Lobot Originally Did A Lot More Talking (And Dying) In Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back
One of the best things about the old Star Wars Expanded Universe (sorry, I'm a geezer who refuses to call it by its revised official title, "Star Wars Legends") was that it afforded writers a chance to delve deeply into the various supporting players who would pop in and out of the original trilogy with nary an explanation for who they were or what their deal even was. One might call this the Boba Fett Syndrome. Take Lando Calrissian's (Billy Dee Williams) cyborg pal Lobot, who joined the smuggler in going legit after Lando became the Baron Administrator of Cloud City. He makes but a few wordless appearances in "The Empire Strikes Back" only to vamoose, never to be seen or mentioned again.
These days, Lobot has a wholly fleshed-out and consistent canonical backstory thanks to books like the "Lando" and "War of the Bounty Hunters" comics series. However, before Disney assumed control of the franchise, you just had to piece together the character's history as best as you could from the wild, wild west that was the EU (for better or for worse). That also meant deciding whether any of Lobot's deleted scenes in "Empire" counted as "canon," or at least as close to canon as it existed back in those days. And there was a whole lot of discarded Lobot material, too, as the actor who portrayed him, John Hollis, recalled in an interview with Star Wars Insider for its 33rd issue in 1997.
A cyborg of few words
The late Hollis (who passed away in 2005) was a pretty accomplished character actor in his time, having recurred on shows like "The Avengers" and "Doctor Who" in the '60s before going on to costar in "The Empire Strikes Back," several of Christopher Reeve's "Superman" films, the 1980 "Flash Gordon" movie, and the Roger Moore era James Bond flick "For Your Eyes Only." To that end, his role as Lobot was much more significant at first. As he recalled:
"Originally, Lobot had quite a lot of lines to read. But they had a discussion where they decided it would be better if he didn't talk, because he had been lobotomized, and he was getting messages through the computer. The dialogue was very much just answering questions to him by Billy Dee."
It was a wise call on director Irvin Kershner's part; better to let the film's visual storytelling do its work than over-explain things through Lobot's dialogue. Hollis seemingly agreed, stating that losing his lines "didn't bother me too much." As for that whole "dying" thing, the actor noted "a lot" of death scenes were shot and later abandoned for the Cloud City sequences, including his own:
"There was a scene of me being carted off by men in white masks. But they would say, 'Oh, we might need you again.' There were a lot of people getting arrested, but they were very wary about showing people die."
Let's take a moment to appreciate Hollis casually calling stormtroopers "men in white masks," shall we? Anyway, Hollis didn't seem too bothered about not being brought back for "Return of the Jedi." He even held onto Kenner's official Lobot action figure and kept it "hanging up in the kitchen on a hook — my wife says it's a good place for me to be."