if they kept the humanoid jabba scene in the original 1977 sw film
and had him as a slug in rotj. would an explanation that he wa turned into a slug by a space wizard be believable for the star wars universe?
shareNo because Jabba doesn't have an Irish accent in ROTJ.
It's just a shame George Lucas isn't at the helm any more as I think the CGI technology is now good enough that he could have placed that portly Irishman Jabba into ROTJ and made a new improved special edition in line with how he'd originally envisaged Star Wars.
Irishman Jabba was NOT how he envisaged Star Wars, lol. Back in '77, he planned to replace him with stop-motion animation but he ran out of money.
shareThat clearly isn't true as we can see that Irishman Jabba was fully kitted out with an outfit not so different from Han's. Plus Han literally calls him a wonderful "human being".
If Lucas had always intended to replace him, he wouldn't have bothered with such precise detailing. Therefore we can infer that this is one of Star Wars' many famous retcons.
"When I first shot the scene with Jabba the Hutt, I knew I was going to create some kind of stop-motion creature...I had to have somebody--an actor--play the part so Harrison had someone to play against, so we just picked a big guy and put him in a fuzzy vest. I, at that point, felt that he may be a character somewhat like Chewbacca, a big furry character. We shot that. As we were cutting the movie, [we] realized relatively quickly that we didn't have the time or the money to actually shoot that scene [the stop-motion optical]. That ILM was pressed way beyond what it could pull off as it was. So I had to abandon that sequence pretty early on. I had to cut back on special effects shots and that sort of thing because ILM just couldn't handle it."
- George Lucas
Yes, that is what George Lucas claimed afterwards.
Point still stands though.
This is one of examples showing that production difficulties can result a better movie (Jaws is another legendary example). I liked that Jabba wasn't show:n to the audience until Return of the Jedi. It was a great buildup for the character when he was only talked about in Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back. That was all ruined when Lucas had his way in 1997 special editions.
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