gonna be.

[ Narrator ] Under Lucas's supervision, the production moved to...

The redwood forests of northern California. "B" camera.

There they photographed one of the film's most exhilarating action sequences--

Hey, wait!

The speeder bike chase.

Quick. Jam their comlink. Center switch!

[ Muren ] I got the idea of using a Steadicam,

and we did a test in a local park here...

Of walking through the woods on a path that we kind of disguised,

and he shot with a camera that shot one frame of film every second.

So when you project it back 24 frames a second, it's going 24 times faster.

We figured you walked about five miles an hour--

it came up to about a hundred miles an hour, and it looked great.

[ Narrator ] Jedi surprised audiences with its imaginative scope--

both large and small.

It introduced a tiny but valiant new ally to the rebellion.

A race of pint-sized warriors known as Ewoks.

And action.

Hey! Point that thing someplace else.

[Arguing in Ewokese]

Hey!

Han, don't. It'll be all right.

Joining the cast was Warwick Davis, who was just a youngster at the time,

but also a die-hard Star Wars fan.

I was an 11-year-old boy at school, and my grandmother...

Happened to hear a radio commercial on the London radio station.

They were putting out a call for short people to be in this new Star Wars movie.

I don't think anybody on the movie was quite as excited as I was.

You know, being an 11-year-old on the Star Wars set, there was no stopping me.

[ Narrator ] In the role of Wicket, Davis became the film's...

Most prominently featured Ewok,

but only after Kenny Baker was suddenly taken ill.

I had this scene with Carrie and the speeder bikes...

In California in the redwoods.

I was looking forward to this. I thought, "Carrie’s nice. I like working with Carrie."

Come the morning of the shoot, Kenny was very ill in bed...

With what I believe was food poisoning.

I was seriously in pain.

They said, "well, we gotta do it because we've got Carrie Fisher in.

We've got the scene set up." So Warwick took over.

Seventy-two "A," take two. "A" and "B" cameras.

And, uh, they called me in to play the scene instead.

[ Man ] Action.

Eek!

Cut it out!

Grrrrr.

I had a dog at the time, and I remember whenever he would hear a strange noise,

he would tilt his head from side to side, uh, to look inquisitive.

I took those kind of movements and used them in the character.

So whenever he sees something or hears a strange sound, he would, you know,

tilt his head.

115-s, take three. "A" camera mark.

[ Man ] What did he say, Ewoks? He said, "look out!"

[ All yelling ]

[Speaking Ewokese]

[ Davis ] I like Ewoks.

I think they're in there to really show that you don't need technology.

You need the will and the belief to take you through anything.

Uh, and the fact that the Ewoks were able to defeat the Empire...

Only using ropes and rocks,

I think that said something about them as a race of creatures.

Fighters coming in!

[ Kasdan ] Doesn't matter how much machinery you had.

If the will of the people is strong, they will always win.

You've failed, your highness.

I am a Jedi,

like my father before me.

[ Man ] And action.

[ Narrator ] As filming on Revenge of the Jedi drew closer to completion,

emotions ran high.

And saying good-bye would be difficult.

[Singing in Ewokese]

[ Hamill ] As we were finishing the third one,

we really had the sense of it was the end.

That they were gonna tie up all the loose ends.

There was a kind of "clearing your locker out at the end of the semester" feel to it all.

So part of me was saying, "oh, I'm so glad to put this behind me."

And the other aspect was, "well, what about all the adventures Luke could have?"

[ Narrator ] For the moment, George Lucas was totally focused on...

Completing his epic trilogy.

He weighed every decision, including a change in Jedi’s title weeks before it opened.

Just before it got to the theaters, George came back and he said,

"I wanna go back to Return of the Jedi."

Now the logic behind that was a Jedi does not take revenge.

[ Narrator ] Return of the Jedi opened on Wednesday, may 25, 1983,

exactly six years from the day that Star Wars made its debut.

On its first day, the film took in $6.2 million,

making it the biggest opening-day box office in history...

By nearly a million dollars.

I told you they'd do it.

But for George Lucas, completing the trilogy involved personal sacrifice.

The success of Jedi would be bittersweet at best.

[ Lucas ] The challenge is trying to do something that's all-consuming...

With having a private life.

I had made the decision-- after Star Wars--

that I had certain goals in my private life.

One was to be independent of Hollywood, the other one ultimately was to have a family.

I finished Return of the Jedi. I figured that was the end of it for me.

I figured, "well, I've done it. I've finished my trilogy.

This is what I started out to do. This is what I was determined to get finished."

It was overwhelming and difficult, but fate has a way of stepping in.

I ended up getting divorced right as the film Jedi was finished,

and I was left to raise my daughter.

[ Narrator ] With the profits he made from the Star Wars movies and merchandise,

George Lucas was able to keep funding his dream of pushing the boundaries...

