Documentary filmmaker Jamie Benning of Filmumentaries.com just released a new short about ‘Star Wars’ character Biggs Darklighter who briefly appeared in ‘A New Hope’.
Titled ‘Blast it Biggs! Where Are You?!”, the film includes an in-depth interview with actor Garrick Hagon about his experience auditioning for and filming ‘A New Hope’.
In the final cut of ‘A New Hope’ Hagon doesn’t appear onscreen as Biggs until much later in the movie. However, he did shoot an earlier scene with Luke on Tatooine introducing their friendship.
Ultimately, this scene ended up on the cutting room floor. At a Star Wars convention in 1987 (as seen in the documentary) Lucas stated that the scenes with Luke and Biggs just didn’t work. After he showed a draft of the script to a few friends, Lucas was advised that he should have more real people in the beginning of the movie to balance out the overabundance of robots. Taking their advice, he added in the character of Biggs and shot those initial scenes in the unrelenting heat of Tunisia in 1976. However, when it came to the final edit, Lucas realized that these scenes felt out of place with the rest of the movie.
When you look at some of the deleted footage, you might feel the same way. Brent McKnight of CinemaBlend said the deleted scenes were “goofy and tonally out of step with the rest of the picture”. That’s true, but it’s still kind of interesting to get a deeper glimpse into Luke’s persona.
Nonetheless, hearing about Hagon’s experience filming ‘A New Hope’ is definitely worth it for any ‘Star Wars’ fan or general cinephile. Watch ‘Blast it Biggs! Where Are You?!’ below.
