Tattoine Found...

From FoxNews.com
A young Luke Skywalker stares out over the dusty planet Tatooine in this film still from the movie, "Star Wars."

A planet orbiting a dual star system is just like the dusty 'Star Wars' home world of Luke Skywalker, according to a research team from Carnegie Mellon. And while many planets have been suspected of having two suns, this newfound planet is the first “circumbinary" planet confirmed by astronomers.

“This is the first definitive case,” Alan Boss, one of the researchers who made the discovery, told FoxNews.com.

“People in the past have thought they saw instances like this. But there are other ways of explaining them. This is the first one where it’s absolutely, quantitatively sure that this is what the explanation is.”

But if it were possible to live on the planet, Boss says the sunsets and sunrises would be spectacular.

“It would change from day to day because the stars orbit around themselves every 41 days,” Boss told FoxNews.com. “So every time you look at them, they’re going to be in a different configuration in the sky. Sometimes they would be close together, sometimes they’ll be far apart. And when sunrises and sunsets occur, sometimes they’ll be quite widely spaced in time and sometimes they’ll go up and down almost simultaneously.”

The planet's discovery was an unintentional consequence of the prime mission of NASA’s spacecraft Kepler. Launched in 2009, Kepler’s goal has been to survey portions of the galaxy in search of Earth-sized planets orbiting stars like the one in our solar system...

Star Wars Come True? Tatooine-Like Planet Discovered
Loren Grush
September 15, 2011
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/09/15/star-wars-come-true-tatooine-like-planet-discovered

10 Things You Didn’t Know About The Empire Strikes Back

http://www.wired.com/underwire/2010/10/10-things-empire-strikes-back

10 Things You Didn’t Know About The Empire Strikes Back
October 12, 2010
Charlie Jane Anders, io9
Categories: Books and Comics, movies, sci-fi

Here’s a slightly different version of the battle between Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader at the end of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. It’s just one of many revelations in a new making-of book.

The Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back by J.W. Rinzler comes out today, and it’s not just essential for fans of the classic film. It’s also a must-read for anybody who’s interested in the creative process, because it goes into excruciating detail, on a day-to-day basis, on the troubled genesis of an amazing film.

You get inside the heads of everybody involved with it, and you see how much pain went into every frame of this movie. In particular, there’s a 17-page section in which you get a transcript of director Irvin Kershner and the actors — especially Harrison Ford — agonize over every second of the crucial carbonite freezing chamber scene, trying to get as much emotional truth and reality out of it as possible. This was on set, after the screenplay had already been revised several times, and every moment of that sequence gets rehashed and debated until it’s (arguably) perfect. There’s tons and tons of eye-popping concept art, including tons of versions of the Luke/Vader fight.

What Rinzler’s book drives home is that Empire Strikes Back was as groundbreaking and daring, in its own way, as the original Star Wars. The film went way over schedule and massively over budget, and almost ran out of money a bunch of times. Everybody became sick on set, Mark Hamill broke his thumb doing one stunt, and there was an accident with the bacta tank that could have killed Hamill if he’d been inside. Also, the movie’s second unit director and its first screenwriter both died during the process.

You see how George Lucas put together ESB at the same time that he was building his business empire, including Lucasfilm and the more mature version of Industrial Light & Magic. Lucas was creating his team and fighting for creative freedom, even as he was stepping back from writing and directing — and a big part of this movie’s brilliance stems from Lucas’ drive to finance the film himself, keeping 20th Century Fox out of the loop creatively. (And if Empire had failed, Lucas would have been broke, despite the first film’s huge profits.)

What comes through, in every interview and behind-the-scenes detail, is the determination of everyone involved to make The Empire Strikes Back bigger and better than the original Star Wars. In spite of huge, almost insurmountable difficulties, the determination to create something better comes through clearly.

