George Lucas has finally revealed the answer to a question Star Wars fans have had for decades.
The filmmaker, 80, whose Lucasfilm has confirmed a new Star Wars adventure starring Ryan Gosling, 44, was celebrating the 45th anniversary of The Empire Strikes Back in Los Angeles on the opening night of the 2025 TCM Classic Film Festival.
In his conversation with TCM’s Ben Mankowitz, Lucas finally revealed the mystery behind Yoda’s backward speech.
‘Because if you speak regular English, people won’t listen that much,’ the director told the per Variety.
‘But if he had an accent, or it’s really hard to understand what he’s saying, they focus on what he’s saying.’
Describing the challenge he was facing, Lucas said Yoda ‘was basically the philosopher of the movie. I had to figure out a way to get people to actually listen — especially 12-year-olds.’
That appeared to have solved the problem. Since it’s debut in 1980, The Empire Strikes Back has earned more than $550 million worldwide.
George Lucas, 80, revealed the answer to a question Star Wars fans have had for decades Thursday night at the 2025 TCM Classic Film Festival in Los Angeles
When asked why Yoda spoke backwards, Lucas revealed ‘Because if you speak regular English, people won’t listen that much,’ according to Variety ‘
Further revealing his creative process, the director said, ‘I write like a blueprint. It’s not got a lot of detail on it.’
‘And when I got the script [for ‘Star Wars’] done, there was a 130 to 180 pages,’ he explained.
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‘So I cut it into three parts and said, ‘I’ll focus on the first one, because we’ll never get enough money to make the whole thing.”
Lucas settle for what would today be seen as an astronomically small fee for making the original film, but he had a reason for doing so.
‘I said, ‘I’ll do it for $50,000, to write and direct and produce… But I do want the sequels.’ And I wanted the rights because I’m going to make those movies no matter what happens to this one.’
Another unusual condition of the contract would end up changing his life, and the film industry.
‘I said, ‘besides that, I’d like licensing.’ They went, ‘What’s licensing?” and gave in to his terms.
‘They talked to themselves, and they went, ‘He’s never going to be able to do that. It takes them a billion dollars and a year to make a toy or make anything. There’s no money in that at all.”
According to CCLCT.com, Star Wars toys have earned some $32 billion.
Lucas also recalled that he was underwhelmed by 20th Century Fox’s efforts to market the film, and took matters into his own hands.
‘I got the kids walking around Disneyland and the Comic Cons and all that kind of stuff to advertise the movie,’ he revealed.
‘And that’s why Fox was so shocked when the first day the lines were all around the block.’
The director said if Yoda, ‘had an accent, or it’s really hard to understand what he’s saying, they focus on what he’s saying’
Describing the challenge he was facing, Lucas said Yoda ‘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 told TCM’s Ben Mankiewicz
Lucas famously sold the rights to Stars Wars to Disney for a staggering $4billion in 2012.
At the time of the monumental Lucasfilm sale—also including his company’s Industrial Light & Magic and the rights to Indiana Jones—Lucas compared parting with Star Wars to losing a family member.
‘These are my kids, I loved them. I created them,’ he told CBS at the time.
However, after selling the Star Wars rights to Disney, Lucas didn’t hold back in expressing his dissatisfaction with The Force Awakens, the first film in the franchise following the sale.
In a 2015 interview with Empire Magazine, Lucas admitted he wasn’t happy with the film, stating that Disney ‘wanted to make a retro movie’ and didn’t follow his planned direction for the series.
He also mentioned that he felt the film was too similar to the original trilogy, saying, ‘They wanted to make a movie for the fans… They decided they didn’t want to use the stories I created.’
He did somewhat backtrack on his initial criticism of The Force Awakens after the film’s release.
In later interviews, he acknowledged that while he had concerns about the direction of the film, he ultimately appreciated the work done by J.J. Abrams and the team at Disney.
He even praised the movie’s success, though he still expressed that it wasn’t quite what he would have done.