Today May 21, 2020 is the 40th anniversary of the best movies (and one of my favorite movies) of all time: The Empire Strikes Back.
With the two year anniversary of this podcast happening this week, as well, I thought it would be fun for me to go back through the past 65 or so episodes of this show and pull some of my favorite moments from some of my favorite guests, as they talk about what it was like, firsthand, to work on the sequel to Star Wars.
If you know me at all, this look back focuses mostly on the special effects: Industrial Light and Magic’s move from Van Nuys to San Rafael, the Hoth sequences, the Tauntauns, the walkers, and go motion.
I’ll be introducing the previous guests who are talking throughout, but just know that it is a combination of ILM wizards, legendary editors and unsung heroes. I’m talking about a total of 16 Academy Awards won in this 25 minute episode.
So let’s all just buckle up and take a trip back even before that 1980 release, before we knew who Luke’s father was and before anyone of us had ever even seen The Empire Strikes Back.