Skip to main content

production - Was Star Wars changed because of a car crash?


I recently heard a story that Mark Hamill was in a serious car accident between the filming of Episode IV: A New Hope and Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, and the resulting surgery, causing visible changes to his face, was the reason for the Wampa attack scene in The Empire Strikes Back. Apparently this scene was only filmed so that the change in Hamill's face due to real injuries could be explained away by in-universe injuries to Luke Skywalker.





Is there any truth to the tale that this scene was influenced by Hamill's real-life injuries, or was it already planned beforehand?




Answer



Seemingly, no it wasn't


On the DVD commentary for The Empire Strikes Back, George Lucas denied that the Wampa scene was created to address Hamill’s injuries, noting that the scene had been written some time earlier.


From IMDB



However, George Lucas explains in the DVD commentary that this attack was merely to keep the audience interested while the Empire searched for the Rebels and to introduce Obi-Wan Kenobi's Force ghost and, by extension, Yoda.



From a different section of IMDB



An oft-quoted myth is that the Wampa attack on Luke was devised to explain the actual scars on Mark Hamill's face because he had been involved in a car crash and had to have reconstructive surgery. Hamill did indeed survive a serious car crash in January 1977 but did not have any visible scars by the time Empire began filming over two years later




From BusinessInsider quoting George from the Bluray Commentary



“At the end of ‘A New Hope’ he had been in a car accident and I knew Mark was going to look a little different than he was in the first film,” said George Lucas in the Blu-ray commentary of “The Empire Strikes Back.”


“But my feeling was some time had past, they have been in the Rebellion fighting, that kind of thing, so the change was justifiable. There’s a scene in the film where Mark gets beat up by the monster [Wampa], which helps even more, but that wasn’t really the meaning of why we wrote the monster in the beginning. We needed something to keep the film suspenseful at the beginning while the Empire is looking for them.”



Left is A New Hope and Right is Empire Strikes Back (Above) Left is A New Hope and Right is Empire Strikes Back


(Below) His scars are however a lot more prevalent in this scene of Empire Strikes Back.


After the Wampa attack


Hamil addressed this in a recent youtube interview he did.




they used a lot of the real scars to build upon



So there you have it, if the scars looked real it's because the make-up department used his existing scars to create a more realistic aesthetic for the fake scars.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

harry potter - Did Dolores Umbridge Have Any Association with Voldemort (or Death Eaters) before His Return?

I noticed that Dolores Umbridge was born during the first Wizarding War, so it's very likely she wasn't a Death Eater then (but she is pretty evil -- who knows?). After that Voldemort was not around in a way that could affect many people, and most wouldn't know he was planning to rise again. During that time, and up through Voldemort's return (in Goblet of Fire ), did Umbridge have any connection with the Death Eaters or with Voldemort? Was she doing what she did on her own, or was it because of an association with Voldemort or his allies? Answer Dolores Umbridge was definitely not a good person. However, as Sirius points out, "the world isn't split into good people and Death Eaters". Remember that he also says that he doesn't believe Umbridge to be a Death Eater, but that she's evil enough (or something like that). I think there are two strong reasons to believe that: Umbridge was proud to do everything according to the law, except when she trie...

futurama - How much time is lost in 'Time Keeps on Slippin''

In time Keeps on Slippin' , Farnsworth creates a basketball team which he matures by abusing Chronitons. This leads to time skipping forward by random, but ever increasing amounts. How much time was skipped in this way? Answer Unfortunately, I don't think a good estimate can be made for this, for two reasons: Many of the time skips move forward by an indeterminate amount of time. At one point, the Professor mentions localized regions of space skipping forward much more than others. We then see two young boys on the street below complaining about having to pay social security, only to suddenly become senior citizens and start complaining about wanting their money. Thus, each individual could have experienced a different amount of time skippage.

aliens - Interstellar Zoo story

I vaguely remember this story from my childhood: it was about an interstellar zoo that came to Earth with lots of bizarre and unusual species, and humans would file through and gape at all the crazy looking creatures from other planets. The twist came at the end when the perspective shifted to the other side of the bars and we discovered that the "creatures" were traveling through space on a kind of safari. They thought they were the visitors and we were the animals. Neither side knew that the other side thought they were the zoo creatures. Answer Got it. Zoo, by Edward D. Hoch. Published in 1958. Link to Publication History Link to PDF

harry potter - What is the difference between Diffindo and Sectumsempra?

In the Harry Potter books, Diffindo is called the 'Severing Charm' and it’s most commonly used to cut ropes and the like. However, in the last book Hermione uses it on Ron but misses, creating a 'slash in his jeans' and his knee gets cut, causing him to 'roar in pain'. We've only seen Sectumsempra used once on screen when Harry directly uses it on Malfoy in the sixth book, but there it's mentioned that he is 'waving his wand wildly'. Wouldn't Diffindo, if used in such a fashion also cause a similar effect? Similarly, if it was able to cut Ron, it would also be able to, say, chop off an ear (George's)? In that case, how are these two spells different, except for Sectumsempra seemingly used exclusively to hurt humans? Answer While Diffindo and Sectumsempra both can be countered by other spells, Diffindo is far more easily countered. Reparo, a relatively common spell, can completely reverse its effect when used once. “He pulled the old cop...