Harrison Ford held nothing back when it came to George Lucas' ropey dialogue.
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00:00The Star Wars franchise is such a colossal behemoth with so many moving parts that
00:04actors surely can't expect to have too much input on the creative side of things.
00:09Inspired by a recent Reddit thread on the subject,
00:11these Star Wars actors all decided to fix scenes they couldn't stand during shooting.
00:16Sometimes all it took was speaking to the director,
00:18while other times it required employing considerably greater tact.
00:22With that in mind, I'm Adam from WhatCulture,
00:24and here are 10 Ways Star Wars Actors Fixed Scenes They Hated.
00:30Mark Hamill wore the Vader mask because he hated the prop head, The Empire Strikes Back.
00:35In The Empire Strikes Back's iconic Darkseid cave scene, Luke Skywalker has a vision of
00:41being attacked by Darth Vader, but when Luke decapitates him with a lightsaber,
00:44he sees his own head staring back at him inside Vader's destroyed mask.
00:49It's a chilling, brilliantly executed scene,
00:51but one which wasn't quite coming together for Mark Hamill during shooting.
00:55Originally, a prosthetic of Luke's head was going to be placed within Vader's mask
00:59for the shot of Luke's face staring up, but Hamill was dissatisfied with the quality of the prop.
01:04And so, the scene was reshot with Hamill simply poking his head up from underneath the set stage
01:09and into the Vader mask,
01:11ensuring Luke's decapitated head looked considerably more realistic.
01:15Not being a prop and all.
01:16This scene proves yet again that the simplest solution is often the right one.
01:20No fancy effects needed, just a guy shoving his head through a hole in the set.
01:24On Twitter, however,
01:25Hamill added that shooting the scene this way did present an additional challenge,
01:30trying not to blink when smoke wafted across his face.
01:34Number 9.
01:34Tim Rose refused to have Admiral Ackbar celebrate the Empire's defeat, Return of the Jedi
01:40Return of the Jedi, of course, ends with the destruction of the second Death Star,
01:44and all the rebels around the galaxy euphorically celebrating their victory over the Empire.
01:49But Tim Rose, the puppeteer who portrayed Admiral Ackbar on set,
01:53objected to a request from director Richard Marquand
01:56that he and the other Mon Calamari characters on board his ship
02:00dance around and celebrate following the victory.
02:02Rose strongly felt that Ackbar would react in a more solemn fashion to the Empire's defeat,
02:07and so refused to perform the scene as Marquand requested.
02:11In a 2019 interview, Rose said,
02:13I was at the stage where I came within 200 numbers of being drafted for Vietnam,
02:18so I had very strong views about the war at the time.
02:21While I think it's something to be proud of, but not something to celebrate.
02:25There's a big difference.
02:26So in Ackbar's last scene, they put the camera on him.
02:29I thought about our people who died, their people who died,
02:32and the weight of it sunk me down in the chair.
02:35And Marquand got really angry and said,
02:37Right, we're going to do this again, and this time you get up and dance around.
02:41I said, if you want Ackbar to dance around, you can put someone else in the suit.
02:45You've got my performance.
02:46And they left it in.
02:47Rose was absolutely right here.
02:50Seeing Ackbar slumped down in his chair is infinitely more suitable
02:53and impactful than watching him do a jig around his ship.
02:58Carrie Fisher spoke her least favourite line of dialogue in an English accent,
03:02A New Hope.
03:04Sometimes actors resort to desperate measures in an attempt to fix a scene they can't stand,
03:09and that was most certainly the case with Carrie Fisher
03:12when she filmed A New Hope's iconic holographic recording of Princess Leia.
03:16In a panel discussion shortly before her death,
03:18Fisher confirmed that she absolutely loved one particular line from this sequence,
03:23when Leia says,
03:24I have placed information vital to the survival of the rebellion
03:28into the memory systems of this R2 unit.
03:30Fisher's frustration with the clunky, unnatural-sounding dialogue
03:34prompted her to perform it in an English accent,
03:36because she felt that it wouldn't sound right coming from an American tongue.
03:40Now, did Fisher really fix the dialogue,
03:42given that fans routinely point out how jarring Leia's English accent is
03:46in the film's establishing scenes?
