Jedi OrderLight-side guardians

The SithRule of two

The RebellionA new hope

Bounty HuntersThis is the way

The EmpireOrder 66

01

The original Star Wars film — later retitled Episode IV: A New Hope — opened in just 32 American theatres and proceeded to become the highest-grossing film of its era, redefining what summer blockbusters could be. In which year did it premiere?

✓ Correct! 1977 — specifically May 25. 20th Century Fox had so little faith in the project they only opened it in 32 theatres at first; queues quickly stretched around the block, and the film expanded to over 1,000 screens within months. It earned $307 million in its initial domestic run, won six Academy Awards (with another four nominations) and inverted Hollywood’s economics for the next 50 years.

✗ Wrong. The answer is 1977. 1975 is when the script was being shopped around. 1979 is when Star Trek: The Motion Picture released as a Star Wars-shaped countermove. 1980 is The Empire Strikes Back. The original Star Wars is May 25, 1977.

02
A New Hope’s writer-director was a then-32-year-old American Graffiti veteran who’d struggled to get the project greenlit and famously took back-end profit and merchandising rights in lieu of a higher salary — the deal that would build a billion-dollar company. He returned to direct the prequels but stepped away from the original-trilogy sequels. Name him.

A Steven Spielberg
B George Lucas
C Francis Ford Coppola
D Irvin Kershner

✓ Correct! George Lucas. The merchandising rights he kept (because Fox didn’t value them) became the financial bedrock of Lucasfilm and the basis of the modern toys-and-licensing megabusiness. After A New Hope, Lucas produced but didn’t direct Empire Strikes Back (Irvin Kershner) or Return of the Jedi (Richard Marquand), then directed all three prequels (1999–2005). He sold Lucasfilm to Disney in 2012 and stepped away from creative control of the sequels.

✗ Wrong. The answer is George Lucas. Steven Spielberg was Lucas’s close friend (and the godfather of his post-A-New-Hope career) but never directed a Star Wars film. Coppola was Lucas’s mentor at USC and at American Zoetrope. Irvin Kershner directed Empire Strikes Back. The original is Lucas’s.

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03

In
1980’s The Empire Strikes Back,
Darth Vader delivers cinema’s most-misquoted line at the climax of his Cloud City duel with Luke Skywalker.
Vader severs Luke’s hand and reveals their relationship.
The exact line is — for the record —“No, I am your father.”
What relationship does it confirm?

A Vader is Luke’s uncle
B Vader is Luke’s father (Anakin Skywalker)
C Vader is Obi-Wan’s brother
D Vader is Han’s father

✓ Correct! Vader is Anakin Skywalker, Luke’s father.
The reveal was so jealously guarded that Mark Hamill was only told the real line on set the day they shot it (the script said
‘Obi-Wan killed your father’), and even James Earl Jones recorded the dub without knowing the full plot context.
The line — commonly misquoted as ‘Luke, I am your father’ — rewrote what trilogies could pull off and is broadly considered cinema’s most famous twist.

✗ Wrong. The answer is that Vader is Luke’s father, Anakin Skywalker.
The whole foundation of the Skywalker saga collapses to this single twist: Anakin (the Jedi prodigy of the prequels) becomes Vader after his fall.
Luke and Leia are revealed in Return of the Jedi to be his twin children, separated at birth.

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