Life on Tatooine

Tatooine was home to Luke Skywalker. His friends lived there. He grew up and was educated there. He worked there. The only family he knew about lived there. While he seemed content, he looked to the stars, longing for adventure. Little did he know that a wise, old man would come into his life soon and things would drastically change.

LUKE’S ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION

In the original shooting script for Episode IV, Luke was introduced to the audience much earlier than in the finished film. While C-3PO and R2-D2 are getting ready to escape in their pod, the film was supposed to cut to Luke at work out on the desert flats of Tatooine. This was supposed to be our first glimpse of the boy hero on screen. He’s dressed in his typical farm boy outfit with addition of a floppy hat and goggles.

While out on the flats, a glimmer in the sky catches Luke’s eye, and he takes out his macrobinoculars to investigate. What he sees nearly knocks him off his feet with excitement. He’s witnessing a space battle overhead. We know this to be the capture of the Blockade Runner containing Leia and the Death Star plans. All this time, Luke’s helper (a Treadwell droid named WED-15-77) has been going about his business doing whatever it is he’s programmed to do. Luke, upon seeing the battle overhead, leaps into action and starts running towards his parked landspeeder to go tell his friends. He yells at the droid, telling it to “get it in gear” but the droid picks up a slight flutter and breaks down. Luke then decides it’s best to just leave him there and takes off, anxious to make his friends aware of the ongoing battle in the stars overhead.

Here’s the relevant script passage from The Art of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope:

EXTERIOR: TATOOINE – DESERT WASTELAND – DAY
A death-white wasteland stretches from horizon to horizon. The tremendous heat of two huge twin suns settles on a lone figure, Luke Skywalker, a farm boy with heroic aspirations who looks much younger than his eighteen years. His shaggy hair and baggy tunic give him the air of a simple but lovable lad with a prize-winning smile.

A light wind whips at him as he adjusts several valves on a large battered moisture vaporator which sticks out of the desert floor much like an oil pipe with valves. He is aided by a beatup tread-robot with six claw arms. The little robot appears to be barely functioning and moves with jerky motions. A bright sparkle in the morning sky catches Luke’s eye and he instinctively grabs a pair of electrobinoculars from his utility belt. He stands transfixed for a few moments studying the heavens, then dashes toward his dented, crudely repaired Landspeeder (auto-like transport that travels a few feet above the ground on a magnetic field). He motions for the tiny robot to follow him.

LUKE
Hurry up! Come with me!
What are you waiting for?!
Get it in gear!

The robot scoots around in a tight circle, stops short, and smoke begins to pour out of every joint. Luke throws his arms up in disgust. Exasperated, the young farm boy jumps into his landspeeder leaving the smoldering robot to hum madly.

This particular Treadwell droid makes a comeback in Attack of the Clones, according to Starwars.com:

The Lars family has had a stubborn dim-witted treadwell droid in their possession for over 20 years. It suffered a final meltdown in the days preceding Luke Skywalker’s departure from Tatooine. WED-15-77 was a recalcitrant yet hardworking droid that belonged to the Lars Homestead for over 20 years. It assisted young Luke Skywalker on a variety of chores, but preferred working for Beru Lars since she always had it do the same predictable jobs. For ATTACK OF THE CLONES, the treadwell design has been resurrected and once again inhabits the Lars homestead, showing that the droids may be simple but are long-lasting even under the harshest of conditions.

 

 

 

Luke’s original introduction (from the Behind the Magic CD-ROM)

Fan made re-creation of the Luke/Treadwell scene by JediSluggo

 

THE LARS HOMESTEAD

When combing through old magazines, books, trading cards, and other memorabilia, you come across photos that you don’t remember seeing in the films. That’s initially what prompted me to create this section of the site back in 1996. I had so many images lying around that I knew weren’t in the film or were promo stills/alternate angles that I wanted to share and talk about. For instance, the image of Luke, Beru, and Owen sitting at their table. There’s a peculiar seating arrangement here. Luke is sitting at the head of the table as opposed to Owen, who sits there in the finished film. It’s a popular photo that’s been around for quite some time and can be found in many official publications. Was this from a different scene, perhaps? Was it the same scene and they were just trying out different seatings? It’s unclear.

Another interesting photo is the one where Luke finds Owen and Beru dead with the landspeeder in the background. He’s got his poncho wrapped around him. This take did not make it into the film, obviously, as he’s not wearing it in the final shot. He looks much more sad and vulnerable here.

