Mark Hamill says that Empire Strikes Back ending could have been much, much more depressing
The gang's optimistic look towards the galaxy and their future wasn't originally written in the stars
Aux News Mark Hamill
Believed to be one of the best sequels of all time, The Empire Strikes Back twisted the established ideas of the original film with a more serious tone and the notion that the heroes don’t always win.
Towards the end of the film, Luke Skywalker loses a whole limb to Darth Vader, with said enemy dropping some pretty shocking parentage news on the poor guy. Then, Leia confesses her love to Han, everyone’s favorite smuggler, right before he gets a cold carbonite bath. The audience and characters just keep taking one hit after another, but there was a bit of starlight at the end of the tunnel. After facing devastating losses, the two heroes hug each other and look out at the galaxy as John Williams’ score brings a hopeful note to the character’s futures.
The ending is iconic, highlighting Star Wars’ ability to balance the light and the dark throughout its films. That wasn’t always the plan though, according to force user and voice actor extraordinaire Mark Hamill. After fans inquired whether the final shot of Luke and Leia hugging was a re-shoot, Hamill confirmed it himself on Twitter.
“Filmed 4 months after we wrapped principal photography on [Empire Strikes Back], it wasn’t a ‘re-shoot,’ it was an added scene,” replied Hamill. With there being concerns “about the downbeat ending [and] thorough defeat of the protagonists,” Hamill says that the final shot was included as “an uplifting moment of hope [and] rejuvenation to reassure the audience.”
Re-shoots and adding new scenes right before the movie comes out isn’t new for the Star Wars franchise. Just in 2019, the world got to throw up their lightsabers as Lucasfilm altered the iconic Han/Greedo scene (again) with the launch of Disney+. Though, it feels like the force was balanced with the addition of The Empire Strikes Back’s optimistic final scene instead of tilting too far into the dark side.
162 Comments
One thing I’ve been wondering about that movie: did most people believe Darth Vader when he said he was Luke’s father?
That fall in my 2nd grade class (I’m old), it was split about 50/50 between the kids who believed him and those who thought he was lying. May have led to one or two playground fights, which I always think about when I see people acting like idiots over their opinion on the quality of The Last Jedi.
The summer between 4th and 5th grade and fifth grade I don’t remember any of us questioning it. I think the line of reasoning was Only 3 people with the force have been main characters. We also assumed after that Obi was Darth’s dad.
Well, I didn’t have the degree of issues some people had with The Last Jedi (I thought Mark Hamill was good but the film was mediocre for me at best) but after I saw interview footage of Rian Johnson maligning The Empire Strikes Back, now I want to hire a team of professionals to kick his ass! That monster.
strange he’d do that, since his movie also ended with the heroes on the ropes but a scene of hopefulness involving a young force sensitive boy looking out on the stars
Same age here. I remember lots of debates about the topic, but no actual fights. The consensus was Vader was telling the truth, but nobody liked it.
12 year old me thought he was lying. Remember – there was no internet to discuss it on either. We had to read about it in magazines (which were printed on paper) that came out weekly or monthly.
Next thing you’re going to tell us is that this “paper” was somehow made from “trees”.As if.
I’m older, so they were usually written on scrolls of papyrus (when not chiseled on stone). It was always fun to unroll the scrolls and read the comments at the bottom.
It was a big step up from the sticks and mud tablets — those things kept drying out and falling apart after a while.
We don’t talk about the dark times…
That is also probably to some extent why pop culture moments don’t seem to happen the same way. Something like Star Wars could crowd everything else out because there wasn’t a substitute being released 5 minutes later. Everyone didn’t have Tumblr/Reddit/Etc. to OD on the topic after 1 month.It was a fun part of the childhood without overstaying its welcome. Releases also weren’t as scheduled so there was no telling when “the answer” would show up.Edit: I kinda flipped when I saw I was grey but then saw I was at AV Club, not io9.
At the time, it seemed ambiguous; like, Vader could have been lying. It wasn’t finally confirmed until RotJ.
I was 6 at the time and saw it in a theater near Times Square, my brother was 9 and we believed him as my brother had a Vader poster in our room as kids. But man were we shook!
