Anatomy of a "Star Wars" Geek Out

"Star Wars" is back in the news again. Over the weekend at the Star Wars Celebration V convention in Orlando, George Lucas and Lucasfilm unveiled one of the minor holy grails of the original franchise: the deleted alternate opening of "Return of the Jedi." The clip, along with several other deleted scenes, are among the promised extras that will accompany the "Star Wars" films' premiere on Blu-Ray next year. This is a great marketing move, only the latest of many similarly shrewd bits of promotion by Lucasfilm that has gotten fans to buy multiple copies of the trilogy over the years.

Let me give you an example. I broke down and finally replaced my "Star Wars" VHS tapes a few years ago when a set was released that contained "archival editions" of the films, unaltered versions that didn't contain any of the "Special Edition" changes that Lucas added back in 1997 when the trilogy was re-released in theaters. Subsequently, all screenings and television airings were of the new versions. A special retrospective screening at a Los Angeles film festival was even canceled back in 2003 because Lucasfilm wouldn't let them show an original print, resulting in controversy. Deep down, I have to wonder if this was all a marketing ploy to get us to grab the releases of the unaltered films when they finally became available on DVD. I definitely prefer the older versions because those were the ones that I grew up with, but they'll almost certainly be available again in the future at some point, and probably better quality than the ones I've got now. I admit I fell prey to the hype, like so many others.

This time around, it's no different. The deleted scenes are an extra that piques my interest, as I'm sure they've gotten the attention of a lot of other fans. As a "Star Wars" enthusiast since I was a kid, it was common knowledge that George Lucas filmed and deleted several sequences from the first trilogy. The proof could easily be found in many pieces of "Star Wars" merchandise. The "Return of the Jedi" opening that was screened in Orlando was described in detail in the film's novelization. I also remember coming across a children's "movie book" version of the first "Star Wars" that had several color stills from the famously excised Biggs Darklighter scenes on Tatooine. A lot of the deleted footage has been unofficially acquired and collected by fans over the years, and compilations will occasionally pop up on Youtube. Yet Lucasfilm is almost certainly holding on to clips in its archives that we haven't seen yet, and might surprise us with something we didn't even know about.

George Lucas encourages this kind of speculation, consciously or not. By never officially giving the fans a chance to see these deleted scenes, keeping them out of all the previous DVD releases, and yet continuing to acknowledge their existence and the interest in them, the lost footage has gained a sort of aura of mystery that Lucas can now exploit as a selling point for the new Blu-Ray releases thirty-odd years later. Not that there's anything wrong with that. This is a perfectly legitimate way to keep up interest in the "Star Wars" franchise, especially since there's not much new material in the works right now. It's a rare fandom that can summon up this much excitement for this kind of minutiae, and there's no reason why Lucasfilm shouldn't take advantage of it.

For my part, I know the allure of the deleted footage is mostly hype. I fully concede that those missing Biggs scenes would have helped set up the relationship between Luke and Biggs for when the character showed up at the end of the first movie, but most of the footage was probably best left on the cutting room floor, along with the additional endings of the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, the airplane hijacking in "Lilo and Stitch," and the famous Audrey II rampage from "Little Shop of Horrors." The alternate "Return of the Jedi" opening scene contains less than a minute of new footage, and shows Luke Skywalker completing his replacement lightsaber on Tatooine before his confrontation with Jabba the Hutt. It's nice to be able to see it, but if this had been in the final film, it would have taken away from Luke's wonderfully built-up entrance at Jabba's palace.

The deleted scenes aren't some truly important discovery, like the recently recovered thirty minutes of "Metropolis" that revealed new insights about the story and characters. The small subset of "Star Wars" fans who care enough to buy the new Blu-Ray for the extra footage probably already know exactly what they'll be getting, where it all fits in continuity, and why it was cut in the first place. And after the footage becomes widely available, the fascination will fade, and younger fans may be left to wonder what all the fuss was about.