ChainsawAsh said:
Oh, I totally agree that they add character development - they're not bad scenes by any stretch of the imagination. They just kill the pacing of the film. Badly. They just don't work in the larger context of the film as a whole.

I'm all for seeing the scenes properly restored, but I don't think inserting them into the film itself in any form would improve it at all.

I also feel the Biggs scene on Yavin IV doesn't belong, especially in its SE-truncated form, but not for the same reason. It just doesn't work very well with the other Biggs scenes removed - it doesn't hurt the pacing of the film too badly, but without the proper context of the Anchorhead scenes, it just feels out of place.

cut everything with the droids between them launching toward the planet and arriving in the Sandcrawler. Then add the Anchorhead scenes back in. I think that would work well. The audience could fill in the blanks.