CT OT Deleted Scenes on Blu-Ray

So what did we all think of this material some of us have been waiting decades to see? Here's my thoughts:

Star Wars

Tosche Station
Mainly stuff we've seen before on the BTM CD-ROM (& then YouTube), except that Luke's introduction watching the space battle is now in colour, with sound, & with a few different takes, so clearly taken from a later cut. One curious thing is the very basic insert of what Luke is looking at through his binoculars - added recently or from the original workprint?
There's also a brief line from Camie as she walks off in disgust - "Don?t worry about it, Wormie" - that wasn't on the BTM CD-ROM for some reason.
Good to see these scenes with slightly better audio, even if it's just emphasising a few chummy pats on the back.

Old Woman on Tatooine
Bit odd that this exists as a standalone 'scene' - it's a very long, silent, single shot with no context. Would have thought it would have made more sense to cut it in with the Tosche Station scenes. Admittedly, there'd still be no context, as there wasn't a landspeeder effect done for her to be yelling at.

Aunt Beru's Blue Milk
Another standalone shot. So that's where the unappetising-looking liquid comes from.

The Search for R2-D2
Pretty sure everything here is what we saw in 'Empire Of Dreams', there's none of the other experimental shots featured in the 'Lost Cut' article.

Cantina Rough Cut
Again, we've seen it on the BTM CD-ROM. It's an interesting glimpse at a few creatures & takes that didn't make the final cut. Han fires first, then the girl gets off his lap, ho ho.

Stormtrooper Search
Yet another standalone shot, one glimpsed before in the Star Wars Holiday Special - a silly gag involving a midget (apparently referred to as 'Flash Gordon' on set) evading a large creature with stilt-like legs, then a few stormtroopers wander about. The legs/stilts look ridiculous - exactly like a pair of stilts wrapped in rubber.

Darth Vader Widens the Search
Despite having been seen before in the SWHS with different audio, & now featuring the vocal stylings of Darth Farmer himself, this is actually a fascinating scene - it's a well-done tracking shot following Vader & Chief Bast down a Death Star hallway, both clearly frustrated at being hobbled by the Imperial hierarchy in their search for the missing plans & the Rebels. Chief Bast actually gets a chance to display some acting ability, however briefly.

Alternate Biggs and Luke Reunion
All it does is show the lines omitted from the SE regarding Luke's father - it seems to have been damaged in removing the lines, as there's a rough splice at the same point that a CGI Rebel walks past in the SE to mask the removal.
They didn't include the other, forgotten, omitted part of the scene, where Luke & Biggs finally part with the cringeworthy line, "We're a couple of shooting stars, they'll never stop us!"
Thank the Force for small mercies.


Enough for one post - thoughts?

 

The Empire Strikes Back

Han and Leia: Extended Echo Base Argument
Just what it says - more of the same. The performances & dialogue are just as good, but it ended just where it should have in the final cut.

Luke's Recovery
More exposition, nothing to make anyone cringe, but unnecessary. Another scene which may or may not have been enhanced with sound effects added recently.

Luke and Leia: Medical Center
The romantic scene between Luke & Leia that's so much harder to rationalise, despite them never locking lips. Good performances all around, complete with a C-3PO interruption that echoes the later one on the Falcon.
Also includes a reference to the deleted Wampa subplot.

Deleted Wampa Scenes
Basically what I expected - a handful of random shots that confirm why the whole Wampa Atack was turfed to begin with. The creatures just look terrible, despite some nice directorial touches, like the camera panning away from Han & Leia's argument to focus on a Wampa trying to smash through a wall. I'm still not sure if it was meant to smash through straight away, or merely tap as it does.

The Fate of General Veers
Virtually everything here has existed for years in almost exactly the same form - fans assembling storyboard animations with live action footage, except that now there's live action reactions from Veers himself.

Yoda's Test
Incomplete footage of Yoda training Luke with the lightsaber. Very unsatisfying, particularly as there's no audio. It's not even edited together in any way, just the shots laid end to end.

Hiding in the Asteroid
Utterly unmemorable - quite literally so, as I can't remember what happened.

Alternate Han and Leia Kiss
The biggest surprise of the lot, IMHO - was expecting just a longer, slower version of what we'd already seen, similar to the extended Echo Base argument, instead it transforms the scene completely. Han kisses a reluctant Leia, and she responds in kind - and how. The Ice Princess is well & truly thawed.
The scene as it finally turned out was perfection, I wouldn't change it for the world, but this really is a golden "What If?"