03:48Probably not, but she at least tried to do something to make it fit better,
03:52even if it ultimately didn't work out.
03:54Hilariously, Fisher also admitted that this single scene is what prompted her
03:58to embark on a second career as a Hollywood script doctor
04:02after the end of the original trilogy,
04:04working for many years polishing scripts of some of the biggest movies of the 1990s.
04:097. Mark Hamill had Luke wink at C-3PO rather than ignore him, The Last Jedi
04:16Mark Hamill had made it incredibly clear that he didn't fully agree
04:19with the creative direction for Luke Skywalker in The Last Jedi,
04:23yet nevertheless gave himself over to Rian Johnson's expectation-subverting vision,
04:28for the most part anyway.
04:29Hamill did pipe up, however, while shooting his reunion with Leia, R2-D2 and C-3PO,
04:35because as written, Luke didn't acknowledge C-3PO at all.
04:39Hamill felt strongly that Luke wouldn't ignore him,
04:42and so insisted to Johnson that he get a brief moment with the droid.
04:46In his own words,
04:47Initially, I didn't acknowledge 3PO. I walked right past him. I said,
04:51Rian, look, after all those years of service,
04:54even though we haven't been in contact in recent years,
04:563PO was the closest to a sidekick I had.
04:59Harrison had Chewie, and I had R2 and 3PO.
05:02Buddies so accommodating and so collaborative.
05:05He said, oh, absolutely, you should go over there.
05:08We didn't really have time to script anything just to acknowledge him,
05:11and that's what I did.
05:13And so, the scene ended with Luke giving 3PO a quick wink before moving on.
05:17It's a small addition,
05:19but one that ensured fans didn't cry foul that Luke straight-up blanked his old buddy.
05:25Donnie Yen made Chirrut less of a stereotype, Rogue One
05:29Donnie Yen proved to be a scene-stealer in Rogue One
05:32with his performance as blind Jedi Chirrut Imwe.
05:35Yet he initially had some serious misgivings with the character as written,
05:38and insisted that he make some major changes to Chirrut's characterisation.
05:42In an interview with GQ,
05:44Yen revealed that he told the filmmakers that Chirrut was written as a stereotype,
05:48a typical humourless martial arts master.
05:51Ultimately, he not only suggested that Chirrut be blind,
05:54but fought for him to get a sense of humour and even improvised jokes during shooting,
05:58such as the memorable line,
06:00Are you kidding me? I'm blind.
06:02Yen, an accomplished multi-hyphenate in his own right,
06:05insisted to director Gareth Edwards that he had far more to offer the film than merely acting,
06:10telling him,
06:11When you hire me, you're not just getting an actor, you're getting a choreographer, a director.
06:16And so, rather than simply grumble his way through an underwhelming part
06:20for the sake of a fat Disney paycheck,
06:22Yen spoke up and immeasurably improved the character,
06:25and in turn the film in the process.
06:28Number 5, Oscar Isaac Persuaded J.J. Abrams to Scrap Poe's Death, The Force Awakens
06:34Originally when Oscar Isaac signed up to play Poe Dameron in The Force Awakens,
06:38it was written to be a relatively small role,
06:41because Poe would be killed off at the end of the first act
06:44when he and Finn crash-landed on Jakku while fleeing the First Order.
06:48As excited as Isaac was to appear in a Star Wars movie,
06:51he wasn't terribly thrilled about being killed off so soon,
06:54especially after recently shooting four separate movies where he died early on.
06:59And so, Isaac made his reservations clear to Abrams,
07:02who around a week later told Isaac that they found a way to give Poe a stay of execution,
07:07ensuring he stuck around for the rest of the movie and ultimately the trilogy.
07:11If Poe felt like the lesser of the sequel trilogy's three heroic leads,
07:15it's probably because he wasn't originally supposed to be one at all.
07:19Number 4, Samuel L. Jackson Requested a Purple Lightsaber
07:23to Stand Out on Geonosis, Attack of the Clones
07:27Samuel L. Jackson's time on the Star Wars prequels reached a fever pitch of frustration
07:31while shooting Attack of the Clones Battle of Geonosis,
07:34when Jackson realised that his character, Mace Windu,
07:38wouldn't stand out amid the chaos of the battle.
