JM McNab
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The Last Jedi is almost in theaters, so, let's pause for a moment and reflect on all the mind-boggling crapola that didn't make its way into our favorite robes-and-laser-swords epic. We're talking about deleted scenes like ...
Return Of The Jedi famously featured the surprise twist that Luke and Leia were long-lost twins, like some kind of intergalactic Parent Trap. This made certain scenes retroactively gross as hell. Particularly, there's the moment in The Empire Strikes Back in which Leia plants her brother a big wet one. It's only saving grace is that she does it more as a "screw you" to Han Solo than out of romantic feelings for Luke. But originally, it was going to be a lot creepier.
In a deleted scene from Empire, Luke is recuperating from the Wampa attack. Mark Hamill had recently undergone real-life facial reconstruction, so George Lucas felt the need to explain the scarring with a whole scene which we like to call "Luke Skywalker starring in a grade-school production of Phantom Of The Opera:"
Lucasfilm
Lucasfilm"Are the lambs still screaming, Clarice?"
Leia soon comes to check on him, and things immediately get super sibling sexy.
Lucasfilm
Luke and Leia almost kiss in earnest because of Leia's "confusing" feelings -- and not the healthy kind, like when she made out with her roommate at Alderaan State. (Go Fighting Tauntauns!)
Lucasfilm
If you really want to make your midi-chlorians crawl, the scene was actually filmed, and was a hair removed from being added to the movie.
Lucasfilm"Sir, R2's erection sensors detect an anomaly in the area."
But right before they lock lips, C-3PO and R2-D2 burst in, because one of their protocols is cockblocking.
Lucasfilm"I am fluent in over six million forms of buzzkill."
Luke gets pissed off, unaware that the bothersome duo saved him from going full Lannister. Luckily, the moment was cut out of the movie, lest we wind up with yet another Skywalker twins wrestling each other in a mud puddle situation.
The Force Awakens was essentially a beat-for-beat remake of the first Star Wars, but with newer special effects and the added sensation that your youth is gone forever and you can never get it back. Its extensive list of callbacks to the original include an orphan living on a desert planet, another Death Star, and, of course, Ms. Yoda. But hey, at least the movie isn't a total carbon copy of the original, because no one gets their arm severed at a bar -- except they did.
LucasfilmAnd it wasn't someone with an ass for a mouth.
In another Star Wars instance of an old man dragging his young protege into a dive bar, Han brings Rey to Maz's castle, seemingly the only building on an entire planet, which must do wonders for its TripAdvisor ratings. In a surprisingly gruesome deleted scene, Rey is hassled by Unkar Plutt, her alien boss of sorts from back on Jakku who's played by Simon Pegg and seemingly assembled from irregular prosthetics thrown out by a Winston Churchill biopic.
LucasfilmYou don't want to see where they put the cigar.
When Rey gets her weapon taken away, Chewie steps in and shows Plutt the Wookiee version of disarming someone:
Lucasfilm"What's the sound of one hand clapping?!"
By now, Star Wars fans should be getting used to people losing extremities all over the place, but here it's especially brutal. At least in A New Hope, Obi-Wan took off that guy's arm using a lightsaber, like a gentleman. Chewie's just effortlessly pulls the thug's limb like it's warm taffy. Not surprisingly, the scene was cut, probably after Disney realized that being able to yank an action figure's arm out of his socket should always be a bug, not a feature.
A lot of fans don't really care for Return Of The Jedi, probably because it's more than a little jarring to see an epic battle between good and evil decided by an army of adorable critters -- like if Die Hard ended with Teddy Ruxpin pistol-whipping Hans Gruber. But people who hate the Ewoks like a cuddly plague wouldn't complain so loudly if they knew the awfulness Lucas originally cooked up.
One of the early drafts for the then-titled Revenge Of The Jedi found Luke confronting the Emperor in his underground throne room, because even rulers of galaxies still have dreams of kicking it like a troll king.
Lucasfilm"Welcome, young Skywalker, I have been expecting- I'm sorry, can we go up to the Death Star? It is hot as balls in here."
Less cool: Obi-Wan randomly shows up. Why? Well, apparently the afterlife is kind of a drag, and he's sick of it. Seriously, Obi-Wan pops back into existence because he "could no longer stay in the netherworld," which makes it sound like he got kicked out of Heaven like a drunk guy out of an Applebee's. A second later, Yoda also appears, though he's still a ghost for some reason.
