I could swear that when I first saw the Empire Strikes Back, right when it first came out in May 1980, the following scenes were in it:
– Darth Vader is in his little meditation chamber and his helmet is off, but instead of that bald scarred head that everyone remembers, there was a BIG GLOWING BRAIN.
– Luke is on Dagobah in Yoda’s hut, and when R2-D2 looks in the window, there are SEVERAL YODAS preparing food.
OK, now I have talked with at least one person who remembers both the multiple Yodas and the glowing brain. Here are the possibilities:
They were in the original release and Lucas, obviously not averse to monkeying with his films, took them out for all subsequent releases.
They were in some adaptation of the movie, such as the novel, comic book, comic strip, radio play, children’s storybook, or any of the two dozen ESB tie-ins I made my parents buy me at the time, and over the years my (and my friend’s) brain has short-circuited and ascribed them to the film proper. I was only seven at the time.
I hallucinated them, they never existed except in my mind, and my friend just wants me to like him.
There is a scene of Threepio removing a Biohazard tag from a door where Wampas are on the other side that made it into the trailer. I think they should have left it in as it would have been threepio’s shining moment.
Perhaps you are a loon. Or at least suffering from “can’t tell the difference between a dream and a memory” syndrome (there must be a better name for that)
Trust me, not only were these scenes not in any release of the movie, but they would make no sense to even be included in the movie!
Tars, I kept waiting for that scene to show up in the special editions, but no such luck. It woulda been so righteous seeing snowtroopers go barging into the wampa holding pen and then pissing their armor.
Guess I gotta stick with watching the commercial on the laserdisk
I, too, mistook the back of Anakin’s disfigured head for a brain when I first saw this scene in the theaters. But I have no memory of said brain glowing.
I can state with certainty that the Star Wars comics from #76 through #100 had no big glowy brains. Iskalonians, sure, and a whole bunch of other wacky stuff, but no glowy brains.
I just checked, no Space-Brain for Vader (or the Emperor) and no super-speed Yodas.
HOWEVER
I found a possible suspect!
Marvel did a paperback comic-book adaption of Empire that was different from the comic-book format: it was done months before they’d seen any of the new characters and before the final script/edit was done: Yoda is drawn a purple, Wendi Pini looking trollish thing, for instance.
Since it was done from A) a shooting script and B) done “blind” it’s entirely possible that the paperback comic adaptation has both scenes.
