Indy's
Idealistic Ending for Episode III
by forumer Indy500. |
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| Part
Two |
| A
long time ago, when George Lucas announced ILM was working on a
Star Wars ANH "Special Edition" that would feature digitally modified,
previously unseen original footage, many wondered if the cut Luke
and Biggs Tatooine scenes would be one of the new additions. Well,
this footage was shown to the public for the first time ever during
a surprise screening at the San Diego ComicCon that year, but it
didn't make it into the ANH SE (no doubt for the very same unavoidable
pacing reasons that Lucas originally contended with). Although the
infamous Anchorhead footage remained on the shelf, Star Wars fans
in theatres everywhere were happily surprised to see that the Rebel
hangar reunion between Luke and Biggs had been unearthed and re-inserted
near the end of the movie. As I've stated previously, the inclusion
of this scene into George's "definitive vision" of Star Wars is
the first and foremost clue that points towards the possibility
of eventually seeing the missing Tatooine footage at the end of
Episode 3. |
| Shortly
after the release of the Special Edition trilogy on video, I remembered
that in the original ANH screenplay Red Leader had said something
to Luke about knowing Luke's father. I double-checked the script,
and sure enough, Red Leader did have some extra dialogue to that
effect. Red Leader approaches Luke and says, "Skywalker! Are you
sure you can handle this thing?" Biggs chimes in and says, "Sir,
Luke is the best bush pilot in the outer rim territories." |
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| According
to the original script, at this point Red Leader was then supposed
to say to Luke :
"I met your father once when I was just a boy. He was a great
pilot. You'll do all right. If you've got half of your father's
skill, you'll do better than all right."
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For
the Special Edition however, this Red Leader dialogue has all been
reduced down to simply, "You'll do all right" - no mention of knowing
Luke's father. I was amazed to discover how ingeniously ILM deleted
Red Leader's lines. Right after Biggs puts in the good word for
Luke, Red Leader is opening his mouth to speak when a digitally
inserted crewman carrying some hoses walks in front of the camera,
creating a "wipe" which hides the fact that a section of film has
been cut out. During the split-second that our view of Luke, Biggs,
and Red Leader is being completely blocked by the crewman, we hear
an excerpt that was taken from the MIDDLE of Red Leader's deleted
lines where he says, "You'll do all right." As the crewman exits
the frame to the left, we just barely catch Red Leader's lips forming
the last two words, "all right," in perfect sync with the dropped
in sound-byte.
Impressive, most impressive ;o)
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The only
thing that betrays the edit is Artoo : the droid appears to "skip"
a few feet as he's being slowly lifted into Luke's X-wing in the
background. |
| After
this discovery, I asked myself "Why?". Why did George even bother
with the slick ILM trickery just to get this small, inconsequential
scene into the movie? He could have just continued to leave it on
the shelf, considering that for 20 years and several modified video
releases, ANH had always been just fine without it. If he had felt
that it was really necessary to have the reunion scene with Luke
& Biggs in ANH, then he wouldn't have cut it from the original release.
George Lucas is infamous for ruthlessly eliminating whole scenes
and sequences from his films during the editing process. He doesn't
usually go in later to add whole scenes unless he feels it will
serve to further the story somehow. In his own words :
| "Unless it's something that you absolutely have to have
in order to motivate a character, unless it's actually a plot
point, just personal history is not something that you need
to put into a script. A script starts off big because you're
trying to define the characters and the plot, but the work
you do after the first draft is to make sure that you tell
a very precise story and that you take out everything that's
not relevant to your plot." |
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| Obviously,
George once felt that the film's plot was more "precise" without
the reunion scene. Keeping his storytelling philosophy in mind,
however, we must conclude that the re-insertion of the reunion into
the ANH SE is an indicator that it now holds some relevance to his
Prequel-expanded, "definitive" vision in some way - he now "absolutely
has to have it" in the saga. So much so, that the scene had to be
digitally altered before it would even work for him. Why did it
become so important to restore this scene, when it's sole purpose
was merely to resolve the still missing Luke & Biggs Tatooine scenes
that got cut from the film's beginning? This fact is made clear
on page 91 of The Annotated Screenplays :
| "Luke is reunited with his friend Biggs ; this scene actually
was shot but was deleted when the sequence at the beginning
that introduced Biggs was cut out. The scene was restored
in the Special Edition." |
So
again, unless we are to eventually see the corroborating Tatooine
footage at the end of Episode 3, why is the reunion with Biggs
now in ANH? I find that odd.
