The Empire Strikes Back Nearly Made C-3PO A Murderer
Throughout the nine mainline Star Wars films, C-3PO is many things: a worrywart, a nuisance, a translator, and even briefly, a god. One thing he’s not, though, is a killer. Threepio makes it quite clear several times throughout the saga that his programming prohibits violence of any kind. The Empire Strikes Back (1980), however, almost gave fans exactly that: C-3PO, the murderer.
Fans of the original Star Wars trilogy are no doubt familiar with Wampas. Even if the name doesn’t ring a bell, the scene from The Empire Strikes Back where a giant white snow monster attacks Luke Skywalker and drags him home for lunch should be etched in every fan’s mind. That evil yeti that almost murked Luke is a Wampa.
It’s a scene that seems better suited for a horror movie than a Star Wars sequel.
Empire originally featured several Wampas. A minor subplot saw the cannibalistic, abominable snowmen break into the Rebels’ secret base on Hoth and briefly wreak havoc. Eventually, the Rebels managed to confine the beasts to a single room behind a blast door with a bright yellow warning sign plastered on the front. This is where C-3PO, the murderbot, comes in.
As everyone who’s ever seen The Empire Strikes Back knows, despite the Rebel’s best efforts, the Empire eventually finds and breaches the secret Hoth base. In a deleted scene, Han and Leia run past the Wampa room on their way to the Millennium Falcon, with C-3PO following close behind. Threepio then pauses when he gets to the room and deliberately goes out of his way to shuffle over to the blast door and rip off the yellow warning sign.
Not only is the scene out of place thematically, but it paints the normally milquetoast C-3PO in an unnaturally cruel light.
When a trio of snow troopers comes upon the now warningless room, one of them opens the door, allowing a wampa to drag one of the troopers inside. The first snowtrooper quickly closes the door, and he and his buddy listen as the wampa tears their friend apart. Even Darth Vader stops to listen to the violent carnage.
It’s a scene that seems better suited for a horror movie than a Star Wars sequel. Not only is the scene out of place thematically, but it paints the normally milquetoast C-3PO in an unnaturally cruel light. Nowhere else in the original trilogy does the droid purposefully do anything to directly or indirectly cause harm to another sentient being.
Why Was The Wampa Footage Cut?
Surprisingly, the decision to cut the scene from the film had nothing to do with the fact that it made The Empire Strikes Back look like a horror movie and turned C-3PO into a killer. The reason all of the wampa footage inside the Rebel base was cut was because the Wampas looked terrible. The suits looked super fake and not at all menacing, turning the vicious carnivores into goofy white furballs.
Even the Wampa parts with Luke were heavily edited so that the beast is only seen in quick cuts. Star Wars fans old enough to see Empire Strikes Back in the theater wouldn’t find out exactly what the monster even looked like until Kenner released a Wampa action figure in 1982. Sadly, due to the deleted nature of the scene, a “Murderer C-3PO” figure, “Now with real Bloodlust action!” was never produced.
Many years later, George Lucas released his Special Edition of The Empire Strikes Back with a reworked Wampa sequence that shows a much more convincing beast eating part of Luke’s tauntaun while he tries to escape. It’s the one change Lucas made that actually enhances the film and the only one in the whole trilogy of Star Wars Special Editions that fans were okay with.
As for C-3PO, he wouldn’t get to kill anything until Attack of the Clones (2002), and even then, it was a battle droid, so we’re not even sure if it counts.