Of film and audio technology.

For the next two decades, he continued to create new and exciting innovations.

In the process, he fundamentally changed filmmaking for the better.

In 1984, Lucasfilm revolutionized motion picture editing...

With EditDroid and SoundDroid,

the world's first nonlinear digital editing systems.

For the first time, filmmakers could instantly access...

Any frame or audio track at the touch of a button.

In 1985, Lucasfilm's computer division invented the Pixar computer,

helping generate a new form of animation...

Characterized by three-dimensional realism.

The division was later sold and became Pixar animation studios,

the creator of such instant classics as Toy Story.

The digital breakthroughs that Lucas himself had ushered in...

Would eventually lead him back full circle to Star Wars.

In 1993, after helping create I.L.M.'s groundbreaking effects...

In Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park,

Lucas concluded that digital technology had finally caught up to his original vision.

In 1997, he would revisit and perfect his galactic saga at last...

With the Star Wars trilogy: Special Edition.

[ Man announcing ] For an entire generation,

people have experienced Star Wars the only way it's been possible--

on the TV screen.

But if you've only seen it this way, you haven't seen it at all.

Things I couldn't afford to do at the time. Things that I had to give up on...

Because I just didn't have the time or money or the power to do it,

I was able to go in, complete the films the way I originally intended them to be...

And have it be pretty much the way I want them to be.

[ Narrator ] In 1999, 22 years after the original premiere,

Lucas introduced Episode I: The Phantom Menace.

The film marked the beginning of another trilogy for a new generation.

It also allowed Lucas to continue his pioneering use of digital technology.

I'm finishing this for the love of Star Wars. I like Star Wars.

I want to see the whole thing finished.

[ Narrator ] For more than three decades,

George Lucas's passion and dedication to the Star Wars saga...

Has brought its share of rewards.

But like the force itself, success also has its dark side.

[ Lucas ] What I was trying to do is stay independent...

So I could make the movies I wanted to make.

But at the same time, I was sort of fighting the corporate system, which I didn't like.

I'm not happy with the fact that corporations have taken over the film industry.

But now I find myself being the head of a corporation.

So there's a certain irony there, is that I've become the very thing...

That I was trying to, uh, avoid,

which is basically what part of Star Wars is about.

The circle is now complete.

When I left you, I was but the learner.

Now I am the master.

That is Darth Vader. He becomes the very thing

that he's trying to protect himself against.

But, at the same time, I feel good that I'm able to make my movies...

The way I want them to be.

[ Narrator ] While George Lucas has remained true to his own vision,

it's been audiences everywhere who've reaped the rewards...

Ever since May 1977,

when moviegoers first caught sight of that galaxy far, far away.

[ Ford ] The themes that George is dealing with are so strong, so primordial.

The conflicts between children and their parents.

Luke Skywalker was George growing up.

George facing a conflict and the need to prove himself.

You have learned much, young one.

[ Ford ] And he did, powerfully.

You'll find I'm full of surprises.

[ Oz ] George was able to put the good guys and the bad guys and the mythology...

In a package that somehow touched us.

I don't know how. I guess if you know how, everybody'd be doing it.

Do. Or do not.

There is no try.

[ Jones ] I am so pleased to be a part of that whole legend, even as an observer.

And I am just an observer.

Most impressive.

He's created people that everyone in the world knows.

Any author that could create such memorable

characters would be a very happy person indeed.

Laugh it up, fuzzball.

[ Kazanjian ] He really established the independent film market.

His films changed epic productions.

He changed storytelling. He created what Hollywood is today.

I'm out of it for a little while,

everybody gets delusions of grandeur.

George was creating a new world for Hollywood,

and we were lucky enough to be a part of it.

[Luke] Come on!

[ Hamill ] He's not just the creator and director, now he is the studio.

He can make exactly the movie that he wants to make.

Obi-Wan has taught you well.

[ Braudy ] One of the things that George Lucas has done in Star Wars...

Is to communicate, in fact, with the younger self that resides...

Somewhere inside even the oldest person.

- Good shot, red 2. - I think our cultural imagination...

Has been transformed by Lucas's films...

By taking us back to stories that make us all feel...

That we share in the heroic journey of the human species on this earth.

The force will be with you always.

[ Cronkite ] George Lucas moved us into a new place in space,

a new time in the future,

which no one else had created up to that time.

Star wars had a tremendous impact on the young people,

as well as adults, for that matter.

[ Lucas ] I committed myself to making these movies. I believe in these movies.

I think they're very entertaining. I think if I can get a room full of people...

And they enjoy it, then I've done whatever I hope to do.

[ Narrator ] For George Lucas, what began as a quest for creative freedom,

became a philosophy, a cultural phenomenon and an empire of dreams.

Argh!

[Beep whistle blip]

And may the force go with you.