Lucasfilm
So the trio of Luke, Zombie-Wan Kenobi, and their poltergeist Muppet pal decide to take on the Emperor together. The Emperor is surprised that Obi-Wan is alive, because he felt his "presence in the netherworld." Hang on, the Emperor is hooked into the netherworld too? Is it like Jedi Facebook?
LucasfilmDarth Vader liked Emperor Palpatine's post.
Luke and Vader fight, while Obi-Wan and the Emperor just stand there and watch like parents at an out-of-control little league softball game. The script ends with Yoda working his mojo to mind-fuck the Emperor while Darth Vader tackles and kills him, leading into the familiar Ewok party. A party that could take a real turn for the worse if the Emperor decided to suddenly be alive again.
The last movie in the prequel trilogy had the awkward task of trying to chronicle the transformation of Anakin Skywalker from a sand-hating whiner to an evil Mustafa-voiced badass. And they nailed it, right? Right? But even though the movie was pretty dumb, it was almost even dumber.
Lucasfilm"Not possible, that is."
In the third act, all the Jedi are killed off by the evil clone army -- the worst use of clones since Michael Keaton decided he didn't like doing housework. In one deleted scene, after the clones have gone full Skynet, Yoda and Obi-Wan return to the Jedi Temple and find a gaggle of Jedi milling about out front.
Lucasfilm"My name? It's #154- ah, shit."
Of course, these "Jedi" are really clones in disguise, which raises so many questions. Mainly: Do they think Yoda's an idiot? Yoda is a Jedi grandmaster and has known every other Jedi since they were poopy padawan babies. And the clones have probably the most recognizable accent and face in the galaxy. Why would they think throwing bathrobes on would somehow amount to a kickass disguise? Not to mention the fact that Jedi are straight-up mind-readers. Sensing things is half of their job description!
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Of course Obi-Wan sees right through their terrible plan, either because of the Force or a basic ability to recognize human faces and voices.
Lucasfilm"No, sir, something about this doesn't add up at all."
This leads to another scene of Yoda hopping around like a coked-up kangaroo, before posing triumphantly like a baseball player getting his photo taken for a trading card.
Lucasfilm"Ready, my ultimate is!"
Luckily for audiences, most cut scenes from the Star Wars movies were the right calls -- sloggy, badly written, sometimes confusingly incestuous mistakes. But among all the discarded garbage, there was one rather awesome darling that had to be killed. A deleted storyline from The Empire Strikes Back found the Rebels on Hoth fighting and imprisoning Wampas.
LucasfilmAnd joined the ever-growing group of people who have had an arm chopped off by one of the protagonists.
Rebels fighting abominable snowmen sounds a lot cooler than stormtroopers getting their asses handed to them by Salvation Army teddy bears, right? So if you're wondering why these scenes were cut, it might have something to do with the fact that the Wampas themselves looked about as believable as some jagoffs in cheap yeti costumes.
LucasfilmThey tried to get the stop-motion snowman from Rudolph, but they were already way over budget.
When the Empire invades the base, Han, Leia, and Threepio run for their lives, sadly leaving Cliff from Cheers to be horribly murdered. While fleeing, Threepio becomes a straight-up Looney Tunes character. Instead of following Han, he stops for a moment and rips the sign off a door which presumably reads "DANGER: Unconvincing Ice Monsters Inside."
Lucasfilm
Lucasfilm"Sir, I believe that if we paint this door as though it were the entrance to a tunnel ..."
So when the snowtroopers run by, they naturally stop and decide to open the door, probably assuming that the unlabeled room is where the Rebels stash all their candy and porn. Of course, this leads to one of them getting pulled inside by the giant paw of an unseen Wampa ...
Lucasfilm
... only for Vader to casually stroll in, see his trooper's incompetence, and stroll away like he's muttering "I can't even" inside his helmet.
Lucasfilm"Well, saves me the trouble of choking him for incompetence."
If it seems kind of stupid and silly, that's probably because it's missing some sweet John-Williams-conducted slide whistle.
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Wampas are a lot more adorable and significantly less murdery as plush toys.
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