Star Wars is arguably as popular now as it’s ever been, with the mythology of the long-running franchise passed down through generations after over forty years of movies, spinoffs, television shows, holiday specials, video games, and countless billions in merchandise. It’s an impressive feat for Star Wars to remain so culturally relevant despite having existed since 1977, and with numerous movie trilogies and Disney Plus shows in development, the brand isn’t going anywhere for a long time.
As is the case with any long-running beloved franchise though, Star Wars is also surrounded by a fair share of urban legends and recently, Phil Szostak has been taking to Twitter to confirm or debunk many of the myths about George Lucas’ Original Trilogy. As the Senior Content and Asset Specialist at Lucasfilm and the author of several The Art of Star Wars books, Szostak is in a more qualified position than most to comment on the history of Star Wars, and has dished out plenty of interesting tidbits over the last couple of weeks, some of which you can see below.
2. “Darth Vader, a tall, grim-looking general” appears in the May 1974 The #StarWars rough draft
3. Darth Vader is not Luke Skywalker’s father until the April 1, 1978 second draft of #EmpireStrikesBack
4. “Darth” doesn’t mean anything in Dutch or German
MYTH BUSTED pic.twitter.com/UaxMKKMwtK— Phil Szostak (@PhilSzostak) August 3, 2019
2. In The Making of #StarWars, George Lucas says that he came up with “Chewbacca” and other Wookiee names by “changing words around”. No mention of Russian.
3 The origin of the Russian words myth appears to be a 2007 website which cites no other sources or quotes.
MYTH BUSTED? pic.twitter.com/5kIPOOxPWN— Phil Szostak (@PhilSzostak) August 6, 2019
2. The Making of #StarWars verifies Lucas’s story.
3. Lucas’s dog Indiana also inspired the name “Indiana Jones” for that film series and the Jones family Malamute that the character named himself after.
MYTH CONFIRMED pic.twitter.com/e0abXlMRHP— Phil Szostak (@PhilSzostak) August 14, 2019
Szostak’s threads on Twitter cover everything from how the visual effects were created on A New Hope to filling in the extensive backstory of the Extended Universe, as well as revealing that Lando Calrissian was essentially created to replace Han Solo in the event that Harrison Ford wouldn’t agree to sign on for The Empire Strikes Back or Return of the Jedi.
Suffice it to say, there’s a lot to dig through in this Tweets, but it’s always interesting to hear the opinions of the people that have been heavily involved in the history of Star Wars, especially when it relates to confirming or denying information that many fans have been taking as gospel for decades.