07:40And so, Jackson went directly to George Lucas and asked him if,
07:44to help him pop among the literally hundreds of characters in the scene,
07:47Windu could have a purple lightsaber,
07:49Though Lucas reminded him that Jedi lightsabers are typically only blue and green,
07:54Jackson retorted that he was playing
07:56the second baddest Jedi in the universe next to Yoda.
07:59Ultimately, that was that.
08:00But when Jackson was summoned back for reshoots,
08:03Lucas called him over and showed him footage of the battle
08:05where Windu was indeed rocking a purple lightsaber, much to his delight.
08:10Few actors would have had the confidence to make such a bold request of Lucas,
08:14let alone the clout to actually persuade him.
08:17Bravo, Jackson!
08:19Mark Hamill convinced George Lucas to scrap an awful line of dialogue, A New Hope
08:25It's no secret that A New Hope in particular has its fair share of ropey dialogue,
08:30but in one scene it eventually became too much for Mark Hamill,
08:33who convinced George Lucas to scrap the offending verbiage entirely.
08:37Shortly after the destruction of Alderaan,
08:39Luke and Han Solo were meant to have an exchange on the Millennium Falcon,
08:42where Han mentions that he's going to drop Luke and company off at the nearest asteroid,
08:46and Luke replies with the following word salad.
08:49But we can't turn back, fear is their greatest defense.
08:52I doubt if the actual security there is, is any greater than it was on Aguili or Sullust,
08:57and what there is is most likely directed towards a large-scale assault.
09:00Hilariously, Hamill bluntly told Lucas what he thought of the dialogue.
09:04He said,
09:05Who talks like this, George?
09:06This is really not fair,
09:08because you know we're the ones who's going to get vegetables thrown at us, not you.
09:12And his appeal ultimately won out,
09:14as Lucas binned the cumbersome dialogue in favour of more plainly spoken chatter between the two.
09:19Praise be.
09:20Number 2.
09:21Harrison Ford changed I love you to I know, The Empire Strikes Back
09:26Now for what's by far the most famous of all on-the-fly changes made by frustrated Star Wars actors.
09:33At the end of The Empire Strikes Back, when Han is about to be frozen in carbonite,
09:36Leia tells him I love you, and Han was originally scripted to say I love you too.
09:41But Harrison Ford felt that it wasn't consistent with Han's established character for him to say
09:46this to Leia, and so improvised a more on-brand retort, with Han instead telling her I know.
09:52This more aloof, distant response was absolutely better suited to Han's character,
09:57and remains both one of the character's defining moments,
10:00and one of the most memorable beats in the entire Star Wars franchise.
10:04Though Ford did shoot a version of the scene as scripted for safety's sake,
10:08when both versions were tested in front of an audience,
10:10it was clear that his improvised revision was the one to go with.
10:14And like that, cinematic history was made.
10:17Number 1.
10:18Ray Park refused to blink as Darth Maul, The Phantom Menace
10:22Sometimes actors just need to figure things out themselves when a scene isn't working for them.
10:27But in the case of Darth Maul actor Ray Park,
10:29it was pretty much the entire Phantom Menace shoot which caused him issues.
10:34The problem, the coloured red-yellow contact lenses he had to wear to portray the Sith
10:38Lord were extremely irritating, enough that they caused discomfort whenever he blinked.
10:43You know, the thing we do every couple of seconds.
10:46As a result, Park decided to blink as little as humanly possible while playing Maul,
10:51a flourish which was primarily for his own comfort on set,
10:54and yet ended up only enhancing the character's unnerving quality.
10:58As it turns out, Maul only blinks three times on screen during The Phantom Menace,
11:03which while underlining his overall creepiness,
11:06was largely Park trying to spare himself some ocular agony.
11:10For all of George Lucas' love of groundbreaking CGI in the prequels,
11:14could he really not spare Park the hassle and just colour his eyes in post?
11:18And there we have it folks, our list of Star Wars actors who fixed scenes they really hated.
11:23And please do let us know in the comments which scene you think they fixed for the better.
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11:35You can come and say hello to me on there.
11:37Thank you for watching everyone, I hope you enjoy the rest of your day,
11:40and until next time, may the Force be with you.