I think if this was fully restored it wouldn't be quite as bad.
Well, okay, maybe it would, but half the reason I can't watch the thing is because of the crappy video and audio quality on every copy I've ever managed to track down.
I suspect that the low video quality is probably insulating you from the full magnitude of the horror. If you could see it clearly, madness might be the result...
Indeed...in the '70s we were shielded by poor broadcast quality and the limitations of our antennae and TV sets....We've never seen the true horror of the Holiday Special, and it's best left that way.
Huh? No, it's from the movie. R2 did something that caused R5's "motivator" to fail, so that Owen had to settle for taking R2 along with 3PO. Although Wookieepedia says that the shot of R2 committing the sabotage was cut from later versions of the film:
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/R5-D4
This is the first time that I've heard that claim, and it seems to be unsubstantiated.
Which claim? That the shot of R2 doing something before R5's motivator blew out was there, or that it was later cut? Because I definitely remember seeing it.
That any footage of R2 doing anything to R5 was filmed.
Like I said, I saw it. It was ambiguous, but that was definitely the impression -- that R2 sent a signal of some sort that overloaded R5's motivator. That's been my interpretation of that scene for three decades now, since well before the movie got recut or retitled or modified to the extent it's been today.
Besides, doesn't it make sense? We know that R2 was on a mission. He had to find Obi-Wan, and being stuck on a Jawa sandcrawler wasn't where he needed to be. Throughout the whole first act of the movie, he was doing whatever he needed to do to deliver Leia's message, by hook or by crook. He stole the escape pod to get down to Tatooine, and once in the Lars' possession, he tricked Luke into removing his restraining bolt and then wandered off to find Obi-Wan. So I don't understand why you'd even be skeptical of the idea that he deliberately made sure that he was the astromech droid that got purchased instead of R5. Surely that's more consistent and less coincidental than R5 just conveniently happening to break down at exactly the time R2 needed him to break down.
Well, I saw the movie in the theater a couple of times in '78 (didn't catch it first-run) and a few more times in theatrical rereleases, read the novel, read the comic adaptation, had the record that presented an abridged audio version of the movie...and this is the first that I've ever heard of this. Wiki articles are limited by the people who contribute to them, and that one only vaguely alluded to the possibility of a cut scene based on the well-known poor edit of a close-up of R2 with R5 in the background after R5 had started to roll away. And there's a lot of info in that article that orginated from EU sources.
The first I'd heard of any of these R5 theories was in a supplement for the late '80s/early '90s WEG RPG that took the liberty of expanding upon the backgrounds of many minor characters. They put forth that R2 had explained his mission to R5, who then deliberatly triggered his own malfunction to ensure the success of R2's mission...and that was pushing things in my book.
Had the scene actually existed, I imagine that other early sources, such as the novelization and comic book adaptation--both of which were informed by early cuts of the movie and included scenes that didn't make it into the final theatrical version--would have included some hint of this scene.
The thing about Star Wars is that a lot of people, years after the fact, perpetuate myths based on memories that have apparently mixed with childhood perceptions and things that they were told or read of after the fact. There are people who swear that the "Episode IV: A New Hope" subtitle was in the original theatrical version of the film. Just last week, I stumbled upon a conversation between a geeky grocery store clerk and his friend regarding whether one should view the Star Wars films starting with Episode IV. When I jokingly offered that there was no Episode IV, just
Star Wars and then
Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, he seriously offered something about how the original VHS release of TESB had "Episode II" in the subtitle. Now I saw TESB on its opening day in 1980 and was 10 years old at the time; that and various contemporary sources all had it as "Episode V" from the get-go...but I didn't argue with the kid, because I've found that in geek circles, arguing about Star Wars is like arguing about religion in general circles. It's just not worth the effort, people believe what they want to believe and take what they've come to believe very seriously.
