TRIVIA
The name Wookiee came about when San Francisco DJ Terry McGovern was doing voice-over work on THX 1138 for Lucas. He made a blunder and exclaimed, "I think I ran over a wookiee back there." Lucas, confused, asked what he meant by the term. McGovern admitted that he didn't know and added that he simply made it up. Lucas never forgot the cute word and used it years later in Star Wars.
R2-D2 is renamed C1-P8 for all the Italian versions of the Star Wars trilogy.
The sound of a TIE fighter is created by combining the squeal of a young elephant with the sound of a car driving by on a rain-slicked highway.
After the good guys have blasted all the hidden cameras, Han goes to the command station, but it's hard not to notice the remaining camera peering down on Han.
When the heroes are in the Death Star trash compactor, watch Luke's mouth just after you hear the roar of the dianoga You can see him lip "What was that?" but no words come out.
After Luke gets attacked in the trash compactor Han and Leia wait for him to resurface. There is than a shot of Leia, leaning to the left against some garbage. Next there's close up of her, who is now leaning to the right.
Watch Leia's left hand as she grabs a metal pole in the trash compactor to try and brace the walls as it crunches momentarily, and when she loosens her grip, it returns to normal.
Cardboard cutouts are used for some of the background starfighters in the Rebel hanger bay.
Mark Hamill held his breath for so long during the trash compactor scene that he broke a blood vessel in his face. Subsequent shots are from one side only.
When the trash compactor walls are closing in on the Death Star, Chewie's position changes in three cuts.
During part of the dialog as Darth and Tarkin are talking about Obi-wan, Darth stops talking, but keeps gesticulating as though he is saying something. Tarkin doesn't respond to his comment until after he stops gesticulating.
When Chewie and Han arrive first in the hallway leading to the Millennium Falcon, you can see Luke and Leia's shadows, waiting to run in on cue.
Vader's image was flipped during the fight with Obi-wan.Watch his breast plate after he says: "You should not have come back."
During the saber duel, there are several shots where you can see a white power cord, supplying power to the lightsabers.
At several points,, you can just see Dave Prowse's eyes through Vader's mask. It was fixed in the later films.
Just after Darth Vader kills Obi Wan his light saber is white, rather than red. This is because the coloring was added after the film was made, and the optical effects crews forgot to add color to this one scene.
At the start of things, 3PO dented the left side of his head during an attack by the Sand People. In the control room however the dent is on the right side.
As the Rebel fighters attack the Death Star Porkins (Red 6) is killed. Later, as Luke is piloting his fighter down the trench in the battle station, Vader scores a direct hit on Luke's fighter. Luke asks R2 to try and fix it and someone on the comm says "... Red 6, can you see Red 5?"
During the medal ceremony, we are shown a close up of Han, and then cut to a shot of Leia, who is smiling brightly. She turns to screen right to get Han's medal from General Dadonna, but when the camera shows us a wider angle, the smile is gone.
At the start of the film Darth Vader is strangling a rebel officer on the Tantive IV. The far left Stormtrooper has his blaster at waist level. When the camera shows a different angle, the same trooper is holding his blaster at chest level. Finally the camera returns to the original angle, and the troopers blaster is back where it started.
When R2-D2 firsts gets put into the Jawa's sandcrawler he looks around at the creatures there. The second time he looks at R5-D4,he turns his head and you can see the face of Kenny Baker, the operator of the droid, through the bubble on R2's head.
Just after the Jawa tells C-3PO to leave the crawler the same Jawa says, "Here comes the window cleaner."
After the R5-D4 unit breaks, and we cut to show R2-D2 turning his head, you can see the Jawas prepping the R5-D4 droid that had just broke! This piece of footage was also reused, if you pat attention, you can see this same shot before R5 broke, while Owen is buying 3PO.
When Luke is eating with Owen and Beru, his cup keeps switching hands.
At one point when the prospects for the movie's release seemed bleakest, the idea came up that perhaps the effects could be removed from the movie and recycled into a TV show.
In the original plot from 1973, called The Adventures of the Starkiller and set in the 33rd century, Luke Skywalker was a general of an unnamed "rebel princess."
There is a brown shawl hanging on the wall of Ben's house. After Ben gives Luke the lightsaber and says "This is the weapon of a Jedi Knight..." it vanishes, but is back after Luke tuns the lightsaber off.
When Leia is about to be tortured and the torture droid enters the cell, you can see the crane that is holding the droid in the air. It's between the droid and the right side of the door.
Han and Luke "transfer" Chewbacca from cell block 1138: Lucas directed THX 1138 in 1970.
Ford, Harrison deliberately didn't learn his lines for the intercom conversation in the cell block, so it would sound spontaneous.
When Luke and Ben enter the cantina there are shots of various aliens. One is a mousy alien, and when she turns his head, you can see right through her eyes.
After Han says, "Looks like someone is beginning to take an interest in your handiwork", the camera cuts to the stormtroopers. You can see the mousy alien take a drink and totally miss his mouth!
In the scene with Han Solo and Greedo in the Cantina, if you watch carefully, just before Han blasts Greedo, the real Greedo is replaced with a dummy that explodes.
During several shots of Luke and Obi-wan rushing down the streets of Mos Eisley, you can see a green alien in the crowds, who is the just departed Greedo.
When Luke and the gang go to the Falcon it is clearly missing its trade mark radar dish.
When Chewie runs to the cockpit to fly the Falcon out of Mos Eisley, his head hits 2 small objects that appear to be small dice.