Lobot's Capture
Simple stuff, but at least I finally got to see more of one of my favourite childhood action figures. One of those things that wouldn't have hurt being left in, but wasn't exactly missed, either.

Leia Tends To Luke
A textbook-perfect example of the sort of thing that should be chopped out of a film. While tending to Luke's wounds, Leia outlines to him everything he's missed - but which we've just been watching for the last half an hour. Luke then whines, "Poor Han" as he might say about something he read in the newspaper.
In the final cut, this utterly unnecessary exposition is gone, & all we see is a worried Leia tending to her friend who seems delirious & barely conscious. Worked brilliantly.
However, it does include the only mention of the name 'Boba Fett' in ESB.

 

Return Of The Jedi

Vader's Arrival And Reaching Out To Luke
Interesting alternative to the beginning scenes of ROTJ, & may well have worked. More to it than just the glimpses we got a year ago, includes an extended intro with Threepio & Artoo on their way to Jabba's Palace.
Something of a throwback to GL's rough draft of ROTJ that didn't make it all the way, but still works, even if the film doesn't suffer without it. Pretty much the most completed of all the deleted OT scenes on the Blu-Ray.

Tatooine Sandstorm
Even with audible sound, this still would have been an exhausting scene to deal with after Han's rescue. Totally unnecessary, given that the entire point of the scene was served 100% with a simple line over a comlink from Han to Luke, "Hey Luke. Thanks for coming back for me. Now I owe you one." Done.
The comic book included some of Han's other dialogue from the scene about being frozen, but they just slotted it in over Luke flying away. The scene was well shot, but the sandstorm served no purpose at all.

Rebel Raid On The Bunker
Just more of what we saw, but somewhat worth it for a classic Han Solo mock-offended reply to an Imperial officer calling him "Rebel scum."
"Scum?"

Jerjerrod's Conflict
I'd probably rank these brief scenes as my favourites, as they're the best performed & directed, even if their deletion caused no harm. The pathetic, submissive character of Moff Jerjerrod suddenly acquires new depth - he dares to challenge Darth Vader, then he questions Emperor Palpatine himself. For the first time, we realise that these Imperial officers really aren't all that different to their counterparts in the Alliance, even if Jerjerrod 's relatively free thinking gets him absolutely nowhere. Tarkin was a monster, Piett & the rest were merely terrified lackeys. Jerjerrod, however, displays a genuine humanity and, as the scene's title states, conflict.
Would have really liked to see these ones cut together with closeups & the like, rather than just the single masters shots that are typical of all the deleted scenes, however.

Battle of Endor: The Lost Rebels
Guess what? Random shots from the shoot of ROTJ in 1982 didn't make it into the film!
So, here some of them are. As I predicted, it's basically just a B-roll of material that wasn't included in the final cut at all. A female Rebel pilot, a Mon Calamari pilot, assorted Rebels on the Falcon manning the guns etc. Nothing really assembled in scenes as such. Yes, General Madine has a little bit more dialogue, but it's all, "Fire when ready" & the like. No in-depth discussions with Mon Mothma about the ethics of blowing up the Death Star, if that's what anyone was expecting.
The Mon Cal pilot does provide a few giggles as he's being read his directions off camera.
Oddly enough, one of the greatest SW deleted scenes mysteries isn't included - the old, bearded Rebel commando who clearly strips a biker scout of his armour. You can see him about to do so in one shot of the final film, then you see him later wearing the armour sans helmet with his hands above his head. No sign of him here.


So that's it. Overall, I'm happy with what was included, they delivered & then some. There's still a handful of scenes that were definitely shot that weren't included (Lando rescuing Luke from the top of the Falcon in ESB), plus little throwaway grabs mentioned in the SW Insider article about Jympson's Lost Cut, but I'm guessing that after all these years, there's only so much that can be recovered.
It'd be nice to see the Lost Cut, but it would be somewhat churlish to complain, given how much we did get.

Big thumbs up.

 

I agree with most of your assessments.

I have to admit that there was no particular deleted scene that I wished had made the theatrical cut. Some of them caused me to raise an eyebrow slightly, but for the most part I understood why the scenes were removed in the first place.

What I did find interesting was the realization of how different the final story would have been had some of the scenes made it into the theatrical cut. For instance, Red Leader mentioning he met Luke's father when he was a boy, or Luke and Leia's apparent romance. We may have seen completely different films (ROTJ and prequels) as a result.

