Star Wars Fun Facts

• George Lucas based the original Star Wars movie around ideas of 'The Hero with a Thousand Faces' by Joseph Campbell's book.
• Lucas used inspiration from Akira Kurosawa's 1958 film, 'The Hidden Fortress', to help tell the giant sci-fi story of Star Wars. The word Jedi is supposedly derived from the Japanese word Jidaigeki meaning period dramas. These are the types of films that Kurosawa would typically create.
• Lucas' initial draft for the Star Wars script was far too long. When 20th Century Fox agreed to make the movie, Lucas gave them the final screenplay which was over 200 pages long. The average screenplay for a movie is between 95 and 125 pages. Due to the length of the original screenplay, Lucas cut out the second two acts. The first act was made into what would be eventually called "Star Wars: A New Hope", and the latter two acts were made into "Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back", and "Star Wars: Return of the Jedi".
• Lucas initially used a series of 21 drawings which he commissioned from the illustrator Ralph McQuarrie to pitch and promote Star Wars.
• Harrison Ford was initially not intended to play the role of Han Solo. He had previously been cast in Lucas' movie "American Graffiti" and he wanted to look for unknown faces. He saw dozens of other actors, including Kurt Russell, but ended up choosing Harrison Ford because of his delivery feeding lines to the other actors.
• Orson Welles was originally going to be the voice of Darth Vader, but Lucas thought that his voice would be too recognizable.
• Star Wars' iconic opening crawl scene was created with practical effects. It was created by placing 2-foot-wide yellow letters over a 6-foot-long black paper background. The camera was slowly passed over the paper to mimic the crawl. In total, it took three hours to shoot.
• Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher actual had to perform the swing over the Death Star chasm themselves. The production couldn't afford stunt doubles so Hamill and Fisher, secured by safety harnesses, swung across the platform thirty feet above the studio floor.
• The original Millennium Falcon, unlike the one we know today, was long and cylindrical.
• Many theaters didn't want to show Star Wars. Less than forty theaters originally agreed to book show times for the movie after it's release date was moved up to before Memorial Day. The studio thought that it would bomb in a crowded summer movie lineup.
• After the amazing success of "Star Wars", and the studio trying to undermine Lucas every step of the way, he decided to fund "Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back" out of his own pocket. This was unheard of at the time. The Bank of America Branch that gave him a loan for the movie ended up pulling out, forcing him to ask 20th Century Fox for help and give up certain rights on the movie.
• Some of the scenes from "The Empire Strike Back" that occur on the planet Hoth were filmed at a glacier in Norway.
• Yoda was originally called "Buffy"

   

  . This was eventually changed to "Minch Yoda" which was later shortened to the name we know today, simply "Yoda".