1. The Wampa Scene Was Written To Explain Mark Hamill's Car Crash - Star Wars: Episode IV - The Empire Strikes Back
People absolutely love this one. So much so, in fact, that it's often thought to be a definitive slice of movie trivia - an endlessly interesting factoid of the highest order that one can attribute to one of the greatest motion pictures of all-time, The Empire Strikes Back, with all the confidence in the world. Shame that it's mostly poppycock, then, huh? So the "fact" goes that Mark Hamill got into a car accident so horrific that his face was ruined and George Lucas was forced to write in a scene at the beginning of Empire Strikes Back that explained his injuries. Namely, the Wampa sequence, in which Luke finds himself beaten to a pulp by the giant ice creature during the first five minutes of the flick set on Hoth. There's no reason why this can't have been true, of course - it just isn't. And how do we know such things? Pretty much, because Mark Hamill has stated in a number of interviews that the car accident in question occurred right after the release of the first Star Wars movie (in 1977) and ended in a mere broken nose, rendering this "fact" obsolete. So whilst an accident did occur, Empire did not have to be hastily rewritten to explain Hamill's injuries - it didn't even start filming 'til years later, in 1979. When h e looked fine. What other famous movie facts are wrong? Share your personal bugbears down in the comments.
Sam Hill is an ardent cinephile and has been writing about film professionally since 2008. He harbours a particular fondness for western and sci-fi movies.
