Originial Jabba the Hutt

My uncle told me when ANH was first in theatres, Jabba the Hutt was a human, and he was surprised when he saw a huge worm in ROTJ. Does anyone have pictures of this original Jabba? Thanks!

 

It was just an old fat dude, and somehow I doubt that deleted scene was in ANH.

 

That scene was orignally filmed with a human actor, but it never appeared in the film that way. The scene was only added back in for the Special Editions - with the CG Jabba.

 

Exactly. You can see the footage with the human actor in several documentaries about Star Wars, but the movie was never released with the ?human? footage. There are two things in the SE that clearly show Jabba was originally played by a human:

1. Han Solo?s line to Jabba, ?you?re a wonderful human being.?
2. Han Solo walks behind Jabba during their meeting. When Lucas used the human actor this wasn?t a problem. When George decided that Jabba was a giant slug it created all sorts of problems because of Jabba?s dimensions. To fix this for the SE they altered the film to make it look like Han stepped up onto Jabba?s tail.

They probably should have left the scene out of the SE as well; Jabba didn?t look like Jabba and the critical points of the story were covered elsewhere. The scene was redundant, which is why it was cut out in the first place. Lucas apologists will vehemently defend this scene, but it was really just a chance for George to flex his CG muscles in front of the 1997 movie-going public. That was also redundant because Jurassic Park was a much more elegant demonstration of ILM?s CG greatness.

 

His name was Declan Mulholland. Sadly, he died June 29th 1999.

 

The "human" Jabba The Hutt was never in the movies. Your uncle saw the "human" Jabba The Hutt from the video "From Star Wars To Jedi". I have the video to. Lucas filmed the scene with the human but never had plans of having Jabba being human. Lucas was later going to superimpose a two legged furry alien but the technology did not allow him to do it, so the scene was not used in the O-OT ANH.


Edit: In my opinion the ANH DVD Jabba is much better than the ROTJ Jabba.

 

Jabba was originally just going to be a large human but George decided he wanted Jabba to be an alien and since he was unable to create a believable form of Jabba for ANH, the scene was cut.

 

In the Marvel comics they just grabbed some random alien out of the cantina to be Jabba, which turned out to be a humanoid with an odd face... go figure

 

I never liked that scene added into the movie. It would have been a cool 'extra' on a DVD, but as for being in the actual movie it just interupts the flow way to much, and like you said it's redundant. Another way for Lucas to show off his new CGI techniques unfortunately.

 

His name was Declan Mulholland. Sadly, he died June 29th 1999.* <---- OMG I turned 9 that day.

I never got to see it.

 

I think it does hurt the pace of the original "Star Wars" and should/should not(depending on ones opinion) have been put back in and the relevance, as we have seen Han and Greedo previously can also be debated, but thats upto Lucas in the end to decide, but if it had been in from 77 who knows?? I think the CG Jabba rendering is o.k and definatly an improvement on the 97 one, though maybe/maybe not it sticks out in 70s movie again it depends on ones opinion and I do prefer the Jabba from ROTJ in the end but I assume Lucas had to use CG for the scene,

I have seen the Declan Muholland scene and was interesting to see the evolution of the scene from its begginnings.

 

Sure the "wonderful part was a joke, but the "human" part was not. If Jabba was never meant to be human why did George film the scene with a human? Sure the "wonderful part was a joke, but the "human" part was not. If Jabba was never meant to be human why did George film the scene with a human? Where did the idea that Jabba was never supposed to be human come from? I?m willing to bet it was George [sarcasm] and we all know he never makes crap up after the fact so that it dovetails with his most recent vision. [/sarcasm]

 

As it's already been said, the human actor was used as a filler for the stop-motion creature that was meant to be superimposed into the scene. My guess is George wanted Jabba to be something more than just a guy in a suit, and I would venture to say their budget didn't allow for any sort of animatronic creatures either, so an actor just filled in for what would eventually become an elaborate and impressive stop motion creature.

Just listen to the way Ford delivers that line - it's very obvious that he's not being serious, and is just trying to get a rise out of Jabba.

 

Touché, I stand corrected.

 

actually, he was never going to be human, the original actor was a fat irish guy, but in the SE GL says that jabba was going to be a sort of fury creature like chewbacca- unless im mistaken

 

Yup, Jabba was always going to be an alien. The time contstraints and budget of ANH prevented GL from following through with the stop animation creature, which I'd imagine wouldn't have looked very good anyway. I'm kinda indifferent about the scene itself, though I am glad they fixed the CG Jabba for the DVDs. I couldn't stand the SE version. It's too bad they didn't get the voice fixed, though.