In addition to the concept art, there are also a ton of set photos, including things like a cast being made of Harrison Ford for the “frozen in carbonite” Han Solo, and Darth Vader and Boba Fett out for a stroll. And there are tons and tons of pieces of script pages and scribbled notes. You get a real sense of what it would have been like to be inside this madhouse of creativity and seat-of-the-pants improvisation. More concept art shows the evolution of the tauntaun, which started out as a kind of weird lizard.

10 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

1. Yoda was originally named Buffy. No, really. In Lucas’ earliest outlines for the sequel, Luke meets a supernatural entity named Buffy, or Bunden Debannen. Here’s how Lucas described it:

Buffy very old — three or four thousand years. Kiber crystal in sword? Buffy shows Luke? Buffy the guardian. “Feel not think.”

And Lucas concludes by saying Luke will become the chosen one, “the human Buffy.” In later drafts, he thought of Yoda as a kind of small frog, and Yoda had a full name: Minch Yoda.

In the earliest script draft, Minch has the immortal line: “Skywalker. Skywalker. And why do you come to walk my sky, with the sword of a Jedi knight?… I remember another Skywalker.”

2. Lucas considered having a scene where Luke’s face gets injured. Mark Hamill was injured in a car accident in 1977, and his face had to be reconstructed — so for a while, Lucas planned on including a sequence where Luke’s face is damaged, and we see it getting patched up by a droid. This got as far as filming — there’s a set picture showing the droid bandaging Luke’s face — but was cut out of the movie.

3. Luke’s journey to becoming a Jedi Knight would have had a lot more bumps. One idea that got tossed around a lot in the early stages of planning ESB was the notion that Luke’s lightsaber had a crystal hidden in the hilt, with secret encrypted information on it — including the coordinates of Minch Yoda’s planet. And Luke would have been “humiliated” when he couldn’t use the Force to stop an attack by a bunch of ice monsters on the rebel’s Hoth base. (With Han telling Luke, “You’re not a Jedi knight, and you never will be.”) Meanwhile, Darth Vader senses that Luke used the force to destroy the Death Star and there’s a new wannabe Jedi in town — so Vader uses telepathy to choke Luke in his spacecraft, nearly killing him — except that R2-D2 jumps the ship into hyperspace and takes it to Yoda’s planet.

4. We could have visited other planets. Possibly including a “water planet,” with an underwater city, and a “city planet,” with the whole planet built over. And at one point, Lucas considered having a visit to the Wookiee home world (some of which ended up in the Christmas special), and Ralph McQuarrie did some concept art of a young Chewbacca. (Also, Lando Calrissian’s home would have been the planet Hoth — not the ice world, but another planet named Hoth — and there might have been a whole alien race living there. And in one early draft, Lando was a clone warrior, one of the many clans of clone fighters left over from the wars.)

5. Darth Vader would have had a castle. And it would have been an evil fortress — in some versions, it’s surrounded by lava, and full of gargoyles who are Vader’s pets.

6. Vader wasn’t Luke’s father at first. In Leigh Brackett’s first script draft, Luke meets his real dad, who says he sent away Luke and his secret sister for their own safety. (Luke’s sister has been training to be a Jedi knight in secret, just as Luke has.) And Papa Skywalker administers the oath of a Jedi Knight to Luke, in which Ben, Minch, Anakin and Luke cross lightsabers, and Luke swears to “dedicate my life to the cause of freedom and justice.”

7. The Luke-Leia-Han love triangle is a much bigger deal in earlier drafts of the script. It’s at the root of Luke’s struggles for self-respect and his humiliations. When Darth Vader is trying to win Luke over to the Dark Side in the second draft, written by Lucas himself, Vader says, “You’re in love with Leia. You don’t want to lose her to Han Solo…. But you will, if you lack the courage to use the strength that’s in you. A strength as great as mine, Luke.” And then at the end, Leia flat-out tells Luke that he’s not the one she loves, because she’s into Han. Also in this version, Han doesn’t get frozen in carbonite — instead, he just flies off to take care of business, leaving Luke and Leia watching the Millennium Falcon disappear.

