Fun Fact Number 1: Star Wars is an epic space opera created by George-I-Ruined-Star-Wars-With-The-Prequels-Lucas.
There have been six films so far, the three original ones: Star Wars: A New Hope, Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, and Star Wars: The Return Of The Jedi.
And also the three prequels, number one, two and three. Yes, they have names, but whatever. Still trying to eradicate Jar Jar frigging Binks from my memory.
The story of Star Wars is a simple one, really.
A farm boy finds out he has secret magical powers the day he held aloft his magical sword and said, "BY THE POWER OF GRAYSKULL."
Oh, wait a minute. That's He-Man.
They should so make a decent movie of that show.
Star Wars: A young farm boy finds two droids, they escape, his Aunt and Uncle get killed, he gets groomed by a strange old man in a cloak, learns how to use the Force, and goes on an adventure to save the galaxy from the evil forces of Skeletor, Mwahahahaha.
Oops, went back to He-Man for a moment.
A farm boy, called Luke Skywalker, saves the galaxy from the evil Emperor, and kisses his sister along the way. What a sicko.
Fun Fact Number 2: A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.
How many have that opening soundtrack playing in your head right now?
The original soundtrack was created by John Williams and performed by the London Symphony Orchestra, with John Williams conducting it himself.
It really is an awesome soundtrack and was nominated for an Academy Award three times, for all three of the original movies.
It won Best Original Soundtrack for Star Wars: A New Hope, the first of the three films.
It also won a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score, a BAFTA for Best Film Music, Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media, Grammy for Best Instrumental Composition, and a few others, including AFI's Greatest American Movie Score Of All Time.
All together, the Star Wars movies (yes, all six of them) have been nominated 25 times for an OSCAR, and won 10 times.
Fun Fact Number 3: The Star Wars movies have award winning sound effects as well.
The sound of the TIE Fighter engines in the original Star Wars movies was created by mixing the sound of a car driving over a wet pavement with an elephant call.
Just don't ask what they were doing to that elephant to make it sound like that. Rumours it involved a long stick and a hedgehog are untrue. Perhaps.
The Pew-Pew sounds of the blasters were not made from real laser pistol blasters.
Ben Britt, the sound designer, thumped the living daylights out of a guide-wire with a hammer, and recorded the sounds on an old fashioned tape-recorder. It was that easy.
Almost as simple as how they created the opening of the doors on the Starship Enterprise. It's the sound of paper being pulled from an envelope.
And that sound you hear every now and again through the Star Wars prequel movies: it's George Lucas grinning at how much money he's making out of his own random and twisted dreams.
Fun Fact Number 4: "I have a bad feeling about this," is a phrase said in every Star Wars movie.
It's basically a running gag, and the amount of times everyone said it leading up to the screening of A Phantom Menace was extraordinary.
Did you spot it in the new film? It did make an appearance.
Fun Fact Number 5: Yoda was originally going to be played by a monkey.
The idea was to dress a monkey in the garb of a Jedi, duct tape a cane to its hand and then have it eat a banana and make funny faces.
Luckily, someone with more sense than George Lucas told him he had a very bad feeling.
This means Yoda's planet of origin wasn't the Planet of The Apes.
In fact, we have no idea where he came from.
His species and planet of origin are never identified in any of the movies.
And, talking about little monkeys, did you know, the word "Ewok" is never spoken in any of the six original films.
It is written in the end credits of Return Of The Jedi, but no one utters that famous line, "No, I actually do have an Ewok in my trousers."
Bonus Round:
1. The Ewok language is a mix of Tibetan and Nepalese.
2. E.T. The Extra Terrestrial made an appearance in The Phantom Menace.
3. The actor who played Darth Vader, David Prowse, is banned from conventions as George Lucas finds him annoying.
4. Steven Spielberg earns a percentage of the Star Wars films because he won a bet with George Lucas.
5. Ewan McGregor got so carried away filming his lightsaber scenes, he made the whooshing and humming sounds himself, which then had to be removed in post-production.
Also Check Out Other Star Wars Fun Facts:
Extra Bonus Round
On February 3rd, 1970, the one, the only, Warwick Davis was born.
Who?
Oh, come on, you know him. He's the guy who plays Tyrion Lannister in Star Wars: The Return of the Jedi.
He was the cuddly, little teddy bear who had a hard time opposite Harrison Ford. Apparently Ford kept tickling his belly to see if Warwick would crap out any gold.
Fun Fact
Warwick Davis is well known as being The Ewok
in Return of the Jedi.
But, he also played the walk-in shots of Yoda
in The Phantom Menace.
Of course, most will know Warwick as the only one who could act in Willow. He played the hero, a reluctant farmer, as most are, who had to protect a special baby, played by an actual adult clone of Tom Cruise, that is being hunted by a tyrannical queen, based on the real life tyrannical queen, George Lucas.