You crack me up every time you post about nostalgic stuff! I immediately relate because we are apparently the exact same age. I saw it with my older cousin, who was also 9. And we were also shook!
Thanks, I like to give people a feeling of what it was like to be around then!Ha, funny that we are the same age but man it really did shake us kids didn’t it! Everything went wrong and after the 1st movie who would have thought Luke or Han could ever fail! The wait for Return of the Jedi was 3 years but felt like forever and I remember back then (which was big deal) news shows giving updates about it being filmed.
Shook to the core! Oh man ROTJ was the biggest event movie of my lifetime.
When Kevin Smith once said “as a kid I could have died happy after Return of the Jedi” he wasn’t kidding! All of us kids left that movie so happy! I love the yub yub song to end the movie!
I was a senior in high school when it came out and I was pretty confident that he was lying.
Also thought he was lying and was genuinely shocked when Yoda confirmed it. I didn’t understand how movies work.
I remember a lot of discussion in 7th grade about that! Thus began nerd arguments that continue today!
SPOILER ALERT!
I totally believed him. Can’t remember anyone else saying they didn’t, but that was a LONG time ago, so…
Same. At the time (somewhere in high school) it didn’t even occur to me and my circle of friends (who saw it more than once) that Vader might have been lying.I think the magnitude of the moment, “search your feelings”, and combined with (a minute later) Luke & Vader’s psionic Force Chat exchange where Luke essentially acknowledged it, was enough for us.
Most? Dunno. But “Dark Father” seemed on the money since Luke S was the name of the director.
Totally thought he was lying.
I didn’t believe it the first time I saw the movie, but on second viewing, I was less sure.
I was only a kid back then but I remember being in denial. It might have been the first movie with a sad ending I ever watched.
It might have been the first movie with a sad ending I ever watched.The ‘Infinity War’ of our generation. My kids were shook after that ending and reminded me of myself trying to come to terms with ESB.Now I see them both as the pinnacles of their respective canons.
Yes.
In isolation I would have assumed he was lying. But the look on Luke’s face said he felt it to be true (granted, at Darth’s urging). So I leaned “believed.”
I was in grade 1 I think, and yeah, there was no consensus at all on this one until grade 4. Wild to think that there was once this three year period when we just didn’t know.
No. If it was meant to create uncertainty in who these characters were, then it succeeded perfectly.
That’s why I still think the correct way to watch Star Wars is the original trilogy first.
3rd grade me never considered Vader might be lying until some of my friends said that he might be lying. There were articles in the Scholastic weekly reader about it and everything.
10 year old me was pissed because it seemed like something right out of General Hospital, and all the other soaps my mother watched. It might as well have been:
I was 11 and saw it the first day it was out. I don’t remember any of us questioning it. Was a long time ago though and certainly saw it multiple times. Perhaps our thinking changed on subsequent viewings. Back then people didn’t fight about the color of people’s belt buckles and shit in films like they do now.
Age 7, so maybe not a very critically-minded viewer, but I assumed he had to be telling the truth.The scene with the Emperor is pretty heavy foreshadowing, really, even before the Special Edition.
10 year old me was so completely horrified at the idea. I was positive that it wasn’t true.
I thought he was lying. And then the movie ended without the good guys winning. I was screwed up. I would believe any awful thing you told 7 year old me. I saw Star Wars 4 times in theatre. I saw Empire once and that was plenty.
While that twist / reveal always irked me (it’s too on the nose for a trilogy loosely inspired by samurai movies and Greek tragedy), I found it really interesting how my 7 year old friends and I responded. First response, sitting in the theater, was to believe Vader. After sleeping on it, we thought maybe it’s a lie. But then we re-watch Star Wars on a movie channel or someone’s state of the art VCR, and we realize the reveal was telegraphed for years. Then, two years later, we read in Variety that photography had begun on Revenge of the Jedi. We all give each other a nod that we’re all thinking the same thing: a father vs. son rematch. That was something that the prequels missed, by the way. Darth Maul was worthy of a rematch with Obi Wan. It’s okay to make the audience wait.
i was 12 or 13 at the time, and what choice did we have but to believe him or not, and argue about it with friends and on the playground until Jedi came out? what i’m saying is, it was perfect and it was the best of times.
