“Let him have it. It’s not wise to upset a wookiee.”
“But sir, nobody worries about upsetting a droid.”
“That’s cause a droid don’t pull people’s arms out of their sockets when they lose. Wookiees are known to do that.”
It also turns out that they aren’t opposed to ripping your arm clean from your body if you mess with one of their friends either, as this new deleted scene from The Force Awakens shows.
We first came across this cut Star Wars scene at io9, which was shared to YouTube by the channel Trailers and BTS, and in it Chewbacca makes good on Han’s three-decades-old threat by swiftly tearing Unkar Plutt‘s limb straight off his body. The violent scene takes place at Maz Kanata’s establishment, with Plutt confronting Rey and demanding she come with him because she’s in big trouble. When Chewie comes over to help out his friend, Plutt doesn’t back down, and instead gets in the wookiee’s face…well, chest. And that’s when we finally see why C-3PO advised R2-D2 to let Chewbacca win all those years ago.
So why did this not make it into the film? The most obvious answer is that it is just way too violent for a standard fare Star Wars film, since these are supposed to be kid friendly (that level of violence is part of what makes Rogue One such a different movie from Lucasfilm).
However, the other reason might be that it makes no sense. There is no way Plutt could have managed to get from Jakku to Maz’s before the Millennium Falcon did. It’s so illogical for him to be there that it’s hard to even pretend it would have been reasonable for her to encounter him there.
But still, it is super cool to see that Han wasn’t exaggerating in A New Hope, and that Chewbacca is as badass as we’ve always thought. And now we know: it’s not just enough to let the wookiee win; you should probably also make sure you’re really nice to all of his friends too.
What do you think of this scene? Should it have made it into the movie, or was the cutting room floor the right place for it? Tell us what you think in the comments section below.
Images: Lucasfilm
