The Empire Strikes Back Trivia
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This Empire Strikes Back trivia quiz has 90 free questions with answers and covers Episode V from the ice caves of Hoth to the underside of Cloud City: the wampa, the tauntaun, the AT-AT assault, the asteroid field, Yoda's training on Dagobah, the bounty hunters, Lando's betrayal, the carbonite chamber and the duel that ends with the most famous line in the saga. It also digs into how the film got made — George Lucas financing it himself and nearly running out of money, Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan's scripts, Irvin Kershner's hiring, the Finse blizzards, the Elstree fire, the fake line fed to David Prowse, Harrison Ford's improvised reply to Leia — plus its Oscars, its box office and its critical reappraisal. Early questions suit anyone who has seen it more than once; later ones reward fans who know the budget, the working names for Yoda, and who physically played the Emperor. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries before publishing.
30 of 90 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Lucas handed The Empire Strikes Back to which director?
Irvin Kershner
Irvin Kershner had taught at USC's film school and was reluctant to follow such a hit; Lucas told him he wanted someone who knew everything a Hollywood director should but was 'not Hollywood'.
Q 02How many years after the original Star Wars is the film set?
Three
Three years: the film is set in 3 ABY, three years after the Battle of Yavin that closed the original Star Wars, with the Rebels now hiding on Hoth.
Q 03On which ice planet is the Rebel base at the start of the film?
Hoth
Hoth is the ice planet hiding Echo Base; an Imperial probe droid finds it and the Empire attacks with AT-AT walkers.
Q 04What creature captures Luke at the start of The Empire Strikes Back?
A wampa
A wampa drags Luke to its ice cave and hangs him from the ceiling; he escapes by using the Force to pull his lightsaber to his hand, then slices off the creature's arm.
Q 05How does Han keep Luke alive overnight in the snow?
He puts him inside a tauntaun carcass
He puts him inside a tauntaun carcass, cutting his dead mount open for its body heat while he builds a shelter, and grumbles that he thought they smelled bad on the outside.
Q 06Which Jedi Master trains Luke on Dagobah?
Yoda
Yoda, the Jedi Master living in exile in Dagobah's swamps, was puppeteered and voiced by Frank Oz, who also performed Miss Piggy for the Muppets.
Q 07What does Yoda lift out of the swamp to show Luke the power of the Force?
The sunken X-wing
Yoda raises Luke's sunken X-wing out of the swamp after Luke fails and calls it too big; Yoda replies, 'Size matters not.'
Q 08In The Empire Strikes Back, what is wrong with the Millennium Falcon as it flees the Rebel base?
Its hyperdrive malfunctions
Its hyperdrive malfunctions, so Han cannot jump to lightspeed and hides the ship in an asteroid cave that turns out to be the mouth of a giant creature.
Q 09Which reptilian bounty hunter stands among those Darth Vader hires in The Empire Strikes Back?
Bossk
Bossk, a Trandoshan played by Alan Harris, lines up with five other hunters on Vader's bridge, but it is Boba Fett who outguesses Han and follows the Falcon to Cloud City.
Q 10Who administers Cloud City on the gas planet Bespin?
Lando Calrissian
Lando Calrissian runs Cloud City as its Baron Administrator; he is an old gambling friend of Han's and the Falcon's previous owner, having lost the ship to him 'fair and square'.
Q 11What is Han frozen in on Cloud City?
Carbonite
Carbonite: Vader has Han frozen in carbonite to test whether the process can safely imprison Luke, then hands the slab to Boba Fett.
Q 12What is Han's famous reply to 'I love you' just before he is frozen?
I know
'I know' was Harrison Ford's suggestion on set in place of the scripted line; test audiences loved it, though George Lucas felt it was not how Han would act.
Q 13Which body part does Vader sever from Luke in their Cloud City duel?
His right hand
His right hand: Vader's blade takes it, lightsaber and all, just before he reveals he is Luke's father; by the closing scene a robotic replacement is being fitted.
Q 21Which actor's small percentage of the box office gross was payment for a few hours' work as Obi-Wan?
Alec Guinness
Alec Guinness returned as Obi-Wan's ghost for a brief Elstree shoot, taking a small share of the gross; an eye condition made him wary of bright lights.
