At the recent Star Wars event celebrating 30 years of “The Empire Strikes Back,” George Lucas announced that the popular movie series was headed to Blu-Ray next year with an all-new set of special features. (And apparently not a remastered version of the original cut of the films….)
One of the promised extras was deleted scenes from the films. And to tease things, Lucas unveiled a scene that served as Luke’s initial introduction in “Return of the Jedi.”
The scene is below and shows Luke putting the finishing touches on his lightsaber.
The scene is pretty cool and as you can tell by the reaction, fans are pretty excited about seeing it. But now CinemaBlend has done some digging and says the scene may or may not be real.
Mark Hamill has both denied and affirmed that he was involved in the production of the scene.
Hamill recently denied he was in the scene at the 2009 ComicCon, saying “I never shot a scene like that.”
However, at other points, Hamill has talked about filming the scene, even introducing it at several conventions and saying, “”You can see my cleft chin sticking out of the hood, but the first thing that gets applause is my lightsaber.”
For more details and the history, check out the article at CinemaBlend.
Dan says
Looks like the video got taken down… 🙁
kurt_eh says
[i]jedi hand wave[/i]
This isn’t the Mark Hamil chin you’re looking for…
[/i]jedi hand wave[/i]
Randall says
I haven’t seen the clip, but the “Return of the Jedi” NPR radio serial did indeed have a scene with Luke building his new lightsaber from parts he found in Ben’s home on Tattooine.
The RotJ radio serial was made several years after the other Star Wars radio serials due to the untimely death of Brian Daley, who had written the scripts for the first two serials and didn’t get to complete the third.
Randall
Michael Falkner says
I remember reading that the scene was originally in the movie but was left on the cutting room floor because it interrupted the momentum of the film. It also spoils the surprise of Luke’s assault on the sail barge by showing him putting the lightsaber in Artoo’s dome.
It may have been the annotated screenplays that I was reading. The scene did exist in the film, and survived in the novelization and, as Randall points out, the NPR radio serial.
Jayson says
I’ve never heard of the existance of this scene before and now it makes me wonder if the scene of meeting at the Falcon in the dust storm still exists as well, interesting.
tensaibaka says
Maybe Hamill was told to deny the existence of the scene early on so they could later add it as hype (or justification) for a Blu-Ray set purchase?
roland says
here you can vind the same video
http://gadgetblips.dailyradar.com/video/deleted-opening-scene-of-return-of-the-jedi/