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EPISODE IV: A NEW HOPE

The one that started it all. Hands-wise, even.

Tatooine. Home of the Tusken Raiders, a fierce tribe with one goal and one goal only; to pull See-Threepio’s arm off.

Okay, there’s also the whole reproduce-the-tribe and eke-out-a-living-in-the-desert thing, but that’s not important. Apparently they also tie desert women to sticks and leave their asses in positions rife for uncomfortable sexual activity (like the back of a Volkswagen?), but, well, let’s move on to some hand stuff.

Yes, folks, there it is. This is See-Threepio’s arm, having been pulled off by the Tuskens after falling off a dune while Luke is getting the stuffing beaten out of him.

Luke later fixed the broken arm at Obi-Wan’s hut. It was easy to do because the arm had come off at a joint and not in the middle of the limb. So says the novelization. Of course, it also doesn’t capitalize Force, so what does it know?

(A side note: I actually really love the novelization, and not just because it amuses me that a novel went on shelves in 1976 to promote a movie no one had seen yet. It’s clearly not quite Star Wars, more like the same story retold in the context of strange science fiction novels and not cinema history. Alan Dean Foster does have a way with words, and it’s a nice reflection on the days before Star Wars came out and ruined Star Wars.)

Now we go to Chalmun’s cantina in Mos Eisley, where Dr. Evazan and Ponda Baba are giving Luke a hard time, for some reason. Damn townies.

Evazan pulls his blaster… Ponda Baba gets riled… Obi-Wan pulls his lightsaber…

Splat.

Ponda Baba’s arm hits the floor, Dr. Evazan gets slashed across the chest, and nobody else cares. Don’t fuck with a Jedi Knight, you hear?!

For some reason the arm that hits the floor looks different from the arm previously attached to Ponda Baba. Moviemaking blooper. Oops. They never bother to fix this in the eight billion revised versions of this movie. Not only that but they’re probably never going to get around to giving Chewbacca a medal. Or pants.

Later, though it’s not seen in the movie, Dr. Evazan promises to make Ponda Baba a bionic hand. He screws up royally and Ponda Baba gets real mad and they end up becoming enemies. Evazan promises to get the best bionic hand there is. Baba agrees. Evazan makes a temporary bionic hand (until he can find a good one) and it works this time.

Then he tries to clone Baba’s brain into the body of an Imperial officer. He screws up again and clones the Imperial officer’s brain into Ponda Baba’s body. So Ponda Baba himself has been completely wiped out. What a lovely story!

Oh yeah, nearly forgot. In Dark Force Rising it says that Palpatine chops off Vader’s hand as punishment for letting Luke commit the terrorist act of blowing up the government building at the end of this little movie. I guess fair’s fair.