“Luke, I am your father.”
This often misquoted line from 1980’s The Empire Strikes Back (it’s actually “No, I am your father”) is so iconic that you’d be hard-pressed to find anybody in the world who doesn’t know that Darth Vader (portrayed on-screen by David Prowse, voiced by James Earl Jones) is Luke Skywalker’s (Mark Hamill) father in the Star Wars franchise.
However, once upon a time, that reveal was downright explosive, changing the fabric of a burgeoning film series that would quickly balloon into one of cinema’s biggest franchises. Hamill himself has broken down how it felt to be at the center of that iconic pop culture moment.
How The Darth Vader Secret Was Kept
In a very early example of screenplays being altered to avoid spoilers from going public, the scripts that the Empire Strikes Back cast and crew received had Darth Vader revealing a very different secret to Luke during their climactic battle in the bowels of Cloud City on Bespin. Originally, he was meant to reveal that Luke’s Jedi mentor Obi-Wan Kenobi (Alec Guinness) is the man who killed Luke’s father.
It wasn’t until the day before shooting that Mark Hamill learned what the actual reveal was going to be, so he could react appropriately. Not even David Prowse was told, so it is entirely possible that while they were shooting, he was confused about why his co-star was overreacting so much to his line.
As Hamill described it to StarWars.com during a 2020 interview celebrating the movie’s 40th anniversary, Empire Strikes Back director Irvin Kershner sat him down and said, “I’m going to tell you something. I know it. [Star Wars creator George Lucas] knows it. And when I tell you, you’ll know it. But that means that’s only three people. So if it leaks, we’ll know it’s you.”
It is unclear if the stakes were ultimately that high. While it is possible that Lucas made the decision without the knowledge of the Empire screenplay’s co-writers Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan, at the very least, James Earl Jones - who had to record the iconic line at some point during post-production - also knew the secret.
‘The Empire Strikes Back’ (1980)Credit: Twentieth Century-Fox
Nevertheless, Hamill felt the pressure. Even though there was no social media and no Internet, he still felt extreme anxiety about accidentally revealing the secret, saying that “I talk in my sleep. I was terrified having that knowledge.”
However, he ultimately managed to keep the spoiler locked down for more than a year between the time he filmed the scene and the time Empire debuted, to the point that his co-star Harrison Ford (who played smuggler-with-a-heart-of-gold Han Solo) turned to him during the premiere after the scene played out and said, “You didn’t effing tell me that!”
Hamill said that his response to Ford was, “I was afraid! I was too afraid!” He also explained that, “Other than that, the scene played exactly as it did. It surprised everyone!”
The Empire Strikes Back Reveal Changed Star Wars
The fact that the Darth Vader secret didn’t leak helped make that reveal a galvanizing moment for Star Wars fans, giving it extra oomph so it could become as memorable and impactful as possible. Partially because of the level of shock that it inspired in 1980, the line still resonates to this day, being endlessly quoted and misquoted.
This may have been a make-or-break moment for the Star Wars franchise as a whole. As Hamill explains, the tone of The Empire Strikes Back was much darker than the original 1977 Star Wars, ending in a much darker place that lacked the hopefulness of Luke destroying the Death Star in the previous installment.
As Hamill says in the same interview, “It was… so dark and so shocking that it ended with us defeated, you know? And Harrison turned into a coffee table. It was tragic all-around. It was just terrible. But it was really exciting to me. I thought… If this one doesn’t resonate with the public, the future of the franchise - and at that time I was only thinking the trilogy - it’s pivotal that this movie connects… I thought if this one tanks or the audience rejects it, we’re all in big trouble.”
Obviously, the movie did connect, partially because of the way that audiences were thrilled by that explosive reveal. The Empire Strikes Back was a massive hit, becoming the highest-grossing movie at the domestic box office in 1980 (earning nearly double the gross of the No. 2 movie, the workplace comedy 9 to 5) by earning $209.4 million in North America (which is $857.9 million when adjusted for inflation - a total that is almost exactly even with what Avengers: Endgame made in domestic theaters).
‘The Empire Strikes Back’ (1980)Credit: Twentieth Century-Fox
Thanks to the success of The Empire Strikes Back, compounded with the box office haul of the original hit, the Star Wars franchise has now grown into a sprawling multimedia phenomenon that includes 12 live-action theatrical films and countless more animated and live-action series, comic books, video games, novels, and theme park attractions.
Leak Prevention Has Advanced Since 1980
Because of what he went through to protect the Darth Vader reveal in The Empire Strikes Back, Mark Hamill found himself in the position of being one of the only people in the industry to be truly prepared for the way that keeping spoilers out of the hands of fans has completely transformed in the 46 years since the movie’s debut.
The process has become considerably more intense in the wake of the Internet becoming widely accessible. Leaks have become more and more common and damaging, with the earliest example coming when the 1997 whodunit slasher sequel Scream 2 had its script leaked online, reportedly forcing screenwriter Kevin Williamson to completely rewrite the third act of the movie.
Many methods have been used to prevent leaks in subsequent productions, including not giving actors full scripts, writing fake scenes to muddy the waters for potential leaks, and only allowing watermarked scripts to be accessible via certain encrypted channels, with the technology to protect spoilers becoming more and more advanced as the years go by. The pressure that someone like the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Tom Holland (who is notoriously prone to leaking plot details from his Spider-Man and Avengers movies) is considerably higher than it would have been for Mark Hamill in the late 1970s. However, that likely wouldn’t be the case if his efforts hadn’t been so effective in the first place.
For more on The Empire Strikes Back, check out No Film School’s archives, which contain articles about the movie’s original downer ending, how it was saved by improv and cheap solutions, last-minute changes that were made, how a real-life accident led to the Wampa scene, and more.
