Original Star Wars Movie

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I'm not a Star Wars buff, but I did go see the first film on the day it was released some (40?) years ago.

I watched it again last night, renamed Star Wars: A New Hope, and with a number iV.

It seems to me that many scenes from the beginning on Tatooine have been cut. Memorably to me, there were scenes in which Bigs and Luke raced through the canyons at break-neck speeds - a display of their abilities to pilot the vehicles and how quickly Luke could pull up out of a canyon. There were also scenes between Bigs and Luke talking about the resistance and the flight academy. Without these scenes, later scenes lack credibility.

If we had not seen Luke's skill as a pilot, especially climbing out of that canyon on Tatooine, his sudden ability to charge through the Death Star channel is not particularly believable. And when Bigs gets killed Luke takes it hard, but we don't really understand that Bigs was a life long friend.

I think there were also more scenes of Luke with his aunt and uncle.

Is my memory faulty? It seems like I couldn't have made up the scenes I remember. I am not that creative.

I saw it in the theater, too. The lines were enormous.

https://mashable.com/2015/12/17/star-wars-original-cut/

The Library of Congress has a 2K scan of the original available for viewing.

The original Star Wars was done on a budget of just $11 million. A lot of careful editing was needed to tell the story.

The scenes with Biggs on Tatooine where edited out for pacing, before it was shown in theaters in 1977. The part you are describing with Luke flying through canyons on Tatooine sounds more like what was in the book version of the movie.

There's a deleted scene with them that you might be thinking of. I do a Star Wars Marathon every year with my friend and his wife and never came across those scenes. I even downloaded a blu-ray version of the originals with all the original puppets and effects, but still no scenes of those you're talking of. No crappy, money-grabbing, special-edition CGI for me!

And as for Luke's piloting skills, it does seem farfetched without seeing him doing it before.

I very clearly remember the "drag" race through the canyons on Tatooine. It is a visual memory.

These are the deleted Biggs scenes, but there's no racing. These deleted scenes with Biggs weren't even in the original release.

If such a racing scene ever existed it would be online. Star Wars fans are relentless. Nothing slips by. I've been deep into this world. I've never seen it even heard of the racing scene.

Are you maybe mixing this up with a different film.

(A bit of political rambling foreshadowing the prequels here... that others were wise enough to cut)