Star Wars
''Star Wars'' is an American epic film, epic space opera multimedia franchise created by George Lucas, which began with the Star Wars (film), eponymous 1977 film and quickly became a worldwide popular culture, pop-culture Cultural impact of S ...
''
fictional universe
A fictional universe, or fictional world, is a self-consistent setting with events, and often other elements, that differ from the real world. It may also be called an imagined, constructed, or fictional realm (or world). Fictional universes may ...
. It first appeared in the
1980 film
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Year 198 (CXCVIII) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Sergius and Gallus (or, less frequently, year 951 ''Ab u ...
'' The Empire Strikes Back'' and has also been a setting in ''Star Wars'' books and video games.
Description
Hoth is the sixth planet of a remote
system
A system is a group of Interaction, interacting or interrelated elements that act according to a set of rules to form a unified whole. A system, surrounded and influenced by its environment (systems), environment, is described by its boundaries, ...
of the same name. It is a small, terrestrial planet blanketed by snow and ice. The freezing climate, although habitable, is too cold for intelligent life to develop. Hoth is home to only a few species, including the towering, predatory wampa and the gray snow-lizards known as tauntauns. Both appear in ''The Empire Strikes Back''.
Appearances
Film
In the 1980 film '' The Empire Strikes Back'', Hoth is the home of the Rebel Alliance's secret Echo Base, which is partially installed in natural caves formed by giant ice bubbles. The Rebels patrol the planet by riding indigenous tauntauns. At the start of the film, Luke Skywalker and his tauntaun are attacked by a wampa. Skywalker eventually escapes and is rescued by Han Solo. When one of the Galactic Empire's probe droids uncovers the base, the Rebels are forced to evacuate. The Empire arrives and deploys ground forces to destroy the base, but the Rebels battle the AT-ATs with ground artillery and snowspeeders to stall them and effectively evacuate. This conflict is commonly referred to as the "Battle of Hoth".
The original draft of ''The Empire Strikes Back'', written by Leigh Brackett, depicted an opening scene with Luke Skywalker on the ridge of an ice planet, though the name "Hoth" was given to the cloud planet at the time (later called
Bespin
The fictional universe of the ''Star Wars'' franchise features multiple planets and moons. While only the feature films and selected other works are considered canon to the franchise since the 2012 acquisition of Lucasfilm by The Walt Disney ...
). The draft also depicted Hoth's wampas attacking the Rebel base.
The Hardangerjøkulen glacier near Finse, Norway, served as the filming location for Hoth in ''The Empire Strikes Back''. Scenes were filmed in subzero temperatures. For the ground battle scene, miniatures were used on a set that used microscopic glass bubbles and baking soda to mimic the snowy territory.
''Legends''
Hoth has also appeared in ''Star Wars'' comics, books, and video games. In the 1983 Marvel ''Star Wars'' comic "Hoth Stuff!", it is revealed that Wedge Antilles went missing during the Battle of Hoth. In the novel '' Darksaber'' (1995), Luke Skywalker and his lover
Callista Ming
This is an incomplete list of characters from the ''Star Wars'' expanded universe, now rebranded ''Star Wars Legends''. The accompanying works were declared non-canon to the ''Star Wars'' franchise by Lucasfilm in 2014.
This list applies ''on ...
travel to Hoth, where they encounter the same wampa that attacked Luke in ''Empire'', but he swiftly kills it. In '' Shadows of the Empire'', Hoth is one of several settings for Dash Rendar's adventures, including the Battle of Hoth.
Video games
The planet appears in the '' Star Wars: Battlefront'' series (2004–) as multiplayer maps, and in the
Lego
Lego ( , ; stylized as LEGO) is a line of plastic construction toys that are manufactured by The Lego Group, a privately held company based in Billund, Denmark. The company's flagship product, Lego, consists of variously colored interlocking ...
hub world
An overworld (sometimes referred to as a hub world) is, in a broad sense, commonly an area within a video game that interconnects all its levels or locations. They are mostly common in role-playing games, though this does not exclude other video ...
The planetary attributes of the fictional planet Hoth have been scrutinized for scientific accuracy. Space.com said Hoth most resembled the extrasolar planet OGLE-2006-BLG-390, "With a surface temperature of , it is nearly as frigid as Pluto." Bruce Betts of The Planetary Society said the asteroid belt near Hoth meant that the planet would have difficulty staying in place. With Hoth being bombarded frequently by asteroids, Betts said it would be unlikely for natural lifeforms (like the wampa and the tauntaun shown in the film) to evolve on the planet.
Jeanne Cavelos theorized in '' The Science of Star Wars'' that the frequency of meteoroids bombarding Hoth indicated that the planet was relatively young since in older solar systems, the debris is more cleared out. Since Hoth has complex lifeforms, Cavolos said the planet's age may be older, in the range of several billion years. The author said Hoth could be similar to Earth in age but lack neighboring planets like Jupiter and
Saturn
Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second-largest in the Solar System, after Jupiter. It is a gas giant with an average radius of about nine and a half times that of Earth. It has only one-eighth the average density of Earth; h ...
to shelter it from meteoroid impacts. She also said with the asteroid belt depicted in the film as close to Hoth that the belt was a likely source for meteoroids. (The asteroid belt itself is unrealistically depicted as being closely clustered, which would normally mean that the asteroids would be reduced to sand-sized rubble over a long enough timespan.)
CJ Miozzi, writing for '' The Escapist'', said that Hoth was realistic as a single- biome planet (among numerous such planets in ''Star Wars''), citing Jupiter's moon Europa as a similar example. Miozzi said the planet was depicted in the ''Star Wars'' books as being geologically active and having additional smaller lifeforms, including
lichen
A lichen ( , ) is a composite organism that arises from algae or cyanobacteria living among filaments of multiple fungi species in a mutualistic relationship.food chain during winter months but that it could grow back outside these months. With Hoth perpetually iced over, Miozzi said lichen likely would not be sufficient to support a multi-tiered food chain that includes an apex predator, the wampa.
Theme park attraction
Hoth appears in the theme park attraction
Star Tours - The Adventures Continue
A star is an astronomical object comprising a luminous spheroid of plasma (physics), plasma held together by its gravity. The List of nearest stars and brown dwarfs, nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked ...
Anaheim
Anaheim ( ) is a city in northern Orange County, California, part of the Los Angeles metropolitan area. As of the 2020 United States Census, the city had a population of 346,824, making it the most populous city in Orange County, the 10th-most p ...
Snowball Earth
The Snowball Earth hypothesis proposes that, during one or more of Earth's Greenhouse and icehouse Earth, icehouse Climate, climates, the Earth's surface, planet's surface became entirely or nearly entirely Freezing, frozen. It is believed that ...
Star Wars Databank
The ''Star Wars'' Databank is the official ''Star Wars'' website's reference guide to elements such as characters, locations and technology included in the franchise's canon films and television series.
Before the canon restructuring in 2014, eac ...