regularjoe said:

Darth Lucas said:

Visually, and imagination-wise, I don't see how a severed hand clutching a lost weapon is not more interesting than simply falling debris.

For starters there is no hand or lightsaber present while Luke goes skating through the gerbil tube. Seeing as the hand was severed a couple of minutes prior to him taking a leap I would think that it would be present in the gerbil tube on his trip through it. There's a whole lotta places in that big wind tunnel that it could have been sucked into, the thought of it just happening to go down the same pipe as Luke did is pretty lame, the thought of someone recovering it from where ever it landed is even lamer.

It's not so much an issue of whether it is interesting or not but whether it is plausible based on what is in the frame of the movie.

But the door Luke falls through to the outside or underside of Cloud city only opens when he stops going down the gerbil tube as you say... So it is possible that the door opening created a further suction and the hand because it is lighter did not have as much inertia as Luke so he probably went past it only for it to follow him down afterwards...

Make any sense? Seriously I only just thought about this now for the first time ever, it's reasonably plausible but it's not really a big deal I don't think.

It does look like a hand and light saber though and the 4th draft script is not the never seen 5th draft (if there ever was one properly assembled as production became a bit messy and stuff did get changed from 4th draft we just do not know exactly what it was changed to and if it was ever finished)

There are numerous special effects shots that were lined up to be done that were never completed for one reason or another and I know of a few through guesswork but I cannot tell you 100% for certain but the music score often gives up where there positions are. All the live action was shot though.