Movies - TV
Why Mark Hamill Preferred Tatooine's Heat To Hoth's Frigid Cold While Filming Star Wars
By DEVIN MEENAN
The cast and crew of "Star Wars" may have only pretended to go to a galaxy far, far away, but since these were the days before wholesale digital environments, making the original trilogy took a lot of traveling. The desert backwater Tatooine in the original "Star Wars" was shot in Tunisia and the ice planet Hoth in "The Empire Strikes Back" filmed in Finse, Norway.
When it came to location preference, star Mark Hamill preferred the desert over the tundra any day. The Norway shoot was plagued by everything from sub-zero temperatures to avalanches — and even though Luke Skywalker’s snow gear may have looked warm, it wasn't built to actually protect against the bitter cold, providing yet another challenge for Hamill.
The actor spoke to StarWars.com about his memories of Norway, saying, "I was very excited to see [the location] and then, as happens in filmmaking, it was one of the worst snowstorms in I don't know how many years." Hamill added, "Certainly [Norway’s] a challenging environment. I mean, North Africa could be warm, but that you can handle better than bitter cold."