10 Things You Missed In Star Wars Deleted Scenes
8. Jabba The Hutt's Human Version - A New Hope
Though Jabba the Hutt as we know him is a grotesque, not-remotely-humanoid creature who made his first appearance in Return of the Jedi, George Lucas originally planned for him to appear in A New Hope in a brief scene opposite Han Solo (Harrison Ford).
Curiously, Lucas' shooting script for A New Hope depicted Jabba as a human, and when it came to filming, character actor Declan Mulholland played the part.
Yet when Lucas decided to remove the scene due to time and budgetary constraints, Mulholland's performance was seemingly lost to time.
And even when Lucas finally restored it for the 1997 Special Edition re-release, Mulholland's performance was of course replaced with a digital Jabba, given that the character had been firmly established as not-humanoid in Return of the Jedi.
However, the original sans-CGI version of the scene featuring Mulholland was eventually released on home video, showcasing the actor's impressive commitment to the part.
It also explains why Han bafflingly refers to Jabba as a "wonderful human being" in the canon version of the scene - because, of course, he was originally intended to be a person rather than a monstrous slug-thing.