8. The film posed unique challenges for special effects and model work. Darth Vader had a new Star Destroyer, which was supposed to be 16 miles long! And they built a full-size Millennium Falcon, which was 65 feet wide and 80 feet long. Also, ILM had to start a new stop-motion animation department just to make the Imperial Walkers and tauntauns work. (They tried a man-in-a-suit tauntaun, with “hilarious if not film-worthy results.”) And then there’s the challenge of Yoda — as we reported the other day, they considered everything from a monkey in a mask to a small child or little person to play the Jedi sage, before deciding to go with Frank Oz’s puppetry.

9. Stanley Kubrick nearly killed the movie. Empire was sharing studio space with The Shining, and there was a huge fire that burned down Stage 3 at Elstree Studios, destroying The Shining’s sets. That meant that Empire had to give up some of its own studio space, and The Shining went way over schedule, especially as Kubrick used the delay as an excuse to rethink his own movie. “Timewise, it is doubtful the picture will recover,” one crewmember wrote at the time.

10. Miss Piggy had a cameo in one of Yoda’s first scenes in rehearsal. When Mark Hamill first met Frank Oz, he asked him to do a brief Miss Piggy cameo during rehearsals on set, as a practical joke — but when the time came much later, it caught even Hamill off-guard. During one scene, Yoda tells Luke to follow his feelings. Luke protests that he has followed his feelings — and suddenly, Frank Oz whips out a Miss Piggy puppet, saying, “Feelings? You want feelings? Get behind the couch and I’ll show you feelings, punk. What is this hole? I’ve been booked into dumps before, but never like this. Get me my agent on the phone!”

Send an email to Charlie Jane Anders, the author of this post, at charliejane@io9.com.

Tags: George Lucas, io9, Mark Hamill, Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back

Darth Vader 'comment' to Luke Skywalker

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/film-news/5304310/Darth-Vader-comment-to-Luke-Skywalker-is-most-misquoted-film-phrase.html

Darth Vader 'comment' to Luke Skywalker is most misquoted film phrase
A comment supposedly made by Darth Vader to Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars trilogy has topped a list of phrases most often misquoted by film fans.
10 May 2009

The words "Luke, I am your father" are familiar to millions of fans of the George Lucas films.

They are widely believed to have been uttered by Darth Vader when he confronts Luke Skywalker in the Empire Strikes Back - but in fact they do not feature in the film.

Second place in the poll was taken by Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, with the evil Queen's quote 'Mirror, mirror, on the wall - who is the fairest of them all?'.

The actual line begins 'Magic Mirror, on the wall'.

In third place in the poll of 1,500 film fans, by LOVEFiLM.com, was Dirty Harry - played by Clint Eastwood - saying "Do you feel lucky, punk?"

In fact, he says "Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya punk?"

And while "Play it again Sam" may be forever linked with Casablanca, Humphrey Bogart's actual line is "You played it for her, you can play it for me. If she can stand it, I can. Play it!"

Fifth was Hannibal Lector in Silence of the Lambs, who did not say "Hello Clarice" but instead said "Good evening, Clarice".

Star Trek's Captain Kirk did not say "Beam me up, Scotty", with the closest he ever came to this phrase was a less pithy "Scotty, beam us up".

Darren Bignell, Communications Manager for LOVEFiLM, said: "Iconic film lines are part of everyone's vocabulary these days, but it's interesting how years of quoting have had a Chinese whisper effect on accuracy."

The Top Ten Movie Misquotes (below in misquoted form) were as follows:

1. "Luke, I am your father" - Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

2. "Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?" - Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)

3. "Do you feel lucky, punk?" - Dirty Harry (1971)

4. "Play it again, Sam" - Casablanca (1942)

5. "Hello, Clarice" - Silence of the Lambs (1991)

6. "Beam me up, Scotty!" - Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)

7. "Frankly, Scarlett, I don't give a damn" - Gone with the Wind (1939)

8. "If you build it, they will come" - Field of Dreams (1989)

9. "I don't think we're in Kansas anymore, Toto" - The Wizard of Oz (1939)

10. "Mrs. Robinson, are you trying to seduce me?" - The Graduate (1967)

Force is strong for Jedi police

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/glasgow_and_west/8003067.stm

Thursday, 16 April 2009
Force is strong for Jedi police

Eight police officers serving with Scotland's largest force listed their official religion as Jedi in voluntary diversity forms, it has emerged.