I was a child and thought he was lying.
I was all of 12 when Empire came out, but no, I did not believe him. I assumed he was lying.
It’s James Earl Jones – how could you not believe it? I was 9 at the time and seem to recall taking it at face value.
At the time, it was either Vader was lying or Obi-Wan was lying when he told Luke his father was a Jedi.Not many people would have figured out they were both telling the truth.
I was around 2-3 years old when I watched ESB for the first time (one of the first movies I remember watching) and once I saw Luke’s hand get cut off I don’t know that anything immediately following that really registered with me. Darth Vader could have said that he was MY dad and I probably wouldn’t have absorbed that.
I watched Return of the Jedi within the next year or two, so I never really recall a time not knowing that Vader was Luke’s father.
I believed him because Luke seemed to believed him. Luke searched his feelings and was magic.
I was 8 at the time and I thought he was lying… sometimes at that age you’re conditioned to believe that the bad guy is always lying.
I was 5 in 1980 and I KNEW Vader was lying.
I hadn’t seen A New Hope prior to Empire , but was very familiar with the plot of the first film from one of those “read along” record albums that featured no-name voice actors, rather than the actual movie cast. They gave Vader a more distorted and mechanical-sounding voice than in the movies, so I assumed the character was a robot- it sounds like the producers of the record were under that impression as well.So, I was 6 at the time I saw it in theater, and I didn’t understand that there was supposed to be a human underneath the outfit. I was more puzzled than anything else how a robot could be Luke’s father.
I STG that part of the hype for ESB was a “Who is Luke’s father?” tagline, and I remember thinking who else could it be but Vader? Am I imagining this? I swear I actually had conversations with my friends about it. But memory is tricky.Anyway, I absolutely believed it when I heard him say it.
I just remember putting on the cassette tape that came with the storybook and laughing very very hard at “No…it’s not true…that’s impossible!” with a childhood friend. For years until Jedi came out. You had to make your own entertainment back then.
15-year old me was all in on it. My older brother and I couldn’t stop talking about it to our parents (who basically ‘saw’ Star Wars from our eternal gibbering three years previous). We never for even a second thought he could be lying.
At first I wasn’t sure. Then I searched my feelings and knew it to be true.
So…which parts were added? Everything after Vader’s final scene or just that final shot of them looking out the window?
the whole scene in the medical ship i believe.
Sounds like all the “hopeful” stuff was added. All the talk about rescuing Han and meeting on Tatooine and “I’ll wait for your signal” and all that.I’m more interested in what they cut out. What’s left wouldn’t have worked on its own.
Agreed, ending with Vader silently walking away from the bridge would have been interesting but too abrupt.
I’m guessing there was something else there. Maybe Luke getting his artificial hand. Maybe Chewie and Lando loading up the Falcon and leaving?
Just in 2019, the world got to throw up their lightsabers as Lucasfilm altered the iconic Han/Greedo scene (again) with the launch of Disney+. Maclunkey!
You’re off the force MacClunkey! I want your blaster and your badge on my desk NOW!
MacClunkey is a good cop!
You’re only saying that because he gets results
Chief: “Alright MacClunkey; your partners have a bad habit of dying! Now, I got some new partners for you: a Bith musician, an R2 droid, a sofa and a cute little Force-sensitive kid!”
*Droid explodes*
MacClunkey: “That’s a new one on me!”
“Force.” Nice.
Towards the end of the film, Luke Skywalker loses a whole limb to Darth VaderNitpicky language guy says: A hand isn’t a limb. Discuss.
It’s certainly not a whole limb
That makes sense. But what about a penis? Is that a limb or a protuberance?
It depends – how cold is the pool?
Depends on how you use it.
No that’s a HOLE limb.
Honestly, half the time it’s just an annoyance.
Hey, I found my wife’s avatar!
It’s an extremity.
So are you.
Harsh but fair.
Haven’t you been on this site forever? Why are you in the greys?
Am I?
It’s actually a legume.
No, Legume is the creator, it’s Legume’s Monster.
That’s only true if it’s from the Legume’s Monster region of France.
