The Missing “Star Wars” footage

It was May of 1977, and I remember where I saw it first. I was in line at the Cine 1-2-3-4-5-6 behind Northway Mall, waiting to see Star Wars for its first week on the big screen. I already knew some of the story; for the past three months the movie’s plotline had been serialized in a Marvel Comics comic book; and as the film began, I saw every scene from the first half of the movie replicated from those comic book pages. It was great, it was fun – and there were things missing.

See, because there was an approximately three-month delay between the comic book’s creation and its publication, there were scenes in the comic book serialization that didn’t show up in the movie. A conversation Han Solo had with Jabba the Hutt, in which Solo tries to convince the scourge of Tattooine that Solo will get him his money as soon as possible, was shown only in the opening pages of Star Wars comic #2, but wasn’t on the screen. In fact, Jabba the Hutt wasn’t even the huge slime lizard we’ve come to know and appreciate; he was actually a man.

Here’s the reconstructed footage of same.

And a generation after the film’s original release, George Lucas re-inserted the footage into the film itself – of course, he had to computer-generate the current version of Jabba the Hutt over the 1977 version. View this YouTube clip and compare.

But truly, the one scene I wished would be reinserted into the original film, concerned the character of Biggs Darklighter. There were scenes in the beginning of the film (and in both the comic book and the original adaptation paperback novel) that explained some of Luke Skywalker’s backstory, how he hung out with his friends at Anchorhead. The scene includes a long conversation between Luke and Biggs, who has told Luke he is joining the Rebel Alliance. The scene explains the frustration Luke feels about his farm-boy duties and the adventurous world of space. The scene occurs just after C-3PO and R2-D2 escape from Princess Leia’s spaceship.

Of course, in the version of Star Wars I saw in 1977, Biggs doesn’t even show up in the film until just before the climactic Death Star battle. And those comic book issues hadn’t been released at the time of the movie’s premiere. So I already knew how the first half of the film would play out – but not the second half, not the death of Obi-Wan Kenobi, not the battle on the Death Star, none of that.

Thankfully, these deleted scenes have been preserved by Star Wars fans and have eventually made their way onto YouTube and other fan-related sites. And with the recent news that the entire six-movie Star Wars series is headed toward a Blu-Ray release, I certainly hope that George Lucas goes back into the vaults, finds the old footage, and adds it to the DVD’s as new extra bonus footage.

If he does that, then maybe, just maybe, I can forgive him for forcing Jar Jar Binks on us.