 

BERU’S VOICE

The actress who played Beru Lars (Shelagh Fraser) spoke her lines on the set, but they were eventually overdubbed by another actress later on. In the mono mix of the film, much of the original dialogue was left intact, including Beru’s original voice and the voices of a few other background characters. The first two clips included below (edited by Jedi Sluggo) use the Beru dialogue from the mono mix to give you an idea of how these scenes would have played out had Fraser’s original vocal track been used. The third clip originated on the old newsgroups, but was later re-edited together by Dylan McDermond.

 

 

 

SEARCHING FOR R2-D2

In the original shooting script and novelization there was a scene involving C-3PO and Luke which took place during the search for R2-D2 after he runs away from the Lars homestead. C-3PO even gets to pilot the landspeeder for a bit. While looking for the rogue astromech droid, something makes a noise in the back of the speeder, and Luke leans back to fix it while he and C-3PO talk about how they are going to explain their whereabouts when they get back. Most of these shots were filmed against a projection of desert footage, much like you’d see on older TV shows when people were driving in cars.

After Luke and C-3PO find R2-D2 in the Jundland Wastes, they have a confrontation with some Tusken Raiders, leading them to meet Obi-Wan Kenobi. When Luke goes back to collect C-3PO who has lost his arm in a fall, we see Luke and Obi-Wan help the droid up, but as they rise, a wipe takes us to the next scene. We never get to see the group making their way back to the landspeeder. Some of the pictures included below imply that there was a little more to this scene.

Oh, and let’s not forget that stylin’ poncho. It looks like they shot some takes with it and some without. In the finished film, we rarely saw the poncho in the Tatooine scenes. You can catch it in a few shots (Docking Bay 94 comes to mind), but for the most part he was poncho-less throughout the film.

 

Clip of Luke and C-3PO in the landspeeder from the Star Wars Trilogy DVD Bonus Disc documentary, Empire of Dreams.

 

BEN’S HUT

In the years following the events of Episode III, Ben (Obi-Wan) Kenobi lived as a hermit on Tatooine in a small hut out beyond the Dune Sea, near the Jundland Wastes. In the original film, the establishing shot of Ben’s hut was at such an angle that we saw Luke’s landspeeder from the back with the hut on the left. In the Lost Cut of Star Wars, the hut is in the background and the Landspeeder (side view) is in the foreground. In the Special Edition, the shot was altered quite a bit and doesn’t resemble the original shot at all. The old hut was completely abandoned in favor of a nicer home framed in a wider shot showing smoke coming from a chimney of sorts, a moisture vaporator, and a creature flying overhead. The scene that takes place inside the hut is an important one, full of exposition. Luke and Ben discuss Anakin, Vader, Leia’s message, and how Luke will help out poor, old Ben.

In the Lost Cut, Luke makes a certain choice about C-3PO involving his restraining bolt. Luke is about to replace the bolt but suddenly stops to think to himself for a second. He then decides not to replace it. The way it is described in Star Wars Insider magazine makes it seem like there is no dialogue involved, and that 3PO just looks away nervously when Luke picks it up. Luke’s decision not to replace the bolt probably means he trusts 3PO now and there’s no need for it anymore.

This entire scene in Ben’s hut was the victim of some fancy editing. From what I can gather, initially the “Leia hologram” sequence came before the discussion of the Force and Anakin Skywalker. One of the editors, Paul Hirsch, suggested that the order of the shots should be changed to make the scene seem more important and urgent. So he went ahead and inserted the hologram shots between the other shots, dropped a few other small bits (like scene mentioned above with 3PO) and it worked just fine.

Starwars.com revealed that there’s an alternate angle of Obi-Wan Kenobi used in the first teaser trailer for Episode III which starts with a voice-over from Obi-Wan:

There’s a shot of old Obi-Wan in the [Episode III] trailer that’s not in Episode IV. The trailer has a close-up shot of Obi-Wan saying “… the Jedi Knights were the guardians of …”. Watch the movie. In the final take, he’s in a medium three-shot, talking while Luke practices with his lightsaber. The film archives pulled up the daily of Sir Alec saying that dialogue in his closeup for use in the trailer.

Re-edited Obi-Wan/Luke scene designed to match the flow of the Lost Cut, edited by Elvis Jones.