You nitpick that but not that the author suggests Han is frozen AFTER Luke has his hand cut off?
It isn’t nitpicky at all. Let’s put it this way if one needed a hand amputated and the surgeon decided to chop the whole arm off because hand, limb, what’s the diff? I’m sure one would sue.
One the best scenes to end a movie in my life and maybe behind Jaws as my favorite/best movie in my lifetime. Now I will say I have the paintings that a lot of people had from back then, I forget the artist but man that finale shot of Empire looked like a painting. And I also had the trading card of it.Fuck, I’m humming the closing in my head right now.
Wait so it was just that shot which was added, right? Not the whole scene. Cause ending it before that scene would not have really made sense. But I could see it just being the Falcon taking off and the shot of the ship, without cutting in the shot of them looking from inside the ship.
Yeah I’ve got the same question.
He seems to indicate that the entire Luke/Leia scene was added later. Even the Chewie/Lando scene gives us some hope for the next film, so that might have also been a late addition.You’re right that there had to have been something, though. They wouldn’t have ended the film with the Falcon rescuing Luke and jumping into hyperspace. Even that is a pretty triumphant moment.
Star Wars, going downhill since 1980…
kinja’ed!
.
Kinja, going downhill since … day f*cking one.
Remember when we were gonna get used to it quickly and accept change and the future and things would improve? then the engagement became like 1/10th or less of what it used to be.
I watched these movies with my son for the first time last week, and I had actually forgotten how solid Empire Strikes Back is. Kirshner had a really great eye for camera placement – the direction is deliberately old fashioned, with lots of long ish shots, and the way he directs action through the frame is much more elegant than the other movies. That lightsaber battle between Luke and Vader is very intense, largely because the direction makes good use of space and emphasizes how physically imposing and visually frightening Vader is. That said, my son kind of wanted to give up on Star Wars after watching it, and I really softened on Return of the Jedi when I saw how much his 6 year old brain needed to see the heroes win.
It really does add a whole new layer to watch them and see them through your kids’ eyes. I picked up on the direction and look of the movie, too. The orange glow in the carbon freeze chamber looks absolutely hellish. My daughter was 7 when I showed it to her and when it ended I could see her little brain melting. “Wait. No. That’s . . . that’s the end? But the bad guys won!”
My 3 1/2 year old today asked to watch the movie with darf bacon.
It’s extra funny because it still totally sounds like a real SW character name.
… mmmm, Force Bacon. Fried up Dark Side style ….
Whereas my kids saw Infinity War first, so ESB was a light pleasant spring breeze by comparison.
I always had a problem with ESB’s pacing. The movie took a HUGE nap in the middle. Lots of shoe leather. Dagobah was chintzy and ponderous, especially the Vader-in-the-cave bit. The training montage was wooden and hollow, I don’t care if Kurosawa would have done it that way. I’m the kind of guy who likes the first of the recurring SNL bits. I like how the world discovers something new, and it’s a pure concept. The magic dies when The Superfans becomes formula. I could watch Episode IV multiple times, but really could pass on any other Skywalker saga movie.If ESB picked up right after IV with the same breathless, nonstop movement, I’d enjoy it more. Instead, ESB has a great opening scene…. and then we all have a sit.
It’s so weird how few films Kershner directed. And how few of them were major pictures. Other than ESB, pretty much his only other big movie was the unofficial (non-Eon) James Bond film Never Say Never Again. And I suppose Robocop 2 if you want to count that as “major” which is debatable. He certainly did a good job on ESB but based on his resume I wonder why he was picked. He hadn’t even done those other two films yet.
Wasn’t he one of George Lucas’ film school teachers? I guess he just liked the guy? Kinda how like Lee Strasberg had a pretty big role in Godfather II because he was Al Pacino’s acting teacher. That was only the third film he was in, and he was in fewer than 10 films total.
I had no idea, thanks for this. He did a great job as Hyman Roth.
He was one of Lucas’ teachers at USC.
