Rediscovered Empire Strikes Back trailer features lost footage of Luke and Leia making out

By

lukeleiasmooch

The San Diego Comic Con has a rich history of giving us our first look at the best upcoming sci-fi movies. Case in point: on August 4th, 1979, Comic Con was where George Lucas showed an excited crowd the very first live-action trailer for The Empire Strikes Back.

For thirty-five years, this trailer was thought to be lost, but it has now popped back up online, and it features some footage from Empire that was left on the cutting room floor… including a very icky scene between Luke and Leia.

First of all, let’s talk about the kiss. In the trailer, Luke and Leia share a much more erotically-charged kiss than the one we see in Empire. In the released version, while Luke and Leia kiss, it’s only to make Han jealous, who is the real subject of Leia’s affections.

Once you know Luke and Leia are brother and sister, even this scene is pretty hard to watch… but it’s nothing compared to the full-on sensuous face suck that was originally meant to occur between Luke and Leia.

Here’s a reconstructed version of the full scene from YouTube. Incest ahoy!

The second scene shown in the Empire trailer was one in which C-3PO tricks a bunch of Imperial Snowtroopers into being eaten by a Wampa. It’s pretty silly, and you can see why it was ultimately cut: it would have taken away a sense of genuine peril from the Hoth invasion scene.

Slapstick and brother-on-sister tonsil hockey. Something tells me we’re better off not having this footage in Empire.

And yup, your ears aren’t tricking you. That’s Harrison Ford narrating the Empire Strikes Back trailer.

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