Star Wars Director George Lucas Explains Master Yoda's Strange Speech
From the very beginning of his Hollywood career, George Lucas always did things his own way. Almost 60 years later, it has not changed a bit.
Appearing at the 45th anniversary screening of The Empire Strikes Back on the opening night of the 2025 TCM Classic Film Festival, Lucas spoke about meeting longtime friend and collaborator Francis Ford Coppola, his first experiences in the studio system, and his journey from American Graffiti to the industry-changing blockbuster Star Wars. However, despite the best efforts of host and moderator Ben Mankiewicz, he made almost no mention of the film that the audience had gathered for - and only when it was ready.
Suffice it to say that Lucas's career has been thoroughly documented and deconstructed: no less than eight books have been written about him, as well as several documentaries and non-fiction series. Still, it was funny to hear him talk about his grouchy disinterest in studio filmmaking - ever since that first day on set - and the lion's share of the 35-minute conversation was spent explaining that, since he had rewritten the original Star Wars script, he already had the plot ready for The Empire Strikes Back.
“I paint as if from a drawing,” he told Mankiewicz. "There's not a lot of detail in it. And when I got the script [for Star Wars], it was 130-180 pages. I cut it into three parts and said, 'I'll focus on the first one because we'll never get enough money to do the whole thing.'"
To be fair to Lucas, Mankiewicz may have accidentally made a tactical mistake by starting their conversation by asking about his friendship with Coppola. But to be fair to Mankiewicz, he had no way of knowing that Lucas would speak in leisurely detail about his early days on the set of Coppola's Finian's Rainbow and the subsequent partnership that formed between the two youngest men on the ill-fated musical. "I was 22, Francis was 27. He had a beard, I had a beard. We both had long hair.We were both film students," says Lucas. "All the other members of the crew were 65 years old."
After Lucas playfully ignored repeated requests to put the microphone up to his mouth so his answers could be heard, Mankiewicz finally got him to discuss a key detail in the Star Wars story: why exactly does Yoda speak backwards? “Because if you talk in regular English, people won't really listen,” Lucas said. "But if he has an accent or it's very difficult to understand what he's saying, they focus on what he's saying."
“He was essentially the philosopher of the film,” Lucas continues. "I had to find a way to get people to listen to it - especially 12-year-olds."
Although the rest of the conversation didn't include much detail about the production of The Empire Strikes Back, Lucas did talk about how the studio didn't back Star Wars, initially being hesitant to agree to the deal memo he drafted. I said, "I'll do it for $50,000 to write, direct and produce... But I want sequels." And I wanted to get the rights because I'm going to make these films no matter what happens with this."
According to him, he added another condition to his contract, which will again become fateful both for himself and for the entertainment industry as a whole. I said, "Besides, I'd like to get a license." They said, "What's licensing?" Unimpressed with the film and given the history of film merchandising up to that point, the studio gave in to his demands. They talked to themselves and decided, "He'll never be able to do this. They need a billion dollars and a year to make a toy or anything at all. There's no money in this."
Lucas said that, overwhelmed by Fox's promotion of the film, he mounted a guerrilla campaign to generate buzz, envisioning a future in which generations of moviegoers will prove their support for their favorite films and franchises first-hand. “I had kids go around Disneyland and comic book conventions and stuff to promote the movie,” he said."That's why Fox was so shocked when the lines were all over the block on the first day."
Finally, Mankiewicz asked Lucas which of the two new characters in Empire - the handsome Jedi Master Yoda or the charismatic rogue Lando Calrissian - he liked better. Once again Lucas didn't take the bait. "If you have 12 children, which one do you love the most?" - the director waved it off. The moderator's attempt was noble, but, like the film that the audience was about to watch, the conversation ended somewhat unexpectedly and inconclusively. But at 80, Lucas makes fewer public appearances than ever, so the opportunity to see him felt like a rare treat - even if the event's unspoken lesson is that the more people who crave something, the easier it is to provide it at their own pace.