C-3PO and R2-D2 are two of the most beloved characters in popular culture. They are also central to the Star Wars universe. That first line spoken by C-3PO (“Did you hear that?”) started us on a never-ending journey full of action and adventure. 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 AND MELTING
Photos of other protocol droids besides C-3PO have been widely available for many years. Many of these droids were never seen in the film. I’m including a few here from the opening scenes of the film.
On a related note, 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. As it turns out, this cutaway to C-3PO was pulled from an unused shot from the beginning of the film. Also, the shot that follows shows R2-D2, and it’s clearly from the Death Star control room, and not the Millennium Falcon.
The video clip below 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. 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.
VADER’S SEARCH
Darth 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. That said, here are a few pictures of Darth Vader that weren’t seen in the final cut of Episode IV. These look like alternate angles/takes, possibly just for inserts and cutaways. 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 picture of him that I don’t remember seeing in the finished 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 below didn’t make it into either version of the film (at least not from these angles.) There’s a possibility that some of them 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 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 Lost Cut of Star Wars. While mentioning the Jawa’s 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 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).”
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.
