Last holiday season, Disney released a home video edition of Star Wars: The Force Awakens that didn’t get much press amongst all the other offerings. Perhaps this was due to the casual Star Wars fan’s newfound reluctance to double dip (nah) or because it was a release of the 3D Blu-Ray of the film and who the hell owns a 3D TV (yeah).
But anyway, it didn’t set the world on fire.
Which is a shame because it contained deleted scenes like this:
Yep, that’s Chewbacca ripping off the arm of Rey’s scuzzy junk dealer Unkar Plutt (Simon Pegg) at Maz Kanata’s bar on Takodana.
First off: holy shit!
The effects look great for a deleted scene, and it’s just fucking great to see that dude get what he deserves.
Secondly, we can see why J.J. Abrams cut this one out. It’s a little on-the-nose with the references to A New Hope, in that it actually mixes two into one: Esquire wisely points out Han’s prior mentions of Wookiees “ripping arms out of their sockets” to Threepio in that original installment, and, though Chewie is no Alec Guinness, we do see shades of Obi-Wan cutting off Ponda Baba’s arm (you know, the guy with the butt face) in the Mos Eisley cantina as well. It might have been fun, but it would have felt a little out of place in that scene. It’s much better to leave Platt stranded on Jakku, shaking his fists towards the sky and cursing Rey for leaving with his ship.
But still, this little clip joins a long, proud history of Star Wars deleted scenes, from Luke meeting with Biggs at Tatooine’s Tosche Station in A New Hope to the gang getting caught in a sandstorm after rescuing Han in Return of the Jedi.
The only real difference here is that these didn’t just linger around as rumors for 30 years, and that’s heartening and disappointing at the exact same time. On the one hand, it’s nice to see Disney be up front about the process of making these movies (though that never will be totally true until The Making of Star Wars: TFA is released). On the other, it would have been cool for this scene to ferment in the minds of fans over the course of 20 years until it took on a status with them it could never hope to live up to.
Still, it’s great to see that asshole get his. Remember: never push a Wookiee over the edge.
Chewbacca photo up top via Film Frame, 2014 Lucasfilm Ltd.