Better than just giving them a four year lifespan and hunting down any that go rogue.
I never thought of that before. R2D2 is lucky Yoda didn’t force push him across the planet!
I had the action figure for Yoda before I even saw the movie so yeah I knew.
It wasn’t a particularly big surprise for me, since we saw Ben Kenobi do exactly the same reveal in A New Hope.
I stand corrected.
Well I don’t think Obi-Wan Kenobi being Ben Kenobi in New Hope was meant to be a big surprise. As I recall, even Luke says “I wonder if he means Old Ben Kenobi”.
Side note, as far as that’s concerned… here’s an interesting look at a fan theory (presumably pre-prequels) that Obi-Wan was actually a Old Ben Kenobi clone, as in OB1… 5 Movie Fan Theories That Make More Sense Than the Movie | Cracked.com
I was also suprised by the following reveals:
AT-AT armor was too strong for blasters
Tauntans smell worse on the inside than the outside
There is no “try”. Only “do” or “do not” when it comes to Force lifting an X-Wing fighter
This isn’t a cave
Vader would be delighted if Han & co could join him for dinner
That Luke was not, in fact, the last hope and that there was another
They had C3POs memory wiped because he wouldn’t shut the fuck up. They didn’t care what they thought he knew or didn’t know.
I seem to recall one of Ebert’s “Movie Answer Man” columns addressing what was becoming an annoying trend: the pre-release movie hype giving away surprises like these. He also mentioned Arnold Schwarzenegger on a talk show revealing that in T2 he played a “good Terminator,” which you wouldn’t know if you just saw the movie cold.
The Leia/Han exchange always seemed to be treated like a joke, when I think it’s a very moving farewell. “I don’t want you to die not knowing that I love you.” “Of course I know, sweetheart. Please don’t worry about me. Just stay safe.” 
Wahh!
I was about 10 years old when I saw ESB in the theater in 1981, and had already had the Yoda identity thing at least partially spoiled for me. I remember knowing even ahead of the movie’s release that the plot of ESB would feature Luke getting trained to be a Jedi by an ancient master in hiding. Then before I saw the movie myself, a kid told me he’d heard from another kid (who’d maybe heard from another kid, etc.,), who’d seen it on opening night, that Yoda wasn’t human… “Kind of like Grover or something”. And of course, Frank Oz voiced both Yoda and Grover on Sesame Street. So as soon as I heard Yoda speaking, I was all like, “OMG, that’s Yoda!”
At the same time I do remember wondering “But HOW can this be the great master Yoda?” when he first came on the screen, acting so silly and so on - “if he’s the great Jedi master, he wouldn’t be pilfering food and giggling over a flashlight!” - so had I not had that pre-movie reveal, I’m sure I would have been “fooled” initially. (I think I’d have caught on when he takes Luke back to his shack while promising to bring him to Yoda.)
“Attack Pattern Delta” involves flying straight towards the AT-ATs, which was a curious choice since any other approach would avoid the very limited range of fire from their little heads.
Well, that would explain why it was fourth on the list…
Having just rewatched this scene from the 97 re-release, it is just a tug of war, R2 doesn’t zap him. And it is rather playful. Both of them are messing with Luke. Does Yoda remember R2? There is no reason R2 wouldn’t remember Yoda, although I don’t recall if they met earlier.
Family Guy’s “Something Something Something, Dark Side” has a good riff on this.
Yoda’s first couple of lines are “I’m not Yoda. Okay I really am Yoda. I won’t train him. Okay I’ll train him.”
Of course, R2 knew.
I was already well aware of who Yoda was thanks to my friend’s Kenner Yoda action figure. I was too young to understand why Luke didn’t know the little green guy was him.
Only tarnished by them picking some fairly obscure minor character to play Yoda.
And I still don’t get why they had Cleveland play R2 when Joe would’ve been much more appropriate for the part.