Um, ‘The Eyes of Laura Mars’ would like to have a word…
I would put that on the “minor pile” — it was a mediocre thriller with mixed to negative (Ebert gave it 1 and a half stars) reviews that still was a commercial success in part because it was made only on $7 million. Which went further in 1978, granted, but still kind of a low budget — major pictures in those days had budgets of $20 million or so. And Empire Strikes Back made two years later was $30 million, but that was considered a very expensive movie.
It was a joke
IIRC he was George Lucas’ film professor at USC, and Lucas needed a non-union director (due to his dispute with the DGA) who he trusted to run the production while Lucas focused on the editing and effects.
He certainly did a good job on ESB but based on his resume I wonder why he was picked.He was one of George Lucas’s teachers at USC. At the same time, he had directed an eclectic series of small independent films. Kershner was the kind of artist Lucas really wanted to become. Not surprising that Lucas chose him.(There’s also the whispers that Lucas wanted to choose directors who didn’t have a lot of industry clout, so he didn’t have to yield any power over the films, but that’s perhaps a bit unkind.)
I’m with your kid on that one, although at the time we didn’t know Star Wars was something you could quit. I was pretty devastated coming out of the theater the first time, and I can’t imagine how bad I would’ve felt if that additional scene wasn’t there, with the somewhat childish reassurance that Luke would get a “good as new” prosthesis for his lopped-off hand.
Yeah, I was a kid when this was in theaters and that was one quiet crowd shuffling out of the theater. After the triumph of Star Wars, definitely NOT what anyone was expecting.
My favorite was when Luke falls out that trapdoor at the bottom of the Cloud City and is dangling over the abyss, my son threw up his hands and shouted, “Why would they have a door like that?”
I assumed it was yet another garbage system. Luke liked to mess around in those.
I always assumed that since the city was a floating gas mine, that was either where the gas they were mining came in, or a vent for waste gas that wasn’t the gas they were mining.
I never saw any of the Star Wars movies in the theater because of the Force being a non-Christian religion, and therefore Satanic, but I did catch the second half of The Empire Strikes Back on TV, completely out of context, and I came away with the impression that Star Wars was a very bleak, serious, and dark franchise.I also wandered right into the middle of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’s series premiere and was thoroughly confused by the constant cuts between the normal-enough-looking standoff with the Cardassians (with Chief O’Brien, there, for some reason), and this weird stuff with a guy who appeared to be trapped in some kind of hell dimension, begging to be let out, and being told “but you exist here.” I ended up getting the impression that DS9 was a really weird, high-concept, incomprehensible thing.What I’m saying, I guess, is that I had pretty weird luck. 😛
I decided to watch the original trilogy with my daughter when she was between 2.5 – 3 years old (I was about the same age when I watched them) in 20 minute chunks. I wasn’t sure if they’d really speak to her as they were definitely more “grown up” than anything she’d watched before, but she loved them, especially Empire Strikes Back, for some reason.
While Empire is my favorite of the series now, as a kid I was partial to Return of the Jedi, probably because it was nice to see the primary protagonist of the series not get his ass kicked for the duration of the film (which is something that anyone can appreciate, of course, but is especially nice to see when you’re less jaded).
My 3 year old daughter loved it because it had lots of Chewbacca. Meanwhile, even before the Luke/Vader fight, my son kept asking, “Why does all this bad stuff keep happening to Han Solo?” Also, as a younger sibling I’m clearly recreating my own childhood where the older kids have to wait to a certain age to see things, and the younger ones just catch them when they’re playing. We agreed my son could watch Star Wars when he turned six. Our daughter? Eh.
One of the biggest contrasts between the first two films for me is the use of lighting. Lucas mostly just flooded the sets with studio lighting, whereas everything in Empire looks colder, wetter and darker.
It’s been some time since I watched it all in context, but I am still willing to say that the duel between Vader and Luke on Cloud City probably belonds among the greatest sword fights in cinema history. The story is told through their body language and choreography in a way that the flashy acrobatics of the prequel fights cannot come close to touching, making them look soulless and without stakes in comparison.
