Throwback Thursday: The Empire Strikes Back and the Twist That Was Kept From Its Own Cast
Throwback Thursday is a retrospective, not a graded review – one twist per era. Two weeks ago it stopped in 1960 with Psycho, and last week in 1974 with Chinatown; this week jumps to 1980 and The Empire Strikes Back (directed by Irvin Kershner from a screenplay by Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan, story by George Lucas). Released on May 21, 1980, it was the sequel to the biggest hit of the decade so far, and it took the opposite tack from the film that came before it: darker, unresolved, and willing to end on a cliffhanger. It went on to be the highest-grossing film of the year.
The Twist
On Cloud City, in the climax of a lightsaber duel that Luke Skywalker is losing, Darth Vader tells him: “No, I am your father.” It is one of the most famous lines in film history, and it is usually misquoted as “Luke, I am your father.”
What’s more remarkable is how the moment was protected. The original Star Wars (1977) had established that Vader betrayed and murdered Luke’s father, and Lucas has said he always intended the reversal, but kept it out of the typed script to avoid leaks. On set, David Prowse, the actor in the Vader suit, was given the line “Obi-Wan Kenobi is your father,” because he was known for leaking information. Only Kershner, the producers, and Mark Hamill knew what would actually be said, and James Earl Jones, who voiced Vader, recorded the real dialogue during post-production.
It is the twist that turned a sequel into an event, and the model for what later franchises would try to copy: a revelation that reframes the whole first film (the Jedi hero Luke was told about is the villain he is fighting), lands as a cliffhanger, and leaves the audience waiting three years for the answer. Critics at the time were mixed on the film; it has since been reevaluated as one of the best sequels ever made.