10 Ways Star Wars Actors FIXED Scenes They Hated
Harrison Ford held nothing back when it came to George Lucas' ropey dialogue.
The Star Wars franchise is such a colossal behemoth with so many moving parts that actors surely can't expect to have too much input on the creative side of things.
Nevertheless, that hasn't prevented the series' more bold-minded cast members from putting their foot down and placing their own stamp on scenes that just weren't working.
Inspired by a recent Reddit thread on the subject, these Star Wars actors all decided to fix scenes they couldn't stand during shooting, whether offering up a more creative solution themselves or simply refusing to perform it as written.
While you might assume that Star Wars movies are pretty much set in stone and rarely deviate from the script, occasionally those in front of the camera made their concerns clear and insisted the scene be tried another way.
And in the case of these 10 scenes - most of them, anyway - they were absolutely correct, using their instincts as performers to rework scenes in ways they found more personally satisfying.
Sometimes all it took was speaking to the director, while other times it required employing considerably greater tact...
10. Mark Hamill Wore The Vader Mask (Because He Hated The Prop Head) - The Empire Strikes Back
In The Empire Strikes Back's iconic Dark Side Cave scene, Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) has a vision of being attacked by Darth Vader (David Prowse), but when Luke decapitates him with a lightsaber, he sees his own head staring back at him inside Vader's destroyed mask.
It's a chilling, brilliantly executed scene, but one which wasn't quite coming together for Mark Hamill during shooting. Originally, a prosthetic of Luke's head was going to be placed within Vader's mask for the shot of Luke's face staring up, but Hamill was dissatisfied with the quality of the prop.
And so, the scene was re-shot with Hamill simply poking his head up from underneath the set's stage and into the Vader mask, ensuring Luke's decapitated head looked considerably more realistic, not being a prop and all.
This scene proves yet again that the simplest solution is often the right one. No fancy effects needed - just a guy shoving his head through a hole in the set.
On Twitter, however, Hamill added that shooting the scene this way did present an additional challenge: trying not to blink when the smoke wafted across his face.