Strathclyde Police said the officers and two of its civilian staff claimed to follow the faith, which features in the Star Wars movies.

The details were obtained in a Freedom of Information request by Jane's Police Review.

Strathclyde was the only force in the UK to admit it had Jedi officers.

In the Star Wars films, Jedi Knights such as Luke Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda use the Force to battle the evil Darth Vader, who has strayed to the dark side.

Jane's Police Review editor Chris Herbert, who requested the information, said: "The Force appears to be strong in Strathclyde Police with their Jedi police officers and staff.

"Far from living a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, some members of the noble Jedi order have now chosen Glasgow and its surrounding streets as their home."

Provided voluntarily

A spokeswoman for Strathclyde Police confirmed: "At the time of the request, 10 (eight police officers and two police staff) had recorded their religion as Jedi."

She added that the force monitored "six strands of diversity" - age, disability, gender, race religion and belief, and sexual orientation.

The force said the information was provided voluntarily and securely stored.

About 390,000 people listed their religion as Jedi in the 2001 Census for England and Wales. In Scotland the figure was a reported 14,000.

The Office for National Statistics did not recognise it as a separate category, and incorporated followers of Jedi with atheists.

Last year, brothers Barney and Daniel Jones founded the UK Church of the Jedi - which offered sermons on the Force, light sabre training, and meditation techniques.

Strathclyde Police employs 8,200 police officers and 2,800 civilian staff.

How's `Hancock' stack up among movie twists?

http://movies.yahoo.com/mv/news/ap/20080707/121543770000.html

How's `Hancock' stack up among movie twists?
Monday July 7, 2008

A Will Smith movie packs in millions of people over Fourth of July weekend. No surprises there.

Yet Smith's "Hancock," the tale of an anti-social boozer who happens to be a superhero, comes with an abrupt plot twist, one that has divided critics and the moviegoing public in the real world (Critics and everyone else can't agree. Now there's a real surprise).

For those who have yet to see "Hancock," we won't give the secret away, but it has something to do with why Charlize Theron's soccer-mom-style character doesn't want Smith's surly superhero anywhere near her family.

Critics generally thought the turn the movie takes halfway through was a cheat, spoiling what had been a promising idea that was a fresh twist on the superhero genre in its own right.

The people who turned "Hancock" into an instant blockbuster beg to differ to the sum of $185 million worldwide at the box office in just a few days.

The plot twist in "Hancock" won't go down in cinema history alongside Darth Vader revealing he's Luke Skywalker's pappy in "The Empire Strikes Back" or Anthony Perkins turning out to be a slasher in his mom's housedress in "Psycho."

However, it does give us a chance to buzz once more about the really great curve balls and maybe a wild pitch or two that Hollywood has tossed our way.

Here's a look at some of the most memorable screen surprises, in no particular order:

MY GIRL: Has there ever been a stranger what-the-heck moment than the revelation that the enticing woman Stephen Rea lusts after in "The Crying Game" really is a guy? The dreamlike gotcha gesture delivered from beyond by Forest Whitaker's character was directed as much at male audiences everywhere who had to hit the reset button on their manhood after falling for Jaye Davidson as a hot new screen goddess only to learn he shared their XY chromosome makeup.

THE SECRET INGREDIENT IS US: How do you turn an utterly forgettable movie into one for the ages? Let Charlton Heston learn that the super-food of the future is made of humans so he can bellow "Soylent Green is PE-E-E-OPLE!" And don't forget the "Saturday Night Live" skit about a "Soylent Green" sequel where Phil Hartman impersonates Heston, learning that the powers that be didn't change the recipe like they promised, so he can holler "It's still PE-E-E-OPLE!"

