18. Yoda Deserved an Oscar
Frank Oz, the man behind Yoda, was a lifelong puppeteer. He built his reputation working with Jim Henson on the Muppet show, where he articulated characters like Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, and Animal. He also was Cookie Monster, Bert, and Grover on Sesame Street. With Yoda, Lucas felt Oz deserved a nod from the Academy, but they disagreed. They rebuffed his attempts to carve out a new Oscar for Oz. The Academy didn’t consider puppeteers as actors. Ironic in a world where actor Andy Serkis has made a name for himself performing in motion capture roles, Gollum in The Hobbit movies and Ceasar in Planet of the Apes films.
17. The Crawl Cost Lucas Money
When Star Wars hit the big screen, union rules mandated that movies start with the credits. Lucas didn’t want to do that. He started with the famous crawl, “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…” rather than list the actors. The credits ran at the end. For Lucas, it was worth the risk to produce his movies the way he wanted. The union fined him, but you won’t find Lucas changed his ways in the subsequent films. As such, the crawl remains one of the icons of the Star Wars universe, only ever copied in jest. It was also one of the hardest effects they had to film. We’ll come back to that.