One Of Star Wars' Rebel Pilots Nearly Became A Human Jabba The Hutt
One of the most infamous deleted scenes from the original "Star Wars" was an encounter Han Solo had with Jabba the Hutt years before the character was introduced in "Return of the Jedi." The scene takes place before he takes off from Mos Eisley with Obi-Wan Kenobi and Luke Skywalker in tow and was a thing of legend for over a decade before George Lucas reincorporated it back into the film for the 1997 Special Edition release.
The idea to make Jabba the Hutt a giant slug creature didn't come up until later on in the series and the original version of the character was just an Irish actor named Declan Mulholland wearing furs, looking more like a "Game of Thrones" character than a galactic mob boss.
It's reported that Lucas never intended for the actor to appear onscreen and that a stop motion creature of some sort would have been comped over the actor even before he decided to cut the scene, but that might have grown from the scene just not working because you don't fully wardrobe someone like that if you're just planning on painting over them later.
Would things have been different if a different, better actor (sorry, Declan) was originally cast? It's possible and if that had been the case we might never have gotten the giant slug Jabba on screen.
They almost had such an actor, but apparently, he didn't get the project at all and wrote off the script, turning down the role of Jabba the Hutt. That actor would later come back and shoot a small scene as an X-Wing pilot. I am, of course, talking about William Hootkins, aka Porkins himself.
In an alternate universe Jabba the Hutt looks radically different
Seems like Lucas always had a chubby guy in mind for Jabba from the beginning. Maybe that has to do with the iconography of a mob boss at the time being Don Corleone in "The Godfather," or maybe it had to do with Lucas wanting an intimidating figure to be putting the screws to Han Solo. Whatever the reason, Hootkins said he was offered the part when talking with Star Wars Insider in 1997.
Like many other "Star Wars" actors, Hootkins couldn't make heads or tails of the script (lookin' at you, Alec Guinness) and turned down the role of Jabba, opting to take another job. It wasn't just that he didn't understand the script, he predicted the movie would be "the biggest disaster in the history of filmmaking."
However, that didn't stop him from coming back when his other job was done and "Star Wars" was still in need of X-Wing pilots and he became one of the most recognizable of the miscellaneous pilots supporting Luke in that final Death Star run.
Putting on my conspiracy theory hat on, I wonder if Lucas intentionally gave the chubby X-Wing pilot the unfortunate name of Porkins and made him the first to die because Hootkins initially turned him down. Makes you think, doesn't it?
Anyway, Hootkins was a great actor who would later pop up as one of the government agents who recruits Indiana Jones to hunt down the Ark of Covenant in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and get shot by Jack Nicholson's Joker in "Batman." If he had accepted the part of Jabba the Hutt and that clunky scene worked better, "Star Wars" could have looked radically different.