HEAD IN THE SAND: Heston gets to curse out humanity in general in "Planet of the Apes" as he stumbles on the noggin of the Statue of Liberty lying on the beach and realizes he's been on Earth all along but in the distant future, after his species has blown itself up. Tim Burton's remake substitutes a terrible twist as astronaut Mark Wahlberg makes it off the simian world and returns to his planet, only to find a monkey named "Ape Lincoln" sitting on the Lincoln Memorial.

POOR BRUCE IS DEAD: With "Breakfast of Champions" and "The Story of Us," Bruce Willis' career might have been dead. But M. Night Shyamalan kept him alive by killing him off in the opening moments of "The Sixth Sense" but concealing that fact so completely that movie-goers were shocked into seeing the flick again and again after they learned he was a ghost. Audiences were somewhat less than shocked with Shyamalan and Willis' next surprise ending superheroes are real! in "Unbreakable."

READY FOR MY SHOWER, MR. HITCHCOCK: Perkins as his own mother has enduring shock value, but Alfred Hitchcock pulled a true stunner earlier in "Psycho" as the killer snuffed Janet Leigh, the movie's lead character up to that moment. That's like Dickens having Oliver Twist die of cholera in chapter three. Who do you root for when the heroine gets tossed in the trunk of her car and submerged in a swamp?

KEYSER SPACEY: As prime suspect Gabriel Byrne lay dying near the end of "The Usual Suspects," you just had to wonder "Well if it's not him, who the heck is Keyser Soze?" Watching Kevin Spacey transform from the grubby, gimpy little Verbal Kint into world-class criminal mastermind Soze in the space of one city block is one of those moments that makes you think "Yeah, this is why I like movies."

MY SISTER, MY MOM: Incest turns out to be the stuff of one of cinema's most artful surprises at the end of "Chinatown," when we learn that Faye Dunaway's little sister also is her daughter. And we get to see Jack Nicholson slap the information out of her repeatedly in a climax that's nothing short of a gut-punch.

MISSION IMPERTINENT: Speaking of slaps in the face, arguably the worst plot twist ever comes in Tom Cruise's first "Mission: Impossible" tale. Millions grew up watching Peter Graves' noble Jim Phelps run the Impossible Mission Force on the small screen. So when Jon Voight's Phelps turns out to be the bad guy in Cruise's version, it was disrespectful of both the source material and its fans. Why didn't Cruise just play Phelps himself, but as the hero everyone remembered the character for? Maybe Cruise was afraid that, like Graves, he would wind up hosting episodes of "Biography" in his golden years.

Lightsabre wins the battle of movie weapons

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1576154/Lightsabre-wins-the-battle-of-movie-weapons.html

Lightsabre wins the battle of movie weapons
By Sophie Borland
18/04/2008

It may look like a humble fluorescent kitchen light, but according to a new survey it is the best weapon ever featured in a film.

The lightsabre, wielded by the Jedi knight Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars saga, fought off stiff competition to win the title from other favourites including Robin Hood’s bow and arrow and the deadly bowler hat thrown at James Bond.

In second place came the 0.44 Magnum handgun from the film Dirty Harry while third was Indiana Jones’ 10ft-long bullwhip.

The survey of 2,000 film lovers, commissioned by 20th Century Fox, placed the samurai sword used in the film Kill Bill as fourth and the chainsaw from the 1974 horror the Texas Chainsaw Massacre fifth.

Since it first appeared in the first Star Wars film in 1977, the lightsabre has become one of the most famous props in film history.

According to the plot of the hugely popular science fiction films, it can only be handled by those strong enough to master its power and it is mainly used by the Jedi knights.

When activated, a beam of highly focussed energy emitting a distinctive hum is unleashed, which is so strong it can cut through most objects.

When it is deactivated, however, the lightsaber appears as a 12in long metallic handle.

Toy versions of the weapon consistently feature among the best-selling Christmas presents for children.