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| Another
thing that I find odd is that during all the Special Edition hoopla,
while every little detail of each new addition to the Original Trilogy
(ANH in particular) was being dissected and scrutinized everywhere
you looked, nobody ever mentioned the work that ILM did on the reunion
scene. In late 1996, and on into '97 and '98, Lucasfilm's marketing
machine was ensuring that we fans were being made aware of all the
cool new stuff the ANH SE had to offer, through a wide variety of
sources, including :
SW Insider magazine
SW Galaxy magazine
Various other sci-fi magazines such as Starlog or Cinescape
The Art of ANH SE book
The Topps SE widevision trading cards set
A variety of official SE collector's magazines
The ANH SE video pre-movie featurette
The Annotated Screenplays
The official website
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| These,
along with any other sources that were touting the Special Editions,
collectively detailed out every little ANH change or new addition
for us. -Everything from how ILM dotted the distant horizon of Luke's
farm with more vaporators, to the digitally enhanced color in the
sunsets. We're talking nit-picky coverage. The Annotated Screenplays,
for instance, pretty thoroughly documents the prominent changes
that were made for the SE's, highlighting them in dark grey boxes
next to the original script. For example, where the original script
says, "The sandcrawler moves slowly down a great sand dune," a grey
box off to the side gives us the amended, "The sandcrawler moves
slowly over the rocky terrain." However, even with attentively small
revisions such as this, there is no grey box highlighting Red Leader's
altered dialogue. Instead, the book just has the original script
with Red Leader talking about Luke's father, which is doubly-odd
since the scene with those lines was never even in the original
version of the film. When it came to addressing the addition of
the digitally tweaked Biggs reunion scene, the best that any of
the official sources could do was to offhandedly tell us, "The scene
was restored." Most of them didn't even manage to do that
much. |
| Such
a hush-hush attitude towards the resurrection and inclusion of this
original footage (as well as the silence regarding the digital modifications
that had to be made to it) seems just a tad strange to me. You'd
think they would have pushed it into the spotlight a little more
than they did. After all, it's not just some fixed shadow under
a landspeeder, or a different view of Ben's house; it's a "brand
new" scene featuring Luke Skywalker, the hero, for cryin'
out loud! The fact that the whole reunion scene issue was largely
downplayed and/or completely avoided in all Special Edition-related
media makes me wonder why George Lucas didn't want to focus any
attention on the efforts that went into putting this "new" little
addition back into the story. ...Perhaps he felt that if he did
call attention to it, the Star Wars community might then more easily
begin to make the connection that the scene could be an important
link to his plans for the Prequel story, which he was even then
actively preparing to give us. George says :
| "I have to think of this as six movies now, I can't think
of it as just one movie. I've got this dual reality in that
they come out once every three years, so each episode has
to stand on its own and have meaning on its own - except that
it's only one chapter in the book. It's not the book. I can't
sacrifice one for the other, so I'm constantly balancing between
the now and the larger picture. The now has to be engaging,
but the larger picture is what is really important." |
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| So,
if the "larger picture" should culminate with the cut Tatooine footage
appearing as an Episode 3 epilogue, then the Biggs reunion was restored
to ANH in order to tie-in with and resolve it, as it was originally
intended to do. But the clues that point to the possibility of this
Epilogue actually happening don't stop with the ANH SE. Interestingly
enough, both Prequel Episodes 1 and 2 contain links to the cut footage
as well. These will be presented next. |
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