The Unfilmed Luke Training Scene For Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back Fixes A Weird Moment
Even in big Hollywood movies, essential footage can still end up on the cutting room floor. Take 1973's "The Exorcist," for example. Ask fans to select iconic scenes from that movie, and the "Spider Walk" scene in which the possessed Reagan crawls backward up a flight of stairs, is sure to come up. However, that scene was deleted ... until "The Version You've Never Seen" of "The Exorcist" was released in 2000. Furthermore, major moments often don't even make it past the script stage, which can leave plot holes in the released film.
No film was bigger in the year 1980 than "The Empire Strikes Back," the eagerly anticipated sequel to the 1977 blockbuster, "Star Wars." Widely regarded as one of the best films in the franchise, "Empire" finds Luke Skywalker coming into his Jedi powers and facing off against Obi-Wan Kenobi's killer, the evil Darth Vader. One unexplained moment from their epic showdown actually appeared in the film's script but was ultimately dropped before filming started. While hardcore "Star Wars" fans love to dissect "Empire" looking for plot holes, the film is still often considered one of the greatest movies of all time.
Fans were confused as to when Luke learned to high jump
"The Empire Strikes Back" builds to a climactic final battle scene in which Jedi-in-training Luke Skywalker faces off against Darth Vader, who killed his mentor and is trying to overthrow the Republic. It's the classic battle that ends with the "Luke, I am your father" line that movie nerds have been imitating into table fans since "Tommy Boy" came out. Luke loses a hand and evil wins out (this time) just before the credits roll. Many fans consider it the best "Star Wars" lightsaber fight in the entire franchise.
In the scene, Luke jumps out of the way of a strike and lands in the port where Han Solo (Harrison Ford) was frozen in carbonite earlier. Seeing him there, Vader turns on the freezing chamber, hoping to do the same to Luke. However, while Vader looks away, Luke leaps from the chamber, reaching great heights, which seemingly confirms that he has learned to fly.
The script originally revealed that Luke learned to high jump while training with Yoda
Fans who watched Luke's training sequence with Yoda earlier in "The Empire Strikes Back" were confused as to when he learned to jump so high. The answer appeared in the script, but the scene was excised.
According to Sci Fi Scripts, there were a couple of scenes in the film's screenplay in which Yoda teaches Luke how to jump. First, Yoda makes Luke jump to try to reach his saber, which Yoda holds in his feet. Luke leaps high, but not high enough to grab it. Then, Yoda orders Luke to bound across a pond, which he ends up landing in, in an attempt to take a stick from Yoda's mouth. These scenes precede the sequence in which Yoda raises Luke's ship from the swamp.
While it can be inferred in the final film that Luke learned to jump so impressively during training, some fans were — and still are — confused as they didn't actually see it happen in the training sequence.