hairy_hen said:
And the 70mm version never had 'close the blast doors'. This was only dubbed in for the mono version, made after the first two mixes were already playing in theatres. Aside from much greater dynamics and the addition of powerful bass, the only differences in content between the 70mm and the stereo mix are some explosive sounds added to the battle at the end. Personally I prefer 'close the blast doors' to be absent, because it makes the stormtroopers appear to be incompetent buffoons, not to mention it is dubbed in a voice entirely different than the one that says to open the doors a few seconds later, which I find jarringly discordant.
Don't forget, the LP "The Story of Star Wars" (which many people owned) also had the "Close the blast doors/Open the blast doors" dialogue in it. That whole LP is burned into my head permanently from the number of times I listened to it. Of course I was puzzled when I later watched the movie on VHS and one of the lines was missing!
As far as the grappling hook miss goes: every single argument that it was in there was also given by people who swore on their mother's grave they saw the Toshi Station scenes in the film. But they were proven absolutely wrong, since the scene was never even finished (no music, no sound effects, just the noisy on-set sound). Yet I'll bet some of those people will *still* insist that they saw it. A memory you really want to have is the hardest thing to let go of.
An alternate version of the film that was ever shown publicly, no matter how big or how small, would have turned up by now. With literally TENS OF THOUSANDS (millions perhaps? there were over 20,000 people at C5 alone!) of fans microscopically picking apart every single iteration of the films every single day, no stone is left unturned for long. That one-time TV airing of Star Wars you once recorded on VHS but lost years ago? Hundreds of us have it (and no it does not have the grappling hook miss, or the Biggs scenes!). That TV special on Star Wars that only aired in that one country? It's been preserved on DVD by someone here, and many of us have seen it. If it exists, it *will* find its way to the internet.
The only thing left nebulous was the 70mm versions of the films, which have been unavailable since they were shown back in the day. But recently even that gap is closing since audio recordings from the theater have surfaced, as well as other findings that can finally start to document the previously unknown. And it's looking very unlikely, based on the 70mm sound mix, that the miss scene could have ever been there even in that version of the film.
These claims are collective false memories, reinforced by the fact that others believe they saw the same thing. It happens sometimes.
--SKot