10 Extremely Uncomfortable Moments In Classic Movies

5. Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back - Luke And Leia's Icky Sexual Tension

There can’t be many people who don’t know the basic plot of the original Star Wars trilogy by now, but if you’re one of the few who don’t, SPOILER ALERT…

Right, so as the rest of us know, Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia are siblings. Obviously, they don’t discover this till later on, but it was all part of George Lucas’s grand plan for the story he had mapped out in his head.

So, why on Alderaan does he decide to throw in a bit of incestuous sexual tension between them? In particular, there’s that moment in The Empire Strikes Back where Luke and Leia kiss for a little too long to be comfortable for siblings.

There is a raft of speculation on the internet that suggests George Lucas originally didn’t intend for them to be related, so the kiss was presumably a plot device to ramp up the tension in a love triangle with Han. There’s also a deleted scene where they very nearly kiss – and this is most definitely a non-platonic smacker – but get interrupted by C3PO

So in summary – and in contradiction of Lucas’s claims of having an entire story planned - Luke and Leia probably weren’t intended to be siblings originally, but along the way Lucas changed his mind. Which begs the question, why leave the kiss in? With the hindsight that we have now, it comes across as really icky. Implying incest in a family film is not really that good an idea generally.