George Lucas Explains Yoda’s Odd Speech

Attending a 45th anniversary screening of “The Empire Strikes Back” at the 2025 TCM Classic Film Festival, 80-year-old filmmaker George Lucas has touched upon a topic of “Star Wars” lore that’s long been discussed and often satirised.

That topic? Yoda’s way of half-backwards way of speaking. A Q&A session tied to the film centered on various topics with only a little bit of “Star Wars” chatter coming into it.

What’s considered the biggest reveal from that 35-minute session was Lucas himself explaining his goal with Yoda’s speech patterns and cadence – namely, it was to make sure kids pay attention:

“If you speak regular English, people won’t listen that much. But if he had 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. I had to figure out a way to get people to actually listen – especially 12-year-olds.”

He also spoke about Fox’s underwhelming promotion of the original 1977 “Star Wars” film, so he mounted a guerrilla campaign to generate excitement:

“I got the kids walking around Disneyland and the Comic Cons and all that kind of stuff to advertise the movie, and that’s why Fox was so shocked when the first day the lines were all around the block.”

The talk came as a re-release of “Revenge of the Sith” is set to do what could well be the best opening weekend for a film re-release in many years, though won’t match the high of $35.9 million that the “Star Wars: Special Edition” scored in 1997.

Source: Variety

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