Q 22Who voiced the Emperor in the original 1980 release of The Empire Strikes Back?
Clive Revill
Clive Revill supplied the voice, while the face was a heavily made-up actress with a chimpanzee's eyes superimposed; the whole scene was reshot with a new actor for the 2004 DVD.
Q 23Which makeup artist was chiefly responsible for building the Yoda puppet?
Stuart Freeborn
Q 14Which two screenwriters are credited on The Empire Strikes Back?
Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan
Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan share the credit: Brackett died of cancer soon after delivering the first draft, and Lucas, who rewrote it before hiring Kasdan, backed keeping her name on the film.
Q 15In which Norwegian village were the ice-planet scenes of The Empire Strikes Back filmed?
Finse
Finse sits below the Hardangerjøkulen glacier; the shoot ran into the area's worst snowstorm in half a century, so some scenes were filmed just outside the door of the crew's hotel.
Q 16At which English studio were the interiors of The Empire Strikes Back shot?
Elstree
Elstree Studios in Borehamwood hosted the interiors; Lucas paid for a new 'Star Wars stage' there for the Dagobah and Rebel base sets.
Q 17A fire on the set of which Stanley Kubrick film destroyed studio space planned for The Empire Strikes Back?
The Shining
The Shining: a fire on Kubrick's Overlook Hotel set early in 1979 gutted a stage Empire had booked, and Empire then had to give up two more stages so that Kubrick could finish.
Q 18How did George Lucas mainly pay for The Empire Strikes Back?
His own Star Wars profits plus a bank loan
His own Star Wars profits plus a bank loan: Lucas staked his earnings so that he, not a studio, would own the film outright, then had to scramble for more credit as the costs soared.
Q 19Which two Oscars did The Empire Strikes Back win?
Best Sound and a special award for visual effects
Best Sound and a special award for visual effects were its two Oscars; John Williams's score was nominated as well, but lost to the musical Fame.
Q 20James Earl Jones went uncredited as Vader's voice, calling himself what?
Special effects
Special effects: Jones felt a voice dubbed over another actor's performance was too small a job to sign, so he declined a credit on the first two films and was finally named in Return of the Jedi.
Stuart Freeborn built the Yoda puppet and gave it some of his own features, adding Albert Einstein's as well in the hope of making the little Jedi look wise.
Q 24In the first-draft script of The Empire Strikes Back, who was Luke's hidden sister?
A brand-new character
A brand-new character: the first draft gave Luke a hidden sister called Nellith, no relation to the princess, and had his father turn up as a ghost, a different man from Darth Vader.
Q 25Alan Dean Foster's Splinter of the Mind's Eye was written to be filmed as what if Star Wars flopped?
A low-budget sequel
A low-budget sequel: Lucas had Foster write a story cheap enough to film if the first movie only scraped by; when it became a phenomenon instead, the back-up plan was published as a novel in 1978.
Q 26Which Rebel pilot, played by Denis Lawson, flies a snowspeeder in The Empire Strikes Back?
Wedge Antilles
Wedge Antilles and his gunner bring down the first Imperial walker by tangling its legs in a tow cable; Lawson's nephew Ewan McGregor later joined the saga as Obi-Wan.
Q 27Which Imperial admiral, played by Michael Sheard, does Vader choke for leaving hyperspace too close to the Rebel base?
Ozzel
Ozzel's blunder gives the Rebels time to raise their energy shield, so Vader chokes him from afar and promotes Captain Piett to admiral in the same breath.
Q 28To whom is the frozen Han to be delivered for a bounty?
Jabba the Hutt
Jabba the Hutt: Boba Fett flies the frozen Han to the crime lord on Tatooine to collect the bounty, and Return of the Jedi finds him hanging on Jabba's wall as a trophy.
Q 29Why does Luke leave Dagobah before finishing his training?
He has a vision of Han and Leia in pain
He has a vision of Han and Leia in pain in a city in the clouds and flies off to help, against the pleas of both his teachers and exactly as Vader, who is torturing Han as bait, intends.
Q 30Which word really begins Vader's line often misquoted as 'Luke, I am your father'?
No
No: 'No, I am your father' answers Luke's charge that Vader killed his father; to guard the twist, the actor in the suit was given a false line on set and the real one was dubbed in later.