Top 10 Favourite Movie Weapons

1. Lightsabre (Star Wars)

2. .44 Magnum (Dirty Harry)

3. Bullwhip (Indiana Jones)

4. Samurai sword (Kill Bill)

5. Chainsaw (Texas Chainsaw Massacre)

6. Golden Gun (James Bond - The Man With The Golden Gun)

7. Bow and arrow (Robin Hood)

8. Machine gun (Scarface)

9. The Death Star (Star Wars)

10. Bowler hat (James Bond - Goldfinger)

The Greatest Five Seconds in Movie History

http://www.matchflick.com/column/1640

The Greatest Five Seconds in Movie History
by Bobby B.

"No. I am your father."
-- Darth Vader, The Empire Strikes Back

It is difficult -- if not impossible -- to understand the impact these five words had on all of popular culture back in 1980. They were spoken, of course, by one of the cultural icons of the last half of the twentieth century; the modern fairy-tale symbol of all that is evil; the ultimate cinematic bad-ass; Darth Vader. And when a stunned Luke Skywalker heard these words his expression of shock, horror and disbelief found millions of reflections in the faces of the audience that bore witness to this awe-inspiring revelation. There has never and will never be another moment like it in the history of film.

Nearly thirty years later the phenomenon that is Star Wars is taken for granted. Young people today don't know and older people don't remember that there was a time when no one knew that Darth Vader was Luke Skywalker's father. Nowadays that moment in cinematic history has become a part of our social fabric. I would venture to guess that everyone reading this has uttered those five words (probably altered erroneously to include a sixth – as in "No Luke, I am your father") in their deepest baritone at some point in their lives. Take a moment: can you think of anyone who does not know where those five words come from or who it was that said them? Someone may or may not know who Michael Corleone is, or Iago, Sauron, or the White Witch; but everyone knows Darth Vader. People who have never seen any of the Star Wars movies (I hear there are such people, poor, sick, twisted souls) are cognizant of Luke Skywalker's dark lineage by sheer cultural osmosis. But it goes deeper than that. Those five words were much more than a powerful twist in the ultimate fantasy flick. That sentence changed movies and by extension, America, forever. More than any other film THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK is responsible for the American tradition of the summer blockbuster. It wasn't the first. GONE WITH THE WIND, THE SOUND OF MUSIC, and THE GODFATHER had all been massive in their day. And then there was JAWS, and STAR WARS changing the game altogether.

Released at the beginning of summer, they put up numbers never before seen. This was a result not just of the films themselves, but the changing face of marketing. Still these two spectacular hits were surprises, first-timers, phenoms unto themselves. The release of THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK stirred in a new ingredient...anticipation. Springing directly out of the hype machine and story momentum of the first film, THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK opened to a blockbuster reception. The world had spent three years waiting for it. Slated to be The Event for the summer of 1980, everyone wanted to be a part of it. We had rushed to see JAWS and STAR WARS because we'd heard they were great but we'd penciled in THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK on our calendars because we knew it was coming...and thus a tradition was born.

This had everything to do of course, with the impact of STAR WARS. Movies are our societal dreams, the creative manipulation of our collective sub-conscious. In the 1970's America had started out having a difficult time of it. We had lost a war for the first time – a war we weren't even sure we should be participating in. A president had resigned in disgrace. Symbols of hope from the decade before – Martin Luther King, Che Guevara, Bobby Kennedy – had been assassinated and the civil rights movements for Black and Native Americans, women, and homosexuals seemed to have crashed on the reefs of the Me Generation. And the films of the Seventies reflected this new, bruised and battered

reality: CHINATOWN, THE FRENCH CONNECTION, TAXI DRIVER, SAVE THE TIGER, DOG DAY AFTERNOON, THE DEER HUNTER, THE EXORCIST, even THE GODFATHER. Though these films were often brilliant they didn't provide relief from an increasingly complex, frustrating and dangerous reality. America had needed a break, an escape. And STAR WARS had provided.

