George Lucas has revealed why popular character Yoda speaks backwards in the Star Wars universe.
The Jedi master first appeared in the 1980s The Empire Strikes Back, and has gone on to become a central figure in the film and television franchise.
He often speaks using back-to-front phrases, offering pearls of wisdom such as: “The greatest teacher, failure is.”
Variety reports that during an appearance at a screening of The Empire Strikes Back in Hollywood, Lucas took the time to explain why he gave the character such an idiosyncratic way of speaking.
“If you speak regular English, people won’t listen that much,” said Lucas. “But if he had an accent, or it’s really hard to understand what he’s saying, they focus on what he’s saying.”
The filmmaker continued: “He was basically the philosopher of the movie. I had to figure out a way to get people to actually listen — especially 12-year-olds.”
Baby Yoda – whose real name is Grogu, and is the same species as Yoda – first appeared in The Mandalorian in November 2019.
Two months later, showrunner Jon Favreau shared a photo of Lucas cuddling the character on set.
During the development of the series, however, Lucas was worried about the character, and made one request to executive producer and director Dave Filoni.
In the book, “The Art of the Mandalorian Season 2,” Esquire noted that Filoni “had a talk with George, at one point, about the Child.”
Lucas’ “main concern was that the kid has to have a proper amount of training,” Filoni stated.
Fortunately for Lucas, the training is demonstrated in “The Book of Boba Fett,” with Grogu being trained by Luke Skywalker.
By the end of the episode, though, Grogu leaves Luke and returns to the side of Din Darin (Pedro Pascal).
“I've spent my life creating Star Wars – 40 years – and giving it up was very, very painful,” Lucas told an interviewer in 2020. "But it was the right thing to do. I thought I was going to have a little bit more to say about the next three [films] because I'd already started them, but they decided they wanted to do something else.”
Things “don't always work out the way you want it. Life is like that,” he said.
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