C-3PO and R2-D2 are two of the most beloved characters in popular culture. They are also central to the Star Wars universe. Those first lines spoken by C-3PO (“Did you hear that?”) started us on a never-ending journey full of action and adventure that will live on forever. Faithful companions and servants, it’s a safe bet you’ll never see a Star Wars film without them in it. This semi-comedic pair never seem to be out of trouble and someone’s always searching for one or both of them at any given time.
PROTOCOL DROIDS
Photos of other protocol droids besides C-3PO have been widely available for many years and many people never noticed they weren’t in the film. Sometimes items like sticker books and trading cards are like breeding grounds for good cut scenes material. It’s amazing what you can find when you take a look at things you’ve had lying under your nose for years.
Here’s something else. Remember the scene in Episode IV when the TIE Fighters attack the Millennium Falcon after it escapes the Death Star? After the last TIE explodes, you see C-3PO on the floor exclaiming that he’s melting. Well, as it turns out, this cutaway to C-3PO was pulled from an unused shot from a scene on the Tantive IV in the beginning of the film. The shot that follows that one shows R2-D2 and it’s clearly from the Death Star control room, and not the Millennium Falcon.
The video clip I’m including was made by JediSluggo. What he did was take the opening scene and edit in the shot of C-3PO on the ground to give you an idea of how the scene might have played out had the editors gone a different way. It contains the existing hallway crossing, then the inserted shots from the other scenes. The dialogue makes more sense if you entertain the notion that R2-D2 was the one that wanted to scurry across that hallway.
 Fan created video clip of an alternate Tantive IV scene including C-3PO on the floor edited together by JediSluggo. |
Here’s another fun fact, while we’re on the subject of the Tantive IV. My friend Brad found a little clue about where the Tantive IV may have gotten its name from:
Considering that names such as Coruscant (which I realize Zahn created) and Rancor came from real words, it looks like the name of Leia’s ship from A NEW HOPE came from a real word too. The meaning certainly conveys the sense of running to escape danger, as she was doing. What do you think?
tantivy (tan-TIV-ee)
adverb – At full gallop; at full speed.
noun – A fast gallop; rush.
adjective – Swift.
interjection – A hunting cry by a hunter riding a horse at full speed.
VADER’S SEARCH
Ok, so Vader wasn’t actually looking for the droids. He was looking for the plans to the Death Star that fell into the wrong hands. The clues he found led him to an escape pod, which then led him to droids.
So here are a few pictures of Darth Vader that weren’t seen in the final cut of Episode IV. There’s nothing all that interesting here. We know Vader was on the ship and we know the scenes that took place there. These look to be just alternate angles and takes, possibly just for inserts and cutaways. I like the imagery, however. The shots are quite similar. They’re mostly side views of Vader walking through the hallways of the ship.
The close-up shot of Vader is scanned from an old 1979 calendar I had lying around. The shot of Vader walking with the Imperial Commander is from the book Secrets of the Sith. The other shot of Vader walking where you can see both doorways is from the Star Wars Trilogy DVD.
On a side note, the company Decipher who at one time specialized in Star Wars customizable trading card games named Vader’s lackey in those opening shots Commander Daine Jir. I’m including a shot of him I don’t remember seeing in the film.
COMBING THE DESERT
In the original version of Episode IV, the scene where we see the Stormtroopers out in the desert examining the landing site of the escape pod was very short. There were dewbacks in the scene but they were pretty stationary and far away in the background.
For the Special Edition, this entire scene was re-shot, lengthened and enhanced. The dewbacks were computer generated and the whole scene felt bigger and longer.
The photos I’m including didn’t make it into either version of the film (at least not from these angles) so I’m including them in this section. There’s a possibility that some of these may be promo stills, especially that shot looking up at the trooper which was one of the first Star Wars pictures I remember seeing as a kid.
THE SANDCRAWLER & THE DROID SALE
In the Star Wars Insider Magazine, Issue #68, p.41, there’s an image of a sketch by David West Reynolds. Dr. Reynolds is one of the few people to have ever seen the famous Lost Cut of Star Wars which is a rough assembly of the film thrown together to gauge the flow of the scenes.
While mentioning the Jawa Sandcrawler, he noted:
The sandcrawler was another exciting blank canvas for us to fill. This would take unusual measures. To get the droids’ locations in this “droid prison” would require the original set blueprints.
Locating all the droids therein, however, would take unconventional research. The one thing that would have that information was the Lost Cut, the earliest film version of Star Wars. The Lost Cut shows the interior of the sandcrawler in much more detail than we see in the final cut of the film. A look at this footage, with the help of then Lucasfilm film archivist Tim Fox, made the location of every droid crystal clear, including droids we don’t see in the final cut of the film. Thanks to the unique views in the Lost Cut, I was able to provide an accurate sketch for Richard with the location of every droid.
Not only did he find droids we never got to see, but the caption to one of his sketches in the upper right of the page reads: “Reynolds’ sandcrawler ramp sketch shows Jawas leading out the droids for sale, including the binocular Treadwell droid they’ve just stolen from the Lars farm (a scene cut from Episode IV).”
So there’s the interesting bit. Was there originally a scene in Star Wars where the Jawas stole a treadwell droid? Was it just a concept or does this footage actually exist somewhere? Was it just assumed they stole it? Am I being too literal?
The best theory I can subscribe to is that the scene which Dr. Reynolds says was cut from Episode IV is related to yet another cut scene involving the same Treadwell droid. In short, Luke is out working, sees ships in the sky, runs off to tell his friends and in the process leaves his faulty, broken down, and smoking treadwell droid behind. Interestingly enough, during the droid sale later in the film, a treadwell droid is seen among the group.
Now, one might theorize that the production team only had so many cool droids that moved so they just reused the droid in this scene, writing it off as another droid of the same model, much like the other astromech droids or protocol droids you see in the films. I had always thought this to be the case.
Is there more to it than that, though? Was this droid, in fact, supposed to be the same one that Luke left out on the sand flats? If so, that brings up the humorous and ironic notion that the Jawas stole or scavaged the abandoned Treadwell droid, fixed it up a little, and (perhaps unknowingly) tried to resell it back to the original owners.
There’s also this bit from the novel which takes place after Luke leaves the treadwell droid behind:
Behind him, a pitiful beacon of black smoke from the burning robot continued to rise into the clear desert air. It wouldn’t be there when Luke returned. There were scavengers of metal as well as flesh in the wide wastes of Tatooine.
It makes you think, doesn’t it? (Special thanks to Treadwell Jay and SKot for both pointing this out and then giving me their input.)
On a side note, there appears to be a small scene that was deleted from the film (or the script) involving Jawas in their little homes. Here’s a quote from George Lucas’ famous May 1977 interview with Rolling Stone:
Well, the Jawas are more like scavengers, junk dealers. We had a Jawa village scene in the film but we didn’t shoot it because the location was too far away, we just cut that out to keep on budget. We found these great things in Tunisia, little grain houses that were four stories high but with little tiny doors, little tiny windows, it was a hobbit village. So we had a whole sequence with these little hobbit-world slum dwellers but we had to cut it out.
He could be talking about the same setting used in Episode I many years later for the slave hovels.
