Where's the Biggs footage??

Rating: Null/10 (17 April 2003)

When I heard that Lucas was releasing a special edition of Star Wars in 1997 with footage that was taken out to be put back I was excited..Finally the missing Biggs scenes that I had heard about but only knew from the original storybook and comics that I had bought during the original release was going to be shown...Imagine my disappointment when once again I was robbed...Instead I got a lame Jabba the Hutt sequence that is a dialogue repeat of the equally lame new cantina sequence....This is why I never fretted over the lost Jabba sequence...Everything I needed to know was explained in the much better original cantina sequence...Why Han needed the money and so on...But the Biggs footage explains a whole character including Luke's and gives part of the reason why he's so frustrated about his life...Unless you had known like I did before hand,when Luke mentions Biggs and Tank you ask yourself who are these guys that he's talking about and what is Tosche Station?All that would have been explained in the Biggs footage...If Lucas wasn't going to put those back in then he should've cut those lines referring to them out...Even the restored hangar scene leaves you wondering who Biggs is and what his relation to Luke is....Bottom line-If the Biggs footage had been restored it would have put the special in the special editions and would have given the fans a chance to see what they'd been missing but as Lucas has said in interviews pleasing the fans is not his priority..In some cases this is true but not in this case...Not when the unseen footage would've provided new insight and development to a character...But then character and story development were never Lucas' strong points...No,the special edition was a chance for Lucas to test run his new toys...Toys which he apparently now totally fallen in love with....