Again, it was more impressive than I remembered. People made a big deal over the Vader scene in Rogue One, which is fun and all, but it’s mostly about cool Force powers. The fight on Bespin really emphasizes how unsettling it would be to have a massive guy in armor chasing you with a sword. Also I’d forgotten the little bit where Luke gets one good hit on Vader’s shoulder, and Vader responds by cutting off Luke’s hand. The prequels didn’t even try anything at that level, which is what it is. The bigger disappointment is the lightsaber battle in Return of the Jedi, where Vader just kind of loses his footing after Like charges at him.
Yeah, the RotJ fight isn’t as good, though their final pass – when Luke is giving into anger – I dig a lot.
I’m mixed on Vader’s combat scene in Rogue One. I think it’s clearly fanservice and that it’s mostly there for the wrong reason, i.e. it’s fun to watch the evil wizard space fascist executing people. On the other hand, fanservice isn’t always bad, and it was a good visual demonstration the Empire’s unstoppable might.
I thought it would have been far more interesting if one of the main characters had been in that hallway, to get carved through like butter. But I feel like Disney might not go for that, for marketing reasons.
“Kirshner had a really great eye for camera placement”As if all that stuff wasn’t storyboarded to the nth degree months in advance to fit in with all the effects… I don’t see much visual flair in his other films.
Plus Ewoks!
Hamill is great on Twitter.
Like when he tweeted the word “gay” 69 times yesterday in response to Florida’s “Don’t say ‘gay’” bill.
Nice
Lifelong crush on Mark Hamill: continuing
I used to watch Corvette Summer sooo many times as a kid.
Danny Bonaduce’s best film!
The lowest of low bars.
and then almost got a time-out because of it. then they determined that he didn’t actually violate any rule.
I don’t think he was in any serious danger of a suspension; somebody in Germany reported his tweet, they investigated, and they denied the complaint.Happens all the time, the only difference is that German law requires Twitter to notify the person reported.
Well, he’ll never be allowed to be a substitute teacher in Florida.
It’s his thoroughness and dedication to accuracy that I admire.
We should high-five.
Has any movie franchise been discussed, inspected, and obsessed over more? How is this fact (any fact) just coming out now?
Possibly because it’s not very interesting.
So the final scene of the film could have been Vader watching the Falcon hyperspace away and then huffing off the bridge of the Executor? That would have been fine, but abrupt. It was a wise move to show our heroes licking their wounds. You know, a real downer of an ending would have been having one of them die. Imagine the wookie dying trying to save Han from capture? What fun is Empire and Jedi if none of them perish?
Counterpoint: Empire Strikes Back was released in 1980. Audiences were still pretty used to downbeat and bummer endings, the previous decade having seen a sort of all time high for such things. Consider the endings to the films in what was the closest thing to a sci fi blockbuster franchise before Star Wars, the Planet of the Apes series:Planet of the Apes (1968): I won’t rehash/spoil it for those who still haven’t seen it yet. Let’s just call it the biggest sucker punch/mic drop/twist ending Rod Serling ever engineered outside of a Twilight Zone episode.Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970): After the previous film’s main character Taylor (Charlton Heston) is mortally wounded, he uses his dying moments to set off a megaton thermonuclear weapon, literally destroying all life on Earth. The film then ends with this uplifting little piece of narration:
In one of the countless
billions of galaxies in the universe, lies a medium-sized star, and one
of its satellites, a green and insignificant planet, is now dead.
I’d love to see the MCU attempt to pull off something so final and hopeless.Nonetheless, they came back with Escape from Planet of the Apes (1971). That one ends with the only truly nice characters we’ve met in the entire series, Cornelius and Zira (Roddy McDowell and Kim Hunter), being hunted down and murdered by agents of the U.S. Government. Their orphaned, infant child escapes by being smuggled to safety as a circus chimp.And then there was Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972), which features the aforementioned son named Ceasar (also played by McDowell) growing up in an America which has been transformed into a fascist technocracy. His adoptive father, one of the few decent humans we’ve met in the whole series, is tortured and murdered by said government, prompting Ceasar to lead a revolution. The original cut of the film ended with this nice, uplifting speech:
“Where there is fire, there is smoke. And in that smoke, from this day
forward, my people will crouch, and conspire, and plot, and plan for the
inevitable day of man’s downfall. The day when he finally and
self-destructively turns his weapons against his own kind. The day of
the writing in the sky, when your cities lie buried under radioactive
rubble! When the sea is a dead sea, and the land is a wasteland out of
which I will lead my people from their captivity! And we shall build our
own cities, in which there will be no place for humans except to serve
our ends! And we shall found our own armies, our own religion, our own
dynasty! And that day is upon you now!”
