Nick66 said:
SpilkaBilka said:
I agree, I think people were influenced by the Story of Star Wars LPs and stuff like that. But I *want* to believe!
Someone on this board, I forget who, has memories of seeing the movie in theaters a few times, and there was no scene of Vader flying away at the end. The story sounded credible to me.
Anyway, it would be cool to see *some* kind of variation between prints, no matter how small of a difference.
FWIW,I just have to say, I saw Star Wars multiple times in '77-'78 with my Dad. I have very, very distinct memories of both the missed grappling hook scene and Vader spinning off without regaining control of his ship. I have no memories of the Biggs scene. But yeah, I absolutely remember look tossing the hook, pulling it back almost into the belt, and cueing it up again.
I'm pretty confident of these memories because many years later when I saw Star Wars for the first time on home video (I believe it was HBO) I remember being very surprised at the grappling hook scene in particular (i.e. only one throw). I also remember being surprised at seeing Vader get control of his ship, but in that case I thought my memories might just be playing tricks on me. My Dad thought the same thing at the time, and we've since discussed it. To this day, as many times as I've seen the film, I'm always surprised when Luke gets that grappling hook to catch on the first try.
This was long before the internet, and long before I would have been exposed to any chatter about this to create a false memory.
I don't know about the Biggs scene, and I'm frankly skeptical about that, but I'm about as certain as I can be about seeing the other two scenes.
I screened Star Wars literally hundreds of times from 77-79, and there was never a grappling hook miss.
Think about how much longer that scene would go if there was a miss. Try and story-board it out as you remember it. Also listen to the musical cues during that scene. It would be a major job to re-work the audio to incorporate the throw, miss, reeling back in of the hook, another throw etc.
I really am sure this was never in the film, and it is created memory from it being in the novelisation and the comics etc. Remember, most people only saw the film in 77 a few times, then not again for a few *years*, inbetween that time there would have been much discussion, reading, acting out scenes etc. that would distort the memory.
Memory is notoriously unreliable. I have seen 17 different prints of Star Wars on film, from different labs, have heard bootleg audio recordings from 77, seen bootleg video tape from 77, and as mentioned screened it countless times in its initial few years, not one sign of the grappling hook miss, and nothing in the audio of the released versions to show it has been removed. I'm putting this one down to recreated memories, like Bugs Bunny at Disneyland.