George Lucas has explained why Yoda has such an atypical speaking pattern.
Anyone who's seen Star Wars will know what that means, just as Darth Vader has breathing problems and Obi-Wan Kenobi says 'hello there', Yoda (Frank Oz) speaks in a different manner to the other characters.
The little green guy gave us some absolute bangers during his time on screen, including the likes of 'do or do not, there is no try', and the man who created Star Wars has explained it all.
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George Lucas was recently at the 2025 TCM Classic Film Festival for a 45th anniversary screening of The Empire Strikes Back, and according to Variety he talked a bit about Yoda.
When the question 'why does Yoda speak backwards' was put to Lucas he explained his reasoning.
"Because if you speak regular English, people won’t listen that much," the Star Wars creator explained.
"But if he had an accent, or it’s really hard to understand what he’s saying, they focus on what he’s saying."
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Lucas said that Yoda was 'basically the philosopher of the movie', which if you've seen The Empire Strikes Back he really is as he delivers lesson after lesson in Jedi philosophy to Luke (Mark Hamill) in pretty much the best performance a puppet has ever given in cinema (sorry, Kermit).
The filmmaker said that he 'had to figure out a way to get people to actually listen - especially 12-year-olds.'
That makes a good deal of sense, while all the action is going on, Yoda is trying to educate Luke about the Force and tell him 'luminous beings are we, not this crude matter', and the way he puts it does seem more likely to get audiences to pay attention than just speaking normally.
Oddly enough, when it comes to the way people think Yoda speaks, his first appearance is actually a bit of an outlier.
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He does the backwards talking thing when we first meet him, the first thing he says on screen is 'away put your weapon, I mean you no harm', but that's because he's pretending to be a little gremlin to secretly test Luke, who thinks he's on Dagobah to find a 'great warrior.'
Even when he's pretending to be a chuckling little gremlin, Yoda does still drop the occasional pearl of wisdom by telling Luke 'wars not make one great', but Skywalker doesn't pick up on the lesson right away.
However, once he drops the act then the Yoda of Empire Strikes Back doesn't jumble up his words nearly so much and instead has a more dramatic and poetic tone to his words.
This stays through Return of the Jedi, but in the prequel trilogy Yoda is putting on an act for anyone but is doing a lot more backwards talking that we know him for.
Topics: Star Wars, Film, TV and Film
Joe Harker