Once everything is allowed, people will stop caring.

Yeah, I wouldn't care what George did if he'd just release a quality version of the non-SEs.

There's been some progress, though. He's went from saying they don't exist to saying he can't afford to do it.

I thought it was commonly known that the scene existed in some form from the ROTJ shoot.

Hell, I always assumed that the cave stuff with Luke and R2 at the end of SOTE was an intentional riff on this scene.

Deleted scenes? Long overdue. I dig SW deleted scenes... even though it's just a matter of time until some douchebag "fan editor" comes along and (poorly) recuts the movies to include those scenes. Anyway, I used to be totally onboard with the SE versions but when the OOT discs came out in 2006, that all changed. If Lucas was including the OOT cuts, this bad boy would be the killer app to finally force me to make the upgrades. But it's really hard to get excited about HD versions of the 2004 versions, new masters or not.

As to the Vader/Palpatine business from ESB, my reading is always going to be that both Vader and Palp knew damn good well who Luke's daddy was and they were both trying to hide their agendas from each other, even though both had a pretty good idea of what the other was up to. Palpatine wasn't born yesterday and I otherwise have a sorta hard time understanding Vader's obsessive search for Luke before and during ESB. The guy wouldn't go to that much trouble unless he already knew the truth.

This deleted scene as well as a couple others was described in the Behind The Magic encyclopedia which had actual vids of the New Hope deleted scenes (I think we all know those).

The only other deleted scenes I remember well was the sandstorm scene after the Jabba's Palace escape. There was even a blurry photo provided.

There were some references to additional Hoth scenes (the rebel base being invaded by Wampas for example), but I'm not sure if any of these was even filmed. I think Lucas spoke once of a Wampa raid illustration by McQuarrie. But I'm not sure of my memory here.

Star Wars Insider did an Empire anniversary issue years back that showed many deleted scenes. The scenes of the monsters in the base were definitely filmed. You can see this stuff in the Marvel comic.

Rebels fend off one or several monsters in the corridors and they are jailed in that room with the sticker like in the Shadows of the Empire video game. Threepio rips the label off the door during the escape (see: the trailer) and Snowtroopers unwittingly enter the room and are killed.

There's also a scene where Luke falls onto the Falcon at Bespin and Lando has to pull him in. The rebel base scenes had Luke wearing a kind of Phantom of the Opera-esque mask and the trailer had extended kissing between Luke and Leia in that scene. I think I also remember seeing an image on Hyperspace confirming deleted Jedi training sequence involving the lightsaber and a metal bar. That was in the comic too.

I still remember the dialogue exchange from that snowtrooper scene after a trooper gets pulled into the room and mauled

Vader "Rebels in there?"

Trooper "Uh... no sir."

It was absolutely filmed. I think there are pics of the scene on the "Behind the Magic" CD Rom.

Here are some pics I had handy of the deleted ESB scenes mentioned.

[flash width=640 height=360]http://www.dailymotion.com/swf/video/xeqdcx?width=640&theme=none&foreground=%23F7FFFD&highlight=%23FFC300&background=%23171D1B&additionalInfos=1&hideInfos=1&start=&animatedTitle=&autoPlay=0[/flash]

Above is a fixed version of the Celebration V video.

Also on the first page in Mr Pickle's post - is yet another remastered version of the deleted scene - replacing a dead link that was once there.

In other Lucas Blu-Ray news, THX-1138 was released today.

The Digital Bits pointed out a site called The Movie Bit which posted an interview clip with Skywalker Sound's Matthew Wood regarding the 5.1 mix of the OT for the Blu-ray. He implies there's going to be some more work done to the tracks before they're released, hopefully this means they're going to correct the oversights from the '04 DVDs.

link