Yeah, maybe there was an early cut that I saw. I guess it sticks in my mind because I remember wondering what the hell was going on when they switched from the battle scene to the distant shot from the POV of some guy with a pair of binoculars.
I’ve written a scene that never happened in Star Wars, heh heh. Lets’ just say it involves a certain brave princess captured by a gangster and turned into a slave girl. It goes into quite a few details that were apparently left out of the movie to keep it from getting a XXX rating. Damn censors!
That matches my recollection as well – I was 15 when the movie was released. I probably saw it 3 times at least.
I remember Luke rushing to greet some random guy when he arrived at the rebel base – “Biggs!!!” – and I’m thinking “who?”
Later Biggs is shot down, cut to reaction from Luke: “<sigh> Biggs…” (Me: who?)
“Oh my God. Are getting out that damn thing to watch STAR WARS again??!!”
-Mrs. Dooku
Bah - I was already in the doghouse for getting a little carried away after my Cards won, so I figured, what the hell. She later walked in to ask me if I was coming to bed right when Artoo was worried about being watched by the Jawas, while I was saying “Peesacaportnan…Peesacaportnan…CEEEPAKAHHH!!!” Then I heard the door shut. 
I can confirm that there is no “Luke watching the battle” scene in my original reel-to-Beta copy of ANH. We first meet Luke as I remembered yesterday, or rather as CalMeacham more accurately described it. The first reference to Biggs is when Luke says “It just isn’t fair. Ah, Biggs is right, I’m never going to get out of here.”
I can also confirm that there is a kamikaze snowspeeder crashing into the bridge of an AT-AT in ESB. Kamikaze isn’t a good descriptor, though - he gets hit, screams, and his out-of-control speeder happens to crash into the bridge. He didn’t yell “Banzai!” and deliberately ram it.
One more unfortunate note: My Betamax does not have RCA outs, nor a co-ax out - it’s got VHF screws. The only way I’m getting it to DVD is to buy one of those VHF screws-to-coax-to-RCA-to-USB converters, which I’m not sure even exist.
Actually, I should have been more clear - I knew it wasn’t a totally deliberate suicide run, but instead a damaged speeder doing it.
Was it Hobbie?
Anyways, by VHF screws do you mean an F-type coax connection? Because if that’s the case, getting it to RCA should be possible. As for the USB, well, not so sure on that one. That’s what Dazzle crap is for. Or, preferably, something better than Dazzle.
-Joe
Can’t there have been more than one official version during the first run? There’s reports of Spielberg having two slightly different Close Encounters of the Third Kind during the first run. One of my sisters saw it in two different theaters and proclaimed that they weren’t quite the same movie.
Oh it’s certainly possible, I don’t dispute that - I’m just reporting what was on the reel that my parents’ theater received and I subsequently watched way, way too many times.
I don’t know - I’m not sure who Hobbie is. It wasn’t Rogue Two and Jansen.
Thanks for doing so. Maybe I’m just going nuts, along with everyone else who claims to have seen that.
Might as well mention where I first saw Star Wars: the Starlite Drive-In, Kankakee, IL. It was probably the last movie we ever went to see at that theater.
I remember that as a child, I saw the original Star Wars (before it was rechristened “A New Hope”) at the theatre. I also remember owning the storybook, and being surprised to see the Biggs pictures in it, because he wasn’t in the movie.
As for the AT-AT scene in ESB–maybe I’m going insane, but I have a very vivid recollection of the snowspeeder pilot crashing into General Veers’s AT-AT. And then it topples over onto its side. I’m sure of this.
I remember the crash scene so clearly because I also owned the action figure of the AT-AT commander (which I called General Veers), and I had to pretend like that scene had never happened–when I played with my Star Wars figures, the Imperial forces were always the good guys, while the rebels were just pesky insurgents. My support for the Empire is another reason why I remember this scene–it kind of upset me to see Veers killed in that manner.
I also had an Imperial officer action figure whom I called Admiral Piett, and it pissed me off to no end when he died on board the Super Star Destroyer in ROTJ exactly the same way Veers was killed in ESB–by a kamikaze pilot on fire! Not only did I recognize that Lucas was copying himself, but now another one of my action figures was dead!
On preview–I see Dooku’s confirmed that my childhood memory isn’t faulty. Yeah, it wasn’t a true kamikaze–his speeder was hit so he took Veers’s AT-AT with him.
Hobbie is the guy with the nosebleed.
He’s with Luke “Hobbie, you still with me?” on the run “I’m with ya, Rogue Leader” that ends up with Luke crash landing.
Now…how to convert Beta to DVD?
-Joe
I remember the kamikaze speeder scene as well. Since all my tapes and DVDs are of recent vintage, I guess I won’t be seeing it again. Alas.
But, you know, maybe we shouldn’t ascribe a sinister motive to the scene’s removal. There’s a very similar scene in ROTJ, as I recall, with a damaged A-wing crashing into the bridge of a Star Destroyer. Maybe Lucas just wanted to cut down on the number of times he used the same trick in consecutive movies.
Nope, sorry - this was one of the scenes specifically added to the SE. I recall it being commented on at the time. This link confirms it, listing all the added scenes.
The scene with Luke watching the battle through binocs has never appeared in any release of the movie (source: IMDb again). You may be confusing it with the scene when Luke rushes out of the house and uses them to look for Artoo.
That’s not a completely reliable source, you know.
There must have been. I was 23, hadn’t read the book because there wasn’t one, and was at the second showing on opening day: Biggs didn’t show up for another hour and a half and there was no binocular scene.
(looking at the link) Jebus, Biggs looks like Harry Reems!
I’m pretty sure that the opening text crawl sequence always said “Episode IV”.
Hey, let’s not get into that again! 
“Episode IV” wasn’t added to the opening crawl until the first video release.
There’s no way the “Biggs and Luke at Yavin base” scene was added for the Special Editions. I saw Star Wars half-a-dozen times in the theatre in 1977 and 1980, and dozens of times on video, and that has been totally ingrained in my memory.
I’ve only seen the Special Editions once each, when they were first released.
Then why does every single website I could find disagree with you? I can provide at least ten cites for this - all US-based, so it isn’t just my UK videos that don’t include it - and have still to find a single cite to say that it was in the original cut.
You’re also wrong about the “Episode IV” being added only at the first video release. It was in fact added to the 1981 cinema re-release.