Finally, the last original entry, Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973) ended on a somewhat upbeat note, suggesting reconciliation and peaceful coexistence between humans and the other apes might be possible. Ironically, this was the worst received of the series.
Starred for preserving literally decades’ worth of spoiler alert material.That’s professionalism. Well done.
And apparently, Planet of the Apes was rated… G. Fucking G.Man, the 70s had some *grit*.
G. Gavin Gunhold?
My fav ‘bad ending’ is Dirty Mary Crazy Larry. The Fast & The Furious should have ended like that.
Punch it, baby!
Yeah, but didn’t the statue of Caesar at the end of the final movie cry? I seem to remember the narrator making a note of that, which to 7 year old me indicated the future was going to be a repeat of the older movies.
yeah MCU needs a FAT CITY-style ending to really show the kids what’s what
Those films were pumped out one right after the other. As an impatient kid, it was great to keep seeing them every year or so and revisiting the storyline. My parents were way-too-permissible film lovers which allowed me to see some brilliant and intense movies way back when, in an age of many masterpieces… That permissiveness made me into the movie lover I am today. I had no problem with the darkness of Empire… To me it didn’t seem like a downer, it made me feel excited, anticipating how the whole saga would play out.
this article calls it a “re-shoot” several times, and yet Mark specifically says it was not one.
That’s not exactly the kind of journalism we expect from the Kinja AVClub!
He might not consider it a re-shoot, but it certainly qualifies.Re-shoots are anything they film after principal photography is wrapped. That includes all-new scenes in addition to replacements for old ones.I think he was trying to emphasize that the entire scene was created specifically as a reaction to viewing the rough cut.
well, he was the professional actor who was actually there, so it’s true that i’m just trusting that he knows what he’s talking about.
By definition it’s a re-shoot. Any filming after principal photography wraps is called a re-shoot. One professional actor might want to use a different term to emphasize its unprecedented nature or something (maybe he’s trying to draw a distinction between pick-ups and re-shoot?), but that doesn’t mean the AV Club is wrong to use it.For a site too cheap to use editors, there’s a relatively unlimited list of things we can pick on. This seems a strange complaint.
Don’t forget, Lucas had ILM produce 3 more FX shots after the movie had already premiered on 70mm, but before the 35mm engagements. The shots help clarify the spacial relationship of Lando/Chewie on the Falcon relative to Luke/Leia on the medical frigate. 3 FX shots plus the score had to get adjusted, and it all had to get inserted into the cut negative. Then they had to print all the final reels again then ship them to theaters. All in 3 weeks. That’s nuts.
Most boring SW movie.
I once threw up a lightsaber. It hurt.
So what would the last shot have been?
The medical droid telling Luke they don’t have any prosthetics in his size or complexion?
No, that his insurance didn’t cover it.
Towards the end of the film, Luke Skywalker loses a whole limb to Darth Vader…He loses a hand, not a limb.
Hope and optimism are relative. Eight-year-old me settled back in his seat during the final scene, ready for the rescue of Han to commence. Then…credits. I walked out of the theatre sobbing. “How long until the next one?” “Three years, probably.” Three years was FOR. EV. ER. And yeah, I believed Vader.
I’m glad they decided to not have Leia give Luke a happy ending
And to think, without this re-shoot/not-a-re-shoot, we would’ve not gotten this.I wish that person on Twitter had asked Hamill if he had any explanation about Lando wearing Han’s clothes.
The Falcon having originally been Lando’s ship, I like to think that they were always his clothes, and Han just took them.
This one seems pretty obvious: Lando and Han were fucking.
You should know, a hand is not, “a whole limb”. The whole (upper) limb is divided into the arm between shoulder and
elbow; the forearm between elbow and wrist; and the hand below the wrist. Luke lost he hand. It was awful, and shocking, but it wasn’t a whole limb.