In an interview with New York Daily News, Paul Blake — a.k.a. the actor behind Greedo in the original “Star Wars” film — confirmed what fans of the science fantasy series have known for years. While George Lucas has worked vigorously to make Blake’s character look like the one who pulled the trigger first, the English actor confirms Harrison Ford’s legendary screen icon was the one who actually fired the inciting blast in the original script.
“Of course, in it said it all in the original script, we played in the scene in English and at the end of the scene, it reads, ‘Han shoots the alien,’” Blake said to the newspaper. “It’s all it says and that’s what happened. It was very painful.”
And that’s not the end of it. Apparently, Blake had some other, not-so-kind words against the ineptitude of Ford’s character behind-the-gun.
“He was a bit inept wasn’t he?” Blake continued. “He’s a worse shot than a Stormtrooper. I don’t think Jabba had him under a pension plan, let’s put it that way… It would be lovely to see them go back to the original version, I much preferred it, I must say. And it does give it Greedo a little more glory if he’s just blown away.”
This might not be a huge revelation for fans, but it’s comforting at least to hear someone from the original production speak so candidly about this topic. Though, anyone who saw the jerky head-spurt in the remastered editions can tell that wasn’t the way it was originally supposed to be. And while that might not be a shock, this bit of news might be a bit of a surprise: apparently, in the original script for “Return of the Jedi,” Boba Fett was set to play the film’s main antagonist.
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While it’s weird to think of anyone but Darth Vader as the ultimately baddie, Craig Miller — the first-ever fans relation officer for Lucasfilm — revealed the initial plans to Inverse (via Yahoo! Movies) during yesterday’s May 4th festivities. Originally, after being set up in “Empire Strikes Back,” Fett was going to play a much larger role in the following film, as it focused on him rescuing Solo and eventually becoming the main antagonist. But Lucas reportedly got tired of that idea pretty quick and decided to scrap it altogether.
“While we were working on ‘The Empire Strikes Back,’ George decided he was going to complete the first film trilogy and that would be it… When George decided not to make another trilogy, he completely jettisoned that storyline — which is why, in the first ten minutes (of ‘Return of the Jedi’), Boba Fett gets bumped into and falls into the mouth of a giant monster.”
So essentially, after this happened, Lucas squashed three movie ideas into one film — which would explain why it felt a little, you know, compressed. It might also explain the rushed and hurried narrative in some patches, like how Luke became a masterful Jedi off-camera between sequels. There’s no fear of that ever happening again, however. For better or for worse, “Star Wars” will be with us for the long, long, long haul, and in a galaxy not so far away.
Wasn’t boba fett in an the droids animated series or in a short of the dreadful Star Wars Christmas special so how could he be considered for the main villain in Jedi when he was introduced so much earlier?