Lucas fielded this query at the 2025 TCM Classic Film Festival, where Empire was getting an anniversary screening. His answer, basically, is that audiences, and especially children, are too dumb to understand Yoda’s deep wisdom if you just say it normal-style.

Yoda is one of the most cherished and revered extraterrestrial characters in movie history, and part of that has to do with the peculiar way in which he speaks.