Why Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back Was A Whole Different Beast For VFX Artists

When "Star Wars" hit theaters in 1977, no one knew how big it would be. By the time the sequel "Star Wars: Episode V — The Empire Strikes Back" was set for a 1980 release, there was a lot of pressure on the VFX team to deliver the goods. There were more effects shots here, and fan expectation was high.

In a 2016 video interview with "The Star Wars Show," legendary VFX artist and then-senior effects supervisor and creative director at Industrial Light & Magic Dennis Muren spoke about working on the second film and how much harder it was than the first one. Muren, by the way, was hired at ILM in 1976 before the first "Star Wars" film, and has since been a part of projects like the original "Battlestar Galactica" series, "The Abyss," "Terminator 2: Judgement Day," "Jurassic Park," "Twister," and "A.I. Artificial Intelligence." Oh, and then there are the nine Academy Awards he's received for visual effects and technical achievement.

Muren was asked about "the most painfully rewarding special effect(s)" he was a part of by viewer @MrBob_A_Feet. He spoke about a few moments in "Empire" that were really difficult for the crew and revealed that some unfinished prints made it out to the public.

Dennis Muren said that "Empire" was "the hardest thing I've ever done." He explained: 

"It was far beyond what 'Star Wars' was as far as the effects go. Many more shots — much more complicated with the light backgrounds, the snow backgrounds, and the cloud backgrounds, so the matting [matte paintings behind the action] had to be better. So many more designs had to be done for it. So many different types of things between the walkers and the asteroid sequence. 

"Just the asteroid sequence alone, trying to bring clarity to all these rocks that are moving around, and you can't tell one from another, but you want this one to look big and this to look small, and you have a Falcon flying through there. You can't tell what you're looking at. I mean, that all had to be figured out, and that's just one sequence. And there were so many of them, and we just barely got that show done."

Those sequences are some of the best parts of the film. While the effects during the Hoth, Bespin, and the asteroid field scenes may look a little bit dated to modern audiences, I can tell you from my experience seeing the film in the theater in my footie pajamas that they blew my little kid-mind. It looked like magic to me, and in the end, isn't that part of ILM's name?

One wild thing that Dennis Muren revealed in the interview is that some of the 70-millimeter prints that got out there contained effects that weren't finished. Though Muren said that there were effects shots in there, they weren't ready for the big screen. He explained:  

It would be a few of them that would go out, your great big quality super prints that they make, and I think there's 30 prints out that have temporary shots in them. Like about 17 temp shots that were unfinished. [...] They didn't look very good at all. You know, really, the colors [are] mismatched, and a map on every [...] and we just didn't, we couldn't do it. 

"And then we got those done like three days later, so all the rest of them came out fine, but those shots are around somewhere, and I remember talking to someone, and they said, 'Oh, don't worry. That'll be sent to the Midwest or overseas. No one will ever see those prints.' I always wonder — they're out there, and they probably went to the major cities, and everybody saw those, and it was terribly embarrassing."

I wonder whether or not I saw an unfinished one as a little girl. Probably not because I was in New York, but it's fun to speculate. I have what might be a false memory of seeing blue-ish and red-ish graphics boxes around Tie-Fighters in "A New Hope," but I can't swear to it. In the end, seeing how the sausage is made is pretty cool, knowing how much work went into those effects. I really want to see the unfinished prints now, just for fun. Hey, it's film history.

All the "Star Wars" films are streaming on Disney+.