 

One of my favourites is the scene where Moff Jerjerrod is ordered to turn the Death Star on the Endor moon.
I read that subplot in the original ROTJ novelization many years ago, and always thought it was cool.
Finally seeing the footage, those are great scenes and are very well acted by Michael Pennington.

 

About the only unfortunate thing about that scene for me is that a friend of mine claimed for years that it was in the version he saw at the cinema in 1983 (he'd obviously read it in the book) & he's never, ever backed down on that claim - now, if he sees it on the Blu-Ray, he'll cite it as 100% proof he was right.

 

I know that there's a reason that the reference to Red Leader having flown with Father Skywalker had to be omitted because of the retconned continuity, but I'm not sure what it is. Can somebody explain it?

By that time, Luke knew his dad was a fighter pilot, so Uncle Owen's tale of him being a commercial pilot he knew were false. Anakin Skywalker was (presumably) a well-known stud pilot in ROTS (although this didn't really come across too well).

Was it because that Red Leader's knowledge would mean that it was known that Anakin had children, when that was supposed to be secretive?

 

Absolutely LOVED this. Vader is just eerie and I got the impression that Luke's 'answer' is igniting his sabre. Totally badass Luke.

 

Anybody? Explanation on why Red Leader's comment about Luke's dad wouldn't work now?

 

Technically there's no reason why it couldn't, & apparently Red Leader (Garven Dreis) has even appeared in TCW to retcon the very line.

I think it wasn't put back in for the same reason it was taken out in 1977 - it's just a bit over the top & chummy coming right after a very stern delivery of his previous line ("Skywalker! You sure you can handle this ship?").

However, let's face it, tossing the line back in post-ESB would also cause headaches for GL, having to explain just why Red Leader wasn't aware of what happened to Anakin, how he knew that Luke was his son, etc. Can of worms.

 

Technically there's no reason why it couldn't, & apparently Red Leader (Garven Dreis) has even appeared in TCW to retcon the very line.

I think it wasn't put back in for the same reason it was taken out in 1977 - it's just a bit over the top & chummy coming right after a very stern delivery of his previous line ("Skywalker! You sure you can handle this ship?").

However, let's face it, tossing the line back in post-ESB would also cause headaches for GL, having to explain just why Red Leader wasn't aware of what happened to Anakin, how he knew that Luke was his son, etc. Can of worms.[/quote]

Hmmm. I thought that there was some logistical reason why he COULDN'T have said it.

Although I agree that just the timeline - how would he have known he was Anakin Skywalker's son? Did Obi-Wan quickly tell him? - was reason enough.

 

More a case of shouldn't. Take a look at the minor contradictions between the OT & the PT, then the lengths that some go to in order to have them still make sense. "Leia had a memory of her mother because of her Force sensitivity." "Yoda was only Obi-Wan's Master when Obi-Wan was a Youngling." "Obi-Wan just didn't bother to mention to Luke that he trained Anakin as a promise to his other Master that he never, ever mentions, rather than taking it upon himself, because he felt it would have confused Luke."

All make perfect sense after careful consideration, but let's face it, when the lines of the OT were written, they were meant to be taken at face value (yes, even Obi-Wan's 'lies' in ANH). Same as Red Leader having seen Luke's father, heroic Jedi Knight & brilliant star pilot who was murdered with the rest of the Jedi, fly like a superstar when Red Leader was a kid.

If something strikes the audience as wrong for whatever reason, then has to be reconciled (either by pausing, reflecting & rationalising, or by going to reference material), it can probably be said to not work in the first place.

In this instance, the line doesn't work in any context:

- 1977: the Biggs scenes, both Anchorhead & Yavin, were cut altogether as they were an unnecessary distraction;
- 1997: Biggs at Yavin was included, but Red Leader's line about Luke's father was still cut, because the exact nature of Anakin's story had yet to be worked out, all we knew was that he fell to the Dark Side & became Darth Vader. The line was an uncomfortable distraction, too many questions would be asked;
- 2011: the line can be said to make sense in the context of the greater Saga, but it still distracts from the point of the scene by bringing up a dark past which isn't relevant to Luke's immediate situation, and still brings up niggling questions.

It doesn't work. The only way I could see it being included is in some sort of massive TV maxi-series version which includes just about everything possible & is tweaked to play at a slower pace, similar to several TV versions of The Godfather.

 

I gotcha, and I agree with all of that.

