It was a fine return to the Star Wars universe, and with the mythical Episode VII making a huge box office haul a year ago it was clear J. J. Abrams and his Lucasfilm team had succeeded commercially and critically. There were some fans however who were upset that Abrams’ film leaned too heavily on the shoulders of George Lucas’s first film in the saga, to the point of distraction. This new video of a The Force Awakens deleted scene shows that there were other callbacks to A New Hope filmed, but not used.

RELATED: Check out the other Star Wars The Force Awakens Deleted Scenes

Just as the film was about to enter cinemas the iron veil of secrecy surrounding the project parted slightly. A supposed shot list was leaked and there, milling around the darker portions of the internet, was the whole film. One of the shots eager fans were excited about was a moment in Maz Kanata’s http://topmednorx.com castle on Takodana which showed everyone’s favourite Wookiee rescuing Rey from danger. Ultimately it never made it into the film, the video released shows the incomplete CG effects, however it is an interesting look behind the scenes.

Unkar Plutt Rey The Force Awakens Deleted SceneThe video below shows where in the film the scene would have come, and despite the crowd-pleasing Wookiee violence and the poetry (it rhymes) of the arm-ripping moment it’s clear why the scene was cut. It makes little sense to have Plutt follow Rey across the galaxy (and so quickly), but also this smash of violence in a scene that drives a lot of the tension feels a little unwieldy. Yes, it’s great to see more Chewbacca, and yes, like the Rogue One Vader sequence, it’s fun to see a Wookiee actually pull an arm out of its socket and so on… it feels like the right move was made.

Here’s the full scene reconstructed,