Summary

  • Jabba the Hutt was originally played by a human actor, Declan Mulholland, in 'A New Hope' in a deleted scene.
  • Lucas cut the original scene because of time, budget, and technology restraints, but it was reinserted in 1997 using CGI technology to create Jabba's character.
  • Lucas made several changes to 'A New Hope' over the years, as he often felt that the older movies were too limited by the technology of the day and that CGI could bring them closer to his original vision.

A human actor was on set to play the original Jabba the Hutt in Star Wars: A New Hope, but neither the actor nor the scene made the final cut in 1977. The notorious slug-like gangster is one of the key villains in the Star Wars movies, causing trouble for the galaxy's heroes from the Clone Wars era through the rise of the Galactic Empire. While Jabba's most prominent onscreen role in the series was in Return of the Jedi, the character was originally supposed to appear in the first Star Wars film.

Jabba was originally supposed to appear in A New Hope, where he would have had an encounter with Han Solo. Ther were many deleted scenes in A New Hope, and the gangster's sequence was one of them, but Jabba's scene was reinserted back into A New Hope in 1997 with the special editions of the original trilogy. While audiences of the late 1990s and beyond saw Han talking with a CGI Jabba the Hutt, the original scene featured a human actor named Declan Mulholland. Jabba has always been one of the most recognizable aliens in Star Wars, so Mulholland's casting caused many viewers to wonder why Jabba was originally a human.

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Jabba's Final Look Wasn't Achievable In 1977 But Was Fixed Later

The production of Star Wars was famously troubled. Lucas' vision for his far-away galaxy exceeded the technological limits of the era, and much of what he planned was ultimately hampered by time and money. One sequence that fell victim to this was the original Jabba the Hutt scene, which was initially intended to be far more ambitious. The plan was to use Declan Mulholland as a stand-in for a non-human Jabba the Hutt and then use a matte process to cover his performance with a new creature for the finished film. Unfortunately, Lucas lacked the time, funds, and ability to pull the scene off, and so it was abandoned for the final cut.

However, by the late 1990s, film technology had finally caught up to Lucas' vision for Star Wars. When Lucas began preparing the Special Edition of the first film, he dusted off the Jabba scene and gave it a CGI makeover. Using the updated slug-like design from Return of the Jedi, a computer-generated model was created and inserted into the sequence, covering up Mulholland's original Jabba completely. While future editions would include a more realistic CGI Jabba, the scene has remained a part of A New Hope ever since. Mulholland's performance is now entirely obscured given how iconic Jabba has become in his present form.

How Muholland Reprised His Jabba Look In Time Bandits

declan-mulholland-time-bandits

However, Declan Mulholland's version of Jabba would end up appearing on the big screen again. Mulholland would go on to appear in Terry Gilliam's 1981 film Time Bandits in a minor role as one of a group of robbers. During his appearance, Mulholland wore a very similar outfit to the scenes he filmed as Jabba, with a fur-covered vest and grungy clothing underneath. The costume in Time Bandits is a little fancier than the one in the A New Hope deleted scene, but there's an undeniable resemblance to the original version of the powerful Jabba the Hutt.

It's possible that the similarity was intended as an inside joke by Gilliam or Mulholland, although very few among Time Bandits' audience would have understood it. It's far more likely that the similarity was a coincidence. Either way, it's a fun and (possibly) accidental tribute to a lost part of Star Wars history.