Debate still rages about this one. Rumour has it that at the end of Star Wars when Luke leaps from the X-wing after returning from destroying the Death Star that he shouts out the "Carrie" - the actresses's name - rather than "Heyyy" as Leia runs up.
Star Wars was expected to be a complete
flop but Sir Alec Guinness thought otherwise. Rather than take a fee for his appearance he
asked for a share of the profits - a decision that netted him several million pounds.
Peter Cushing was renowned as one of horror's greatest actors. But when he came to play Grand Moff Tarkin his image took a bit of a knock. He couldn't fit into the tight leather boots he had been given so opted for some soft plimsolls that were around - and that's why you rarely see a full body shot of Tarkin
There were major problems getting R2-D2 to go in the right direction during the first film. After Leia places the tapes inside him, you can see the cute droid turn and head straight for a wall before the shot cuts away.
On Tatooine when the hologram of Leia appears, C3-PO is so shocked that he falls off the step he is on.
Han Solo's blaster was manufactured from a "Broomhandle" Mauser Pistol.
"Vader" is Dutch for "father."
20th Century Fox was so sure Star Wars was going to be a disaster that they came within a few days of selling their stake in the film as a tax shelter. Positive feedback from an advanced screening made them reconsider, and the profits from the film ended up saving the studio from bankruptcy.
Denis Lawson, who played Wedge Antilles, is the uncle of Ewan McGregor, who played Obi-Wan Kenobi in The Phantom Menace.
The Director's Guild of America (DGA) didn't like the fact that there were no specific credits at the beginning of the film. They "ordered" Lucas to recut the film and put some credits at the beginning. Lucas refused, claiming that this would destroy the opening of the film. The DGA fined Lucas, who paid up, and promptly quit the DGA.
The Millennium Falcon was originally modelled after a hamburger with an olive next to it.Two different basic designs were created for the Millennium Falcon. The rejected one became the Rebel Blockade Runner seen at the start of the film.
Derived from a Japanese movie called Kakushi toride no san akunin (1958), Obi-Wan Kenobi was modeled after a Samurai warrior, and C-3PO and R2-D2 are derived from a couple of petty crooks he conscripted to help rescue a princess.
The word "Jedi" is derived from the Japanese words "Jidai Geki" which translate as "period drama.
Watch out for any scene with Aunt Beru in, as her voice is out of synch with her lips
You can see one extra who wasn't supposed to be in the film by Docking Bay 94 as Han and Chewie try to escape Mos Eisley. He's the one in the green shirt.
Jodie Foster was Lucas' second choice for Princess Leia. Christopher Walken and Nick Nolte were considered for the role of Han Solo. Burt Reynolds was originally cast as Han Solo but dropped out.
A great deal of the film was shot by vintage 1950s VistaVision cameras, because they were of higher quality than any others available. After the film was released, the prices of these cameras skyrocketed.
The episode number and subtitle "A New Hope" did not originally appear in the film's opening crawl. These were added in a later re-release to be consistent with those seen in The Empire Strikes Back.
The scene of an escape pod leaving Leia's ship was the first ever done by ILM.
C-3PO originally scripted as a "used car salesman" type, and designed after the robot from Metropolis (1926).
The Tatooine scenes were filmed in Tunisia. There is a town in Tunisia called "Tatahouine". Some of the interiors of Luke's house were filmed in a hotel in Tunisia, but the exterior is an actual home in the village of Matmata, where caves and craters have been inhabited for a long time.
After the sets were constructed, Lucas went through them and had every single one of them "dirtied up". The R2-D2s were all rolled in the dirt, nicked with a saw, and kicked around a bit.
The sounds of the lasers were made by striking one of the guy wires of a power pylon.
There is a rumour that Anthony Daniels (C-3PO) was having trouble timing his chats with R2-D2, as R2's dialogue was to be dubbed in later. Supposedly, Daniels asked Lucas to make some kind of noise to help him, but when Lucas forgot, the matter was dropped.
Chewbacca was modeled after Lucas' dog,
Indiana.
The following characters "have a bad feeling about this": Luke and Han. See also Empire Strikes Back, The (1980), and Return of the Jedi (1983).
The piece of equipment used to fire the Death Star's weapon is actually a Grass Valley Group 1600-7K television production switcher.
The targeting grid used for the Millennium Falcon's canon is based on a paperweight Lucas saw on Arthur C Clarke's desk
The Chewbacca suit retained a bad smell for the duration of filming after the trash-compactor scene.
Scenes featuring Luke and his Tatooine friend "Biggs" were cut from the film. Biggs was a young pilot who left the Imperial Academy to join the Rebellion. The character later shows up as a Rebel pilot who accompanies Luke down the final run on the Death Star trench and is killed by Darth Vader.
James Earl Jones supplied the voice of Darth Vader, but specifically requested that he not be credited, as he felt he had not done enough work to get the billing. He receives billing in the Special Edition.
Denis Lawson plays Wedge Antilles, although he is called "Dennis Lawson" in the credits.
Most of the crowd watching the heroes receive their medallions are cardboard cutouts.
The plot was heavily rewritten in 1974, and a farm boy named Annikin Starkiller was introduced. It also featured Annikin's father and younger brother, named Kane and Deak. Kane was a Jedi Master and Deak was a learner. Annikin became Luke Starkiller in a later draft of the screenplay, and changed to Luke Skywalker in the final draft.
In one draft of the screenplay, there were three Sith Lords who drew their power from a "Kiber Crystal." Obi-Wan survived the light sabre duel with Darth Vader, and stole the crystal. He gave it to Luke to take with him during the attack on the Death Star.