CT What happened to Jabba's scene in ANH?

I remember this scene from when I first saw the movies in '97. Where Han talks to Jabba... I remember one of the lines "Jabba, you're a wonderful human being". But none of the versions of the film that I have include this scene. What gives?

 

You must be seeing the original, original version. Congrats.

 

Count your blessings. It's a rarity to see the original anymore. Thank God Lucas Film released it, in very limited quantities, a few years ago so old-schoolers like me could avoid the SEs.

 

I've not seen the original for a while,but Jabba wasn't in it was he?
I'm pretty sure you saw the 97 special edition because I remember seeing it as a kid and I had them, though I wasn't aware the line wasn't in the DVDs.

 

The Jabba scenes were filmed but cut out as Jabba was just a fat guy with a fur vest. They restored this for the SEs after CGI'ing over with a thing that looks Jabba-ish but is way too small -- they were just covering up the actor.

After Ep. I Yoda, Jabba in Eps. I, IV, and VI are all way off model from each other.

 

Wow. Do I feel like a moron.

Because I don't watch the SEs hardly ever (except when I catch a few minutes on Spike), I just don't think of this scene a lot. It didn't occur to me that that's all that they had done. I always remember the farcical editing job of having Han "step up" on Jabba's tail, but it just didn't occur to me that they used the deleted scene footage and covered the guy over. I mean, it now makes perfect sense to me as a 23 year old that that's how it was done, but as a 10 year old seeing it in the theater, and almost never seeing that particular scene since then (maybe once or twice?), it just didn't occur to me. I knew about that deleted scene, though, through behind-the-scenes stuff.

 

farcical editing job of having Han "step up" on Jabba's tail

Farcical?

Pretty clever, I thought. Good scene as well. One of the better changes.

 

What's interesting is that the scene may not have been cut because they couldn't get Jabba to work (as a slug) but for some other reason, like how it basically duplicates the content of the Greedo scene. Around the time of ROTJ Lucas thought of maybe compositing in a slug-Jabba, and it was finally done for the Special Editions. Check it out.

 

Did they even know that Jabba the Hutt was going to be a slug at that point? I always thought that there wasn't an actual Jabba design until Jedi.

The Jabba scene is kind of like the deleted Tatooine scenes in that a lot of people swear that they saw it back in 1977, when they are actually remembering the novel or the comic book. I recommend the comic book, actually. It's interesting to see an interpretation of Jabba before anyone knew what he looked like. Sure he looks like anything else that could have been in the cantina, but it's still fun to see.

http://www.asitecalledfred.com/comics101/115.html

Here's a good article about the Marvel Star Wars comics.

 

I think Lucas always intended on a huge slug-like alien, but at the time knew he couldn't pull it off, and so he just filmed the scene anyway for a future project well knowing he could do it later. Marvel just thought to come up with their own design, which I never minded at the time.

(Sigh) I myself didn't care that he had super-imposed a cgi Jabba the Hutt and re-inserted this scene in ANH, especially adding Boba, which to me made Fett seem less of a bounty hunter and more like one of Jabba's cronies.

Instead of the cgi Jabba, they should've just edited the dialogue to make it seem that the human actor had been just an under boss (a capo, if you will) that works for the Hutt. It would have been far easier and better, in my opinion.

 

You're just about bang on. If you reviewing the SE featurette and the Making of SW book that came out a few years ago you will see that he did intend Jabba to be a large, furry yet slug like creature. This why he had Declan Mullholland in the furry get up. The stop motion over lay was going to be done post production. The scene was cut though and thus the post production work on Jabba was not done.

 

I think Rinzler's Making of SW mentioned 'lens problems' (with the camera that shot that scene).

1. Actually, if you read the Making of SW book, you'll see that Lucas had a 'grisly-looking human' antagonist to Han and Chewie in all the drafts from the second one onward.

2. The stop-motion post-production fix for SW didn't come about until 80/81, when the third film was in pre-production.

 

When that Jabba scene was added, Boba Fett had an appearance in all 3 of the OT movies. I liked the scene, not only for the Boba Fett appearance, but also because it showed Han Solo bargaining his debt to Jabba.

 

That's my gripe with the scene. It duplicates the Greedo scene for story content, and then it also ruins the original version's brilliant introduction of the Millennium Falcon. That last bit angers me no end, 'cause the original "what a piece of junk!" introduction is class beyond class.

 

You know, I never looked at it that way. That was Luke's first reaction to seeing the Millennium Falcon. It couples nicely with Leia's reaction of, "You came in that thing?..."

 

Yeah, coupled with what Lt.Cmdr.Thrawn said, that new Falcon reveal disappoints me.

 

I miss the Jabba from the Marvel comics.
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