The bizarre manner in which Yoda speaks has a monumental presence in global pop culture. You'd hear people who are not even Star Wars fans talk like that. But why was such an important character made to speak like that? George Lucas revealed the reason recently.
Appearing at a 45th anniversary screening of The Empire Strikes Back on the opening night of the 2025 TCM Classic Film Festival, Lucas said he did it to make people pay attention.
"Yoda had a very distinctive way of talking, and it was done purposely because if you were speaking regular English, people don't listen that much," Lucas told TCM’s primetime host Ben Mankiewicz. “But if you have an accent, or it’s really hard to understand what he’s saying, they focus on what he’s saying."
"He was basically the philosopher of the movie, so he was talking about all the things... I had to figure out a way to get people to actually listen, especially 12-year-olds."
Frank Oz debuted Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back, reprised the role in Return of the Jedi, and all six prequel and sequel movies. He also voiced Yoda briefly in Star Wars Rebels. Tom Kane took over for The Clone Wars.
George Lucas explains taking a lower filmmaker's fee to keep the sequel rights
Although it is a known story, George Lucas reiterated in the interview why he took a pay cut as a filmmaker when Fox Studios agreed to back Star Wars. He already had the script ready for the entire original trilogy before A New Hope was even greenlit.
"As it turned out, when I got the ‘Star Wars’ script done, there were 180 pages. So I cut it into three parts and said I’ll focus on the first one, because we’d never get enough money to make the whole thing."
Fox executive Alan Ladd Jr. saw potential in Lucas' story even when the rest of the studio brass did not. However, even if Fox had backed out, he would've made the films anyway. He took a lower fee for the first film in exchange for keeping the producing and merchandising rights for the next two movies.
“I said, ‘I want the rights for these things because I’m going to make those movies no matter what happens,'” Lucas said. He did not expect A New Hope to make any profit. The movie put Lucas in a strange self-financing situation when it turned out to be a superhit. While Fox remained the distributor for The Empire Strikes Back, Lucas financed it himself. Had the sequel not worked, he would've gone bankrupt.
Both A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back went on to become two of the most commercially successful movies of all time. Both movies became the highest-grossing films of 1977 and 1980 respectively.
You can watch both on Disney+.