May 25 - Universal Jedi Day

Most of you probably didn't know (I didn't) but today is the Universal Jedi Day. To celebrate, I decided to gather a few facts and trivia around the Internet concerning the Jedi directly or not, including movie curiosities. My second choice was to write a long and boring post on the reasons why I take the newest triology as an offense, but I decided to go with this for the sake of my peace of mind and to prevent eye-straining on the readers (if any remain). So here they are. Have fun! And since it's Monday, may the Force be with you...

• Thousands of Australians during a national census have been known in the past to put down their religion as being "Jedi". Now it seems the first "Jedi Church" is in the making thanks to brothers Barney and Daniel Jones of Anglesey, Wales. They claim to have up to 400.000 members worldwide, with 80 of those physically in Anglesey, and base their religion on the teachings of Yoda to promote inner peace. They have also offered to start up lightsaber fighting classes when construction is completed.
• Return of the Jedi was originally entitled Revenge of the Jedi. The title was change because revenge was not considered to be an emotion that was worthy of a Jedi.
• The Jedi Code of Honour: 'There is no emotion, there is peace. There is no ignorance, there is knowledge. There is no passion, there is serenity. There is no Death, there is the Force.'
• The Sith were originally named The Damned, but due to the debut of a British punk band with the same name in 1977, Lucas was forced to dub over the word "damned" with "Sith" in post-production. To this day, George Lucas hates punk rock.
• The line "I am your father!" remained a secret to the very end - even for actors. During filming, everyone had a different script, which read "Luke. You are your own father!", which confused actors and film crew alike. Lucas had to concoct a huge lie about time traveling in Return of the Jedi to keep it all together. Furthermore, to keep the ending an absolute secret, Lucas had James Earl-Jones saying "Obi-Wan killed your father!" at the time of the filming. He dubbed it over later.
  
• Only six people actually knew that Darth Vader was Luke Skywalker's father before the premiere: George Lucas, director Irving Kershner, screenwriters Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan, Mark Hamill and James Earl-Jones.
  
• The character of Yoda (including his trademark way of speaking) is based on the Dalai Lama.
• To make them sound more menacing, Darth Vader's footsteps were recorded in an underground tunnel near the Golden Gate Bridge.
• The first two Star Wars movies showed Obi-Wan and Luke using blue light sabers, while Darth Vader used a red one, leading fans to assume (correctly) that blue was the standard light saber of the Jedi, while the Sith always used red ones. Luke was indeed supposed to have a blue light saber in Return of the Jedi. But his scenes on Tatooine were shot in bright sunlight, and a blue light saber didn't show up well against the clear sky (if you look, in the first two movies a light saber was never used in broad daylight), so the color was changed to green. To maintain this diversity of light sabers, the next trilogy showed many Jedi using green light sabers (especially Qui-Gon Jin) and Mace Windu using a purple one. But in fact, all Jedi light sabers were supposed to be blue.
• Upon being spoken in A New Hope, the line "I've got a bad feeling about this" was spoken in all three films of the series. It would later be spoken in all movies in the next trilogy.
• The name of Emperor Palpatine was supposed to be Palatine, from the movie Taxi Driver. The name was changed to avoid any legal problems, but the Emperor's name was still never spoken in the movie.
• George Lucas revealed he had Yoda confirm that Darth Vader was Luke Skywalker's father because of a consultation Lucas had with a child psychologist. The psychologist told Lucas that children under 12 years of age tend to believe that the bad guy never speaks the truth. As such, unless the information was confirmed by a reliable source, the audience would always remain in doubt.
• At one point in the scripting process, the Force was a large crystal / galactic Holy Grail known as "Kyber Crystal".
• In Italy, Darth Vader became Dart Fener, the reason being that "Vader" in Italian sounds too close to the common noun for the toilet bowl.
• Darth Vader was the first character George Lucas created for the story.
• The lightsaber sound effect is a combination of the hum of an idling 35mm movie projector and the feedback generated by passing a stripped microphone cable by a television.
• The word "Jedi" is derived from the Japanese words "Jidai Geki" which translate as "period adventure drama." A period adventure drama is a Japanese TV soap opera program set in the samurai days. George Lucas revealed in an interview that he saw a "Jidai Geki" program on TV while in Japan a year or so before the movie was made and liked the word.
• The movie's line "May the force be with you." was voted as the #22 of "The 100 Greatest Movie Lines" by Premiere in 2007.
• The character name Obi-Wan Kenobi appears to allude to the following definitions. OBI - a form of belief involving sorcery, practiced in parts of the West Indies, South America, the southern U.S., and Africa. And a charm used in this belief system. WAN - Archaically meaning dark or gloomy; also pale in color or hue, meaning decline in ability (referring to dotage of the aging Jedi). KEN - knowledge, understanding, or cognizance; mental perception. range of sight or vision.
• Han Solo is the only non-Jedi/Sith in the entire original trilogy to ever use a lightsaber.
• Surprisingly, the most famous line of the saga is misquoted! Although everyone always remembers "Luke. I am your father!", what Darth Vader actually says is "No, I am your father!"
• When Vader throws the Emperor into the shaft in Return of the Jedi, the brief image of a skull can be seen superimposed on his visor.
• Return of the Jedi is the only movie in the original saga where Darth Vader doesn't Force-choke someone.