THE 'PHANTOM' AT TWENTY: A HINT OF DARKNESS...

No child is born evil. Nonetheless, a dark aspect of Anakin Skywalker's personality come to the fore early, as seen in this ultimately deleted scene from EPISODE I where the young Pod Racing champion fights off hurtful accusations of cheating from an equally young Rodian bully...named Greedo!

The scene, cut from the film because Lucas didn't yet want to show any major negative aspects to young Anakin, thankfully made it to later DVD release.

"In EPISODE I we meet Anakin, and he's this perfect little boy, but in the music (by John Williams) there's some minor chords which tell us, 'Uh-oh, something's not right. There's some damage here.'"

Rick McCallum - Star Wars Insider magazine - 2002

Anakin confers with Wald (Warwick Davis).

THE 'PHANTOM' AT TWENTY: ANAKIN'S VICTORY!

A well deserved champion, putting Sebulba in real Bantha poo-doo in the process, local boy Anakin Skywalker is the toast of the arena as he and his friends gather to celebrate his success against a truly out of the game rival. Note the Tunisian location image would have a background wall added to the shot in the film's ILM post production.

THE 'PHANTOM' AT TWENTY: TENSE OBSERVERS!

Watching Anakin's final lap at the Boonta Eve event is worrying enough, but to see the challenge of Sebulba adds to the tension for Shmi Skywalker and her new friends at the arena, watching from a viewscreen and at one of the highest points of the Arena area.

Filming the scenes on ground level in Tunisia. Note the other race viewers barely seen in the finished movie.

Meanwhile, Kitster and Wald show a range of emotions from scared to confident throughout the race.

CLASSIC IMAGE: A CERTAIN POINT OF VIEW- WITH FISTS!

Amongst the other children of Mos Espa, young Anakin Skywalker shows hints of his Dark Side edge to come, tussling with a certain trouble-making Rodian who's unwilling to accept that the human boy won his Pod Race victory through skill rather than cheating. As well as Anakin, things ultimately didn't end up going too well for Greedo, either...

An intriguing deleted scene, featuring Oliver Walpole as Greedo, that eventually made the hugely successful EPISODE I DVD release, but has yet to reach HD Blu-ray.

CLASSIC IMAGE: YOU TALK TO ME, YOU TALK TO MY FRIENDS!

The little Rodian friend to Anakin, Wald (Warwick Davis), poses alongside a fine collection of his alien buddies from the Boonta Eve Pod Race, in this fun posed image taken on location in Tunisia during the filming of EPISODE I: THE PHANTOM MENACE.

“I felt flattered and honoured just to play that small role (of Wald the Rodian). But George felt kind of bad that I was wearing a mask again, as he’d seen me do all these things like WILLOW where I wasn’t wearing a mask. So George said, “There’s another part where you can be a spectator in the Pod race,” and he put in me in there, next to Watto.”

“While we were in Tunisia, there was one day when I wasn’t doing anything, so I decided to go out to the set just to watch what they were doing. George saw me and said “What are you doing?” I said, “It’s my day off.” He then said, “I can’t have you sitting there doing nothing, go and get something on and we’ll put you in a scene-but make sure you look different!” I got a costume and hood and went into make-up and asked them to make me look different. They put a beard on me and stuff and I ended up looking like a nomad character. So I’m in that scene as well.”

“EPISODE I was a very technical film. A lot of the time, you didn’t really get a sense of what we were doing because there was so much missing during shooting. You had to rely on descriptions from the director and possibly some storyboards to get a sense of what would be added by the computer.”

WARWICK DAVIS- JEDI JOURNAL ISSUE 2.1- SPRING 2001