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Another major change between the shooting script and the final film is the changing of scene order as the film switches back and forth from Tatooine and the Death Star in the first half of the movie.

Why it was changed

Editor Paul Hirsch recalled that the scene order changed largely because of suggestions from Lucas’ friend Francis Ford Coppola. Lucas shared a rough cut of the film with Coppola probably in February or March of 1977, and Coppola felt there was too much exposition at the start of the film. As a result, Lucas and editors moved the Death Star conference scene to somewhat later in the film, directly after Obi-Wan tells Luke about the Force, the Jedi, and the Republic, and how Darth Vader was “seduced by the dark side” and “betrayed and murdered” Luke’s father. Hirsch said of moving the conference scene:

“What that accomplished was really terrific. Before, you had no idea of the relative importance of who these guys were; you didn’t see the scene in its proper perspective. But once you’d followed Luke and picked up Ben, you knew how bad the bad guys were. And once we moved that one scene down, it set off a whole chain reaction of other things that had to be shifted.”

- Paul Hirsch[1]

Indeed, prior to the change, the audience would have first learned about the Force when Vader proclaims, “The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force” and then chokes Admiral Motti for his lack of faith in the Force. With Obi-Wan introducing the Force as a spiritual energy field before this though, the audience has a much better idea of what the Force is when they see Vader use it. The audience is also given a bigger payoff for the backstory Obi-Wan shares about Vader and Luke’s father (even if it’s partially untrue), where they can see Vader using the dark side of the Force very shortly after Obi-Wan tells the audience about it. More broadly, the audience also learns how the Jedi and the Republic fell at the hands of the Empire and Vader, giving more context for the Emperor’s decision to dissolve the Imperial Senate as revealed by Tarkin in the conference room scene, as well as the political decision about whether and how to use the Death Star to impose the will of the Empire.

We do not have additional details about the creative decisions behind the changing order of other scenes, but we can speculate about some of them and how they improve the story.

First, the Death Star conference scene was originally placed between the scene of C-3PO and R2-D2 reunited on the sandcrawler at night to C-3PO and R2-D2 arriving at the droid auction during the day and Luke and Owen purchase them. With the moving of the Death Star conference, Lucas and editors replaced it with the scene showing the stormtroopers searching for the droids. While they could have simply put the two sandcrawler scenes right next to each other, placing a scene in the middle helps the passage of time from night to day be less abrupt. Additionally, reminding the audience that the Empire is searching for the droids increases tension in an otherwise slow part of the movie.

Additionally, the scene where Tarkin orders the Death Star to go to Alderaan was originally placed immediately after Luke finds his aunt and uncle murdered. This meant that the scene where Vader tortures Leia and the scene where he reports that Leia is resisting the mind probe was originally only separated by one scene. This could imply that Vader didn’t spend very much time trying to force the rebel base’s location out of Leia. Other than that though, the placement of this scene within the Tatooine plotline does not matter a great deal, but it does have to be shown to the audience before the heroes leave the planet, since the scene of the Death Star destroying Alderaan is shown immediately after they leave.

[1] J. W. Rinzler, The Making of Star Wars (New York: Del Rey Books, 2007), 258.