Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back - Production

Production

George Lucas' 1977 film Star Wars exceeded all expectations in terms of profit, its revolutionary effect on the movie industry, and its unexpected resonance as a cultural phenomenon. Lucas hoped to become independent from the Hollywood film industry by financing The Empire Strikes Back himself with $33 million from loans and the previous film's earnings, going against the principles of many Hollywood producers to never invest one's own money. Now fully in command of his Star Wars enterprise, Lucas chose not to direct The Empire Strikes Back because of his other production roles, including overseeing his special effects company Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) and handling of the financing. Lucas offered the role of director to Irvin Kershner, one of his former professors at the USC School of Cinema-Television, and known for smaller-scale, character-driven films. Kershner initially refused, citing his belief that a sequel would never meet the quality or originality of the original Star Wars. He called his agent, who immediately demanded that he take the job. In addition, Lucas hired Lawrence Kasdan and Leigh Brackett to write the screenplay based on his original story. Brackett completed her draft in February 1978 before dying of cancer, and Lucas wrote the second before hiring Kasdan, who had impressed him with his draft for Raiders of the Lost Ark.

After the release of Star Wars, ILM grew from being a struggling company and moved to Marin County, California. The Empire Strikes Back provided the company with new challenges. Whereas Star Wars mostly featured space sequences, The Empire Strikes Back featured not only space dogfights but also an ice planet battle opening sequence and elements of cities that floated among the clouds. For the battle scenes on the ice planet of Hoth, the initial intent was to use bluescreen to composite the Imperial walkers into still-shots from the original set. Instead, an artist was hired to paint landscapes, resulting in the Imperial walkers being shot using stop motion animation in front of the landscape paintings. The original designs for the AT-ATs were, according to Phil Tippett, "big armored vehicles with wheels". Many believe the finished design was inspired by the Port of Oakland container cranes, but Lucas denied this.

In designing the Jedi Master Yoda, Stuart Freeborn used his own face as a model and added the wrinkles of Albert Einstein for the appearance of exceptional intelligence. Sets for Dagobah were built five feet above the stage floor, allowing puppeteers to crawl underneath and hold up the Yoda puppet. The setup presented Frank Oz, who portrayed Yoda, with communication problems as he was underneath the stage and unable to hear the crew and Mark Hamill above. Hamill later expressed his dismay at being the only human character on set for months; he felt like a trivial element on a set of animals, machines, and moving props. Kershner commended Hamill for his performance with the puppet.

Filming began in Norway, at the Hardangerjøkulen glacier near the town of Finse, on March 5, 1979. Like the filming of Star Wars, where the production in Tunisia coincided with the area's first major rainstorm in fifty years, the weather was against the film crew. While filming in Norway, they encountered the worst winter storm in fifty years. Temperatures dropped to −20 °F (−29 °C), and 18 feet (5.5 m) of snow fell. On one occasion, the crew were unable to exit their hotel. They achieved a shot involving Luke's exit of the Wampa cave by opening the hotel's doors and filming Mark Hamill running out into the snow while the crew remained warm inside. Despite reports to the contrary, the scene in which Luke gets knocked out by the Wampa was not added specifically to explain the change to Hamill's face after a motor accident that occurred between filming of Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back. Lucas admitted that the scene "helped" the situation, though he felt that Luke's time fighting in the rebellion was sufficient explanation. The production then moved to Elstree Studios in London on March 13, where over 60 sets were built, more than double the number used in the previous film. A fire in January on Stage 3 (during filming of Stanley Kubrick's The Shining) forced the budget to be increased from $18.5 million to $22 million, and by July the budget increased $3 million more. Filming finished by mid-September.

One memorable exchange of dialogue was partially ad-libbed. Originally, Lucas wrote a scene in which Princess Leia professed her love to Han Solo, with Han replying "I love you too." Harrison Ford felt the characterization was not being used effectively, and Kershner agreed. After several takes, the director told the actor to improvise on the spot. Ford changed Solo's line to "I know."

During production, great secrecy surrounded the fact that Darth Vader was Luke's father. Like the rest of the crew, Prowse—who spoke all of Vader's lines during filming—was given a false page that contained dialogue with the revelatory line being "Obi-Wan killed your father." Hamill did not learn of the plot point until just before the scene was filmed, astounding the actor; Kershner advised him to ignore Prowse's dialogue and "use your own rhythm". Until the film premiered, only Lucas, Kershner, Hamill, and James Earl Jones knew what would really be said; Jones' initial reaction to the line was, "He's lying!" Interestingly, though, according to the San Francisco Examiner, during a fan gathering in the late 1970s, David Prowse revealed to a crowd of cheering fans that Vader was going to be revealed as Luke's father in the next film. The film includes a brief image of Vader with his mask off, facing away from the camera. For the original viewers of the film, this scene made it clear that Vader is not a droid.

To preserve the dramatic opening sequences of his films, Lucas wanted the screen credits to come at the end of the films. Even though this is more common now, this was a highly unusual choice at the time. The Writers Guild and the Directors Guild had no problem allowing it on Star Wars, back in 1977, because the writer-director credit (George Lucas) matched the company name, but when Lucas did the same thing for the sequel it became an issue because Lucas had his last name on the start of the film (Lucasfilm), while the director and the writers had theirs on the end. They fined him over $250,000 and attempted to pull Empire out of theaters. The DGA also attacked Kershner; to protect his director, Lucas paid all the fines to the guilds. Due to the controversy, he left the Directors Guild, Writers Guild, and the Motion Picture Association.

The initial production budget of $18,000,000 was 50% more than that of the original. After the various increases in budget, The Empire Strikes Back became one of the most expensive movies of its day and after the bank threatened to pull his loan, Lucas was forced to approach 20th Century Fox. Lucas made a deal with the studio to secure the loan in exchange for paying the studio more money, but without the loss of his sequel and merchandising rights. After the film's box office success, unhappiness at the studio over the deal's generosity to Lucas caused studio president Alan Ladd, Jr. to quit. The departure of his longtime ally caused Lucas to take Raiders of the Lost Ark to Paramount Pictures.