STAR WARS drew on the literary and mythic traditions of Joseph Campbell, Beowulf and King Arthur, among others, as well as the cinematic traditions of Westerns and Flash Gordon serials. It was a new movie that touched something old within us, something primal. The simplified positing of conflict between two stark extremes – Good and Evil – had in itself been a relief from the moral ambiguities of the day. It felt like a throwback to an earlier era, the days of Once Upon a Time, a period when there were clear answers to tough questions, our memory of an age that probably never existed. Child-like, but not childish, its stunning special effects dazzled kids and cynical adults alike. Perhaps most importantly Star Wars provided a lot of fun at a time when that was what everyone needed. And it was HUGE. Even though we now live in the Age of the Blockbuster, STAR WARS is still one of the highest grossing films of all time. Everyone saw it. Everyone knew the story. Everyone knew what a light saber was. We hummed the music on the playground. "May the Force be with you" became the phrase of the day. Republicans and Democrats sat side by side, mouths agape, in like wonderment during the cantina scene. A Jew and a Muslim were both enthralled by the awesome sight and voice of Darth Vader. Young people and old gripped their chairs on the roller-coaster ride culminating in the exhilarating destruction of the Death Star. For two hours, people of every culture, color and race forgot their differences and had a blast. STAR WARS had, in effect, engendered a cinematic community that wasn't bound by borders or ideologies or even culture.

The full potential of the social impact of film had been stunningly realized in one stroke and it was more than anyone could have imagined. Groups of human beings often function as a single organism in behavior and this newly formed Star Wars community had been no different. Having had one blast of ecstasy the whole world now waited for its next fix. And that was THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. Adding to the anticipation was that it took years for the next one to come along. Almost before the first film ended there was a rumor that there was going to be a second one. But there was nothing for a while, only speculation. And then speculation became more concrete. Quite deliberately it was leaked that a sequel was in production. Movie buffs, science fiction geeks, children, even professionals over their water coolers hotly debated the title and plot of the new film. Everybody else was drawn in when the marketing campaign began anew.

(STAR WARS had changed the face of movie marketing and maybe marketing in general. It was perhaps, the first movie ever to become a full fledged corporation. There were toys, lunch boxes, comics, cartoons, books, clothes, games, you name it – that carried the STAR WARS name or image. Thirty years later this is old hat. But in the late 1970's this was something new. I was too young to realize that I should have been terrified.)

So we were all waiting. The story, the characters, the marketing campaign, the time period had all combined to create a perfect storm of anticipation. Whatever else was going on in your community in the summer of 1980 you knew that one thing you were going to do, one thing that most people in most communities across the United

States were going to do, we were all going to go see THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK.

I was twelve that year. My family was in transit. My dad was in the military and we had spent three years on a little island, Terceira, out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. That summer was a good one. We were visiting my mother's family in San Antonio, Texas and if you've ever been to Texas in the summertime you know that it's blistering. Temperatures were in the hundreds. You could see the heat coming off of the street. Summertime in San Antonio was about snow cones and dirt, baseball and ice cream, watching flamenco dancing on the riverside and dashing from one air conditioner to the other. We went to Six Flags and I rode a bigger, meaner roller coaster than I had ever ridden before. We went to the zoo and rode on elephants. We saw family we hadn't seen in years. And we planned to go see THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. It was the first movie anyone ever did that for. The weekend it opened people packed to go see the movie because they were going to have to wait in line...for hours. They brought lawn chairs and comic books, squirt guns and games to play. We brought a bunch of quarters because the age of Star Wars had also ushered in another technological and social phenomenon -- video games. This was also the dawn of the age of the multiplex. And once you made it to the ticket booth you probably weren't buying tickets for the next showing but the one after that or the one after that. Before movie theaters had one, two or three screens. Now for the first time there were epic movie houses with screens in the double digits. THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK was showing on six different screens and we still had to wait. But we were cool with that because it was a festival atmosphere. I went with my sister and my cousins but it was like we were friends with everybody who was there and it seemed like there were a million people there. People were playing Frisbee in the parking lot, sitting under umbrellas on the sidewalk, eating lunch in the back of their pickup trucks. Everybody was happy and excited. Everyone was talking about the movie and what they hoped to see. Everyone was an expert on the nature of the Force and the intricacies of being a Jedi. We were all waiting to see Yoda who was already a household name and face due to marketing. And when we finally, finally – not after hours of waiting or even days, but after years of waiting – were sitting in our seats staring up at the screen about to find out what happened to all of our friends, Luke and Leia, Han Solo and Chewbacca, R-2 D-2 and C3PO...it was as sweet a moment of anticipation as any we'd experienced.

