In the original film, the establishing shot of Ben's hut was at such an angle that we saw Luke's landspeeder from the back with the hut on the left. However, in the now famous "Lost Cut" of Star Wars (an early rough assembly of the film), the hut is in the background and the Landspeeder (side view) is in the foreground.

In the enhanced "Special Edition" of A NEW HOPE, the shot was altered quite a bit and doesn't resemble the original shots at all. The old hut was completely abandoned in favor of a nicer home framed in a wider shot showing smoke coming from a chimney of sorts, a moisture vaporator and a creature flying overhead. For a guy who's supposed to be in hiding, Lucasfilm sure gave Kenobi's home a lot of attention. Wink, wink.

Now let's talk a bit about what happens inside the hut. As you know from watching the film, this is a very important scene full of exposition. It's where Luke and Ben discuss Anakin, Vader, Leia's message, and how Luke will (or won't) help out poor old Ben.

In the "Lost Cut" there's a quick scene that involves Luke and C-3PO. While inside Ben's hut, Luke makes a certain choice about C-3PO involving his restraining bolt. Luke is about to replace the bolt but suddenly stops to think to himself for a second. He then decides not to replace it. The way it is described in the Star Wars Insider makes it seem that there is no dialogue involved and that 3PO just sort of looks away nervously when Luke picks it up. Luke's decision not to replace the bolt probably means he trusts 3PO now and there's no need for it anymore.

I also want to mention something else I think is pretty cool. A good friend of mine named Elvis Jones took on the project of re-editing the whole scene inside Ben's hut to match how it's described in the rough cut or "lost cut" of A NEW HOPE.

The story as I understand it goes like this: At first the "Leia hologram" sequence came before the discussion of the Force and Anakin Skywalker. One of the editors, Paul Hirsch, suggested that the order of the shots should be changed to make the scene seem more important and urgent. So he went ahead and intercut the hologram shots between the other shots, dropped a few other small bits (like the 3PO part mentioned above) and it worked just fine. Lucas then decided to keep it.

You can download the re-edited footage below to get a feel for how the scene might have played out had Paul Hirsch's idea not been tried.

That is, there's a shot of old Obi-Wan in the [EPISODE III] trailer that's not in Episode IV. The trailer has a close-up shot of Obi-Wan saying "... the Jedi Knights were the guardians of ...". Watch the movie. In the final take, he's in a medium three-shot, talking while Luke practices with his lightsaber. The film archives pulled up the daily of Sir Alec saying that dialogue in his closeup for use in the trailer.

Description: Re-Edited Obi-Wan/Luke scene by Elvis Jones.

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