10 Unused Star Wars Scenes That Would Have Changed Everything

Each lightsaber stroke and screaming TIE flyby, every line of dialogue and swell of John Williams' score, is etched into the minds of generations of devoted Star Wars fans. The modern-day myth-making of the franchise George Lucas built is embedded into our culture as few cinematic creations have ever been, creating a phenomenon that has been enthralling wannabe Jedi since 1977.

However, the Star Wars the world knows could so easily have been very, very different. In places, George Lucas' initial treatments for the series show little relation to what ended up on screen. Early concepts for now-familiar characters are a baffling array of unfamiliar weirdos, such as a humanoid Jabba the Hutt and a helmetless Darth Vader. Budget concerns, toy-friendliness and better ideas led to huge changes before the cameras started rolling.

But plenty of scenes were fully scripted and even filmed, and then discarded before the final cut. Several such scenes are short filler shots cut for pacing, but others contain substantial wedges of plot that, if they had been included in the finished films, would have completely changed the storyline or atmosphere.

Orson Krennic is one of the finest villains in the whole Star Wars series, an odious rear-echelon bureaucrat who serves as Rogue One's antagonist. His end is a fitting one, when his is obliterated along with a sizable chunk of the planet Scaris in a Death Star test firing/scorched earth operation authorised by Grand Moff Tarkin.

But that wasn't the original fate the filmmakers had in mind for Director Krennic. In an unused scene, Krennic escaped the surface of Scarif and returned to the Death Star only to encounter Darth Vader, who promptly throttled him with the power of the Force for failing so spectacularly to defend the secrets of the Empire's superweapon.

In the end it was decided Krennic's escape from the fiery apocalypse of Scarif was too unlikely, and robbed him of the ironic death via the lasery armageddon of the weapon he oversaw. But then, sadly, it also robbed the audience of another iconic Vader moment.