And it was awesome. I have heard since that THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK opened to mixed reviews when it first came out. All I can say is I was completely unaware of anyone not liking the movie and frankly, sometimes people think too much. From the opening scenes on the ice planet Hoth, to the romance between Han Solo and Princess Leia, to the training of Luke by master Yoda, to the introduction of Lando Calrissian and the Cloud City THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK expanded and deepened the first film and it did it with the same flair and excitement. Thrilling events tumble over each other: the fight with the Wampa, the thunderous battle with the Empire in the ice when the rebels were forced to escape, Luke's pilgrimage to Dagobah, the chase through the asteroid belt, the finding of the Cloud City.

And then, of course, there was the climactic light-saber duel between Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, the fight that everyone wanted to see, the real-deal showdown between Good and Evil we all knew was coming. And it went the only way it could go really. Luke putting up a good showing but really fighting a fight he could not win. We all knew that. After all, this was Darth Vader, the coolest cat in the Universe, a dude so bad he could choke you to death with a dirty look from behind his black helmet. But Luke showed skill, courage, heart. And then it happened. Beaten, helpless, with his back against the wall (or rather, hanging over a giant air-shaft) Luke finds himself facing the personification of cinematic evil on a slender bridge. We all knew Luke wasn't going to die but what was going to happen? How was he going to get out of this mess? And then, out of nowhere, a curve ball: Darth Vader for whatever reason decides to bring up Luke's father:

Darth Vader: Obi Wan never told you what happened to your father.

Luke: He told me enough. He told me you killed him.

We all knew that. Like Luke we learned it from the venerable Obi-Wan Kenobi -- Luke's mentor, a man who'd sacrificed himself to save Luke and his friends -- in the previous movie. And then it happened, the words none of us ever imagined we would hear:

Vader: No. I am your father.

WWWWHHHHHAAAAAAAATTTT??!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!!?

It was electrifying, seismic, a bombshell. Looking back it was as though two hundred million movie-goers all audibly gasped at the same time. Certainly, everyone in the theater I was in did. And the next time I saw it and the next time after that. It was an ultimate story-telling moment in our ultimate story-telling medium; absolute, perfect, completing a perfect circle that made pure emotional sense. And it had been building up for three years, we had all been waiting for just this moment – and none of us had known it.

For one five-second sliver of time (I'm counting the four seconds Vader took to say the words and the immediate next second of shock on Luke's face) we were all one mind, one heart, frozen. It was epic.

There have been a hundred -- a thousand truly great moments in film history: the ending of CASABLANCA, when Dorothy first sees Oz in THE WIZARD OF OZ, Orson Welles entrance in THE THIRD MAN or when Atticus Finch leaves the courtroom for the last time in TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, to name a tiny, tiny few. And I don't know that THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK is a great film in the way these other films are great. The first three STAR WARS films were a product of zeitgeist, they captured a moment. This was something that George Lucas himself didn't seem to understand with the subsequent STAR WARS films. But there has never been another moment in film history that brought so many people together into the same emotional space and mindset as those five seconds in THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK when Darth Vader broke it down reeeeeeeeeeaaaal proper like and let Luke Skywalker know what was really going on.

It didn't take long before you started hearing people saying "Oh, yeah, I knew it all along." and "They didn't fool me.", etc. And you know, maybe some of them did know and maybe some people weren't fooled. If so, it's too bad for them. There are some things more important than being in the know. Those people who "knew" missed out on the greatest five seconds in movie history and one of the greatest moments of community in the Twentieth Century.