‘Episode VII’ has been a hot topic in the movie world for months now, but recent revelations have brought us back to the start. George Lucas’ original ‘Star Wars’ trilogy sometimes comes under fire for a lack of female characters. Aside from Princess Leia, there’s less than a handful of the fairer sex in a galaxy far, far away. In fact, it’s almost as if the guy to girl ratio was just a little better than the one in Papa Smurf’s village. However, Buzzfeed recently uncovered that there was meant to be a few more ladies on screen than there actually was.
On the Blu-ray set for the original trilogy in the extras section, you can find some scenes from ‘Return of the Jedi’ that feature a few female A-wing pilots taking part in the final battle in the skies of Endor. Let me introduce the first one:
This pilot actually made it into the final film momentarily before getting blasted by a TIE fighter, but her one line (“Got it.”) was re-dubbed by a man. Though the true story may never be told, it’s entirely possible that something went wrong in post and they were under a tight deadline from the big man.
The next pilot is an older woman who’s speculated to be a potential lifelong rebel. One reason why both women were cut could have been that the audiences at the time may not have responded so keenly to women being blown up.
The third and final pilot was played by Vivienne Chandler, who had nearly a page of dialogue, didn’t make it into the final film or into the special features of the newest release of the trilogy.
We may never know why these women were cut in the first place (though I can already hear cries of sexism), but it’s still interesting to see what could have been thanks to these newly released deleted scenes. If you have any theories, feel free to share them in the comments section below.