Star Wars Celebrates 40 Years of Empire Strikes Back with Never-Before-Seen BTS Reel

While everyone was celebrating the anniversary of Star Wars: The Last Jedi yesterday, Lucasfilm has gone ahead to release a BTS reel of never-before-seen footage from Empire Strikes Back to celebrate the movie turning 40-years-old.

Check it out:

See never-before-seen on-set footage and outtakes from Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, with commentary by members of the cast and crew who brought the first Star Wars sequel to life. Featured are rare behind-the-scenes moments captured by the film's documentary crew, including the frozen exteriors of Hoth, the Rebel base hangar, interiors of the Millennium Falcon, Cloud City, and the film's climactic duel between Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker. Also included is an all-new and archival audio commentary by George Lucas, Mark Hamill, Anthony Daniels, Billy Dee Williams, and Lawrence Kasdan.

It's fantastic how clear the footage looks as Lucasfilm probably did some restoration to the 40-year-old footage. Besides watching Mark Hamill try his best to rehearse for Luke Skywalker, you also have to love all the extra scenes with Carrie Fisher fooling around the set as Leia.

Though Empire Strikes Back is regarded as one of the best Star Wars films today, it was actually very poorly received when it came out because it went so far from the formula of the original one. A lot of people believe that the same is kind of happening with The Last Jedi, and time will eventually be one the side of TLJ when it goes down as one of the best entries of the Sequel Trilogy.

In the meantime, you can catch The Mandalorian Season 2 now on Disney+.

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