I reckon they tried it and felt it did’nt work.

It probably looked janky and literally the Dewback that was meant to be moving would have been in shot for about a second up from his head straight to the storm trooper.

It probably felt too quick and the wrong pace. But I reckon It might have looked ok as a close up of simply a stormtrooper mounted on the hill then we cut to the escape pod.

There would have been options none of which we have seen. It would have been a glimpse with the focus on the stormtrooper rather than the dewback and this probably spelt out it’s doom more than anything else you could not hold the camera on it long in close up.

It’s a small thing really.

Somehow I doubt it would look as bad as treadwell repairing the moisture vaporator… It might need some sparks or a laser welder something to be more believable.

This is something that became apparent after assembling an edit of the scene and although that does spell a bit of an issue for the sound mix I have done and it also means I have to find more sounds to make him repairing the moisture vaporator make sense and add visual effects to it. It’s also something very interesting that what you are seeing would at the point his little welding arm is extended we hold on a single frame whilst some animation takes over for a short few frames. And again it is tailed off with him finishing the repair job with a few more frames of animation before his arm goes back down. The actual repair job is done off screen while luke goes to his landspeeder.

what looks like a little arm that goes up and down is finished in post production to be believable and a bit longer running time with sound and visual effects and it’s the most important splice to notice in that sequence.

Re-use Matte painting without the real life tank tracks prop. Example.

This may also have been meant to be animated appearing from behind the dunes. the Black triangle looks too small and out of scale and certainly is not the sandcrawler.