George Lucas’ original Star Wars trilogy sparked the imagination of a whole generation, inspiring countless merchandise, much of it aimed at very young kids. Because of this, Lucasfilm substantially trimmed down one of the most disturbing moments from The Empire Strikes Back. Originally, George Lucas and director Irvin Kershner were going to show Han Solo’s torture at the hands of Darth Vader on Cloud City in greater detail, but cut away from most of it. But the YouTube channel Star Wars Analyst details how that scene was once much more graphic, but ultimately cut way down, so as to not traumatize ’80s children.
In the DVD commentary for Empire, Kershner describes how originally, the scene with Vader torturing Han was longer. Vader did all this so Luke would sense Han’s pain via the Force, and fall into Daddy’s trap. We see a brief glimpse of this mechanical torture before the camera cuts away. Harrison Ford’s muted screams behind closed doors are all that remains. But according to Kershner, he even cut that down. All because he and Lucas thought it was too disturbing for “the kiddies” who bought all those Kenner toys. And to be fair, Lucas was right. Like Leia’s torture by Vader in A New Hope, we didn’t need to see it to know it happened.
I do take issue with the narrator of this video saying that ’80s kids were “too soft” for this scene, when he grew up with Anakin’s immolation in Revenge of the Sith. I have to defend my generation’s honor a bit here. We Gen-Xers grew up with a shark eating a kid in Jaws, a guy ripping his face off in Poltergeist, and melting Nazis in Raiders of the Lost Ark. And let’s not even get into Artax the horse’s death in The Neverending Story.
We could handle a lot, thank you very much. But Lucas made the original trilogy prior to the invention of PG-13. He didn’t want to push the envelope and risk an R-rating. He didn’t have the luxury of PG-13 existing, as he did with Revenge of the Sith. But aside from that dig, this video properly highlights how The Empire Strikes Back was very nearly that much darker.