For nearly two decades, fans have watched Star Wars: Episode III—Revenge Of The Sith and wondered, “Why did someone program General Grievous with asthma?” After that, they ask, “Is a Force ghost behind Anakin Skywalker as he fights Obi-Wan Kenobi aboard his lava skiff?” It’s a goof that only the most eagle-eyed fans could spot. For half a second at one hour 59 minutes and 1 second, a face appears behind Anakin as he leaps over Obi-Wan Kenobi during their climactic lightsaber duel on Mustafar. Fans, the most devoted and patient Jedis in the galaxy, began pointing out the face in 2015 but could not determine what it was. Was it an Easter egg or a Force ghost in the machine? One ILM employee was determined to find out.
On his blog, FXRant, Todd Vaziri, an ILM veteran who worked as a compositor on Revenge Of The Sith, explained how he scoured the Lucasfilm archives and found the footage he was looking for. His story, written by Ian Kintzle and published in the program for Star Wars Celebration Japan earlier this month, sees Vaziri investigate “terabytes of unaltered greenscreen photography that hasn’t been touched in years” before happening upon the answer.
“I think it took 24 hours to unearth the footage and put it back on our servers. I was so excited, my heart was pounding out of my chest. No one had seen the original greenscreen footage for nearly twenty years,” Vaziri says. “The problem was I didn’t remember exactly what these plates looked like, both because it wasn’t my shot, and it was two decades prior. So I dug, and I dug, and finally I found the plate photography. I couldn’t believe it. There on set was a man—likely a stunt rigger—wearing not a robe, but a peculiar shirt that resembled one, standing behind Hayden, manually puppeteering the greenscreen lava skiff that he and Ewan were fighting on. His face and the ‘Force ghost’ matched up frame-for-frame.”
The whole piece is worth reading, both for Vaziri’s endearing love for VFX mistakes that reveal the artists behind the effects and a better understanding of how these mistakes happen. Better yet, with the imminent re-release of Revenge Of The Sith, fans can see this mistake the way the filmmakers intended: In a theater.
“The bottom line is that we put human hands on every single one of the thousands of shots that you see in Star Wars. This world is handmade, and little things like this become part of ILM history.”
Check out “The Movie Mistake Mystery from ‘Revenge Of The Sith’” here.