I guess another logistical thing to note is that it seems that the Republic only used clone troopers rather than a normal volunteer army, and so therefore guys like Red Leader probably didn't have much of a place. (Obviously, whatever retcons are in the stupid TCW cartoon are irrelevant to the search for an explanation here.)

 

Red Leader (imo, anyway) is Jango-looking enough that you could just write him off as a defector.

 

Just reading some threads and saw this. Red Leader's comments had to be omitted because if Red Leader knew Luke was Anakin Skywalker's son then certainly the Emperor and Vader also knew and would have went after Luke a long time ago. It just doesn't make sense that random X-wing pilot would know who Luke's father is. I imagine only Kenobi, Yoda, Uncle Owen/Aunt Beru and Bail Organa knew who Luke's father was at that point.

 

Or just before Qui-Gon took over.

The phrase "took it upon myself" can also describe the situation as depicted in TPM.

 

Not the way he says it in ROTJ, it can't. In TPM, he took the task upon himself at the behest of his dying Master. The way he describes it in ROTJ clearly suggests it was his own idea, prompted by how amazed he was at Anakin's strength with the Force, not by any sort of directive. You'd think he might mention something like that, particularly important bits about a prophecy.

On a strictly 100% literal level, you could say that Obi-Wan's dialogue in this particular instance can match what happened in TPM, but you can twist just about any phrase to mean something else when you remove context, inflection, implication and all the other words around it.

 

Well, yes, that's what I meant. Of course it's a different rendition of those words than what audiences of 1983 expected or the likely original intent. Just like Anakin being considered a great pilot - now that's mostly about his having been the only human podracer and the Boonta, because there's very little in the AOTC-ROTS period to justify it.

 

That's not an issue with just the prequels, either; meaning of lines takes a hit in all of the OT films besides ANH.

 

Sorry, wasn't sure if you were trying to do the "what he says in the OT does match what happened in the PT" thing, while ignoring the context, which many seem to like doing in order to 'prove' that it was that way all along.

And yeah, the whole 'great pilot' line is another example. When Obi-Wan meets Anakin in TPM, he's not what you'd call a 'pilot' at all (despite his bragging to Padme), he's basically the equivalent of an extremely skilled car racer - and Obi-Wan didn't witness any of it. Of course, Obi-Wan does witness it in the first draft of Ep I, AFAIK, as Qui-Gon isn't present until Coruscant. It's all a bit of a jumble.

Just to pre-empt the GL-faithful - isn't it possible that the drivers of podracers are called 'pilots', not 'drivers'? Possibly, except that Obi-Wan's conversation with Luke in ANH refers to Luke's father being "the best star-pilot in the galaxy", i.e. a pilot of starfighters. What he says to Luke in ROTJ - "when I first met your father, he was already a great pilot" - is clearly linked to that, not some crazy land-based drag-racing, and given that all the backstory in deleted scenes, the radio drama & so on, has Luke flying skyhoppers, it's obvious that GL had Anakin as an airborne pilot in mind at the time of the OT.
"But, but, but podracers sort of fly, they're airborne a lot of the time..."
Sod off.

Anyone wonder if GL originally had skyhoppers in mind for the big race Ep I instead of podracers?

 

Not just deleted scenes... there's the "I used to bullseye womprats" quote, and we can even see the thing behind him in the garage.

 

i wish i could see the scenes, but i don't have a blu-ray player. and i don't intend to get one either. the only thing i cared about on these releases are the extra features.

 

Thanks for the write-ups, Dath_nub! I haven't bought the Blu-Rays, so this is interesting for me to read. I agree that most of the scense shold have stayed deleted, but Lobot's capture and Jerjerrod's Conflict would have been nice to keep in, plus some of the Ep. !V scenes with Luke and his friends, though those would slow the movie down. Seeing more of the pilots in ROTJ would have been nice, too.

 

Also, it's very interesting that the only mention of the name Boba Fett is in a deleted scene! Of course, I had no trouble knowing his name because of the much hyped action figure, which they advertised before the movie came out.

 

I'm sure they'll eventually be available from The Usual Sources (they'll be removed from YouTube lickety-split if they're put on, though). And fair enough for not wanting to shell out a heap of cash for some extra features - it's worth it if you've got an HD TV, as the films look absolutely incredible, but otherwise, the extra features are all the set has going for it.

Han does say his name in ROTJ, but yeah, despite all the hype, he's not named in ESB. Seem to recall he's not even in the original credits, but I might be thinking of Lobot (credited as 'Lando's aide').