DELETED SCENES: REBEL SHIP-O-WAR!

General Cracken (Mike Stevens) takes on TIE fighters in RETURN OF THE JEDI.

Rebel soldiers maintain the Millennium Falcon's control systems and man their quad laser cannons during the epic space battle above Endor, in these cool deleted scene images from RETURN OF THE JEDI, which recently made their way on to the Blu-ray box set. In sequences filmed in February/March 1982 by numerous Second Unit Directors (including Richard Marquand and George Lucas (plus an uncredited Roger Christian)) actor Mike Stevens (pictured above), playing a character later named General Cracken, is the most familiar of the soldiers, of which he also played one of the Klaatu aliens in Jabba's Court earlier in January at ELSTREE.

Painstakingly recreated, alongside the partially built, out of storage, exterior of the ship for the deleted Sandstorm sequence, the Falcon's interiors likewise sadly never made an appearance in the finished movie.

Rebel soldiers run in an out of the Falcon corridors and to the gun turrets.

A Sullustan Rebel puts out a fire within the ship.

Another Rebel solider, Lieutenant Blount (Trevor Butterfield), mans one of the ship's turrets fighting the TIE's.

These interesting Rebels at war scenes were presumably cut from the movie because they may have been considered too familiar with scenes from the original STAR WARS TIE fighter battle, or they didn't work and may have slowed the film down when finally assembled into the effects shots. Still, they're great to see nonetheless.

With thanks to ADYWAN for the grab images and Ian Trussler for additional info.