In the retrospective, Smith remembers that shortly after the premiere of “The Empire Strikes Back” in May 1980, Lucas called him up on the phone to explain that he needed more shots for the movie. Convinced that he hadn’t heard Lucas right, he reminded the director that the movie was already in theaters, to which Lucas allegedly replied, “No, no, no, it’s not in all the theaters.” Lucas felt that the ending of “Empire” was unclear and audiences wouldn’t know where different characters were in the geography of outer space. The ending sees the heroes escape Cloud City and split up after reuniting with the Rebel Alliance, but in the original release that ended up in approximately 100 theaters, Lucas didn’t think the locations of the Millennium Falcon or the rebel medical ship were clear enough and audiences might be confused.
The crew had three weeks before the movie’s wide release, which meant they had to rush to create three new shots that helped solidify the whereabouts of the various characters. Effects cameraman Ralston remembered that he thought the whole thing was a joke, but he realized that Lucas and co. were deadly serious when they called him to meet at the Lucasfilm corporate offices to help design the shots. In the end, the sequence clearly sets up the fact that Luke (Mark Hamill) and Leia (Carrie Fisher) are on one ship, while Lando (Billy Dee Williams) and Chewie (Peter Mayhew) are on another, headed to try and rescue Han from Jabba the Hutt. It cleared things up to Lucas’ satisfaction and helped lead into the next film, “Star Wars: Return of the Jedi,” creating one of the best movie trilogies of all time.