Back in 1988 when the Star Wars prequels had yet to gently caress our inner children in a questionable manner, George Lucas delivered a speech in front of Congress to help establish the National Film Registry. Interestingly, his speech included this sentiment: “In the future it will become even easier for old negatives to become lost and be ‘replaced’ by new altered negatives. This would be a great loss to our society. Our cultural history must not be allowed to be rewritten.” Of course, if he’s altering it, that’s still cool. Unleash the CGI rewrites.
We already knew he replaced the puppet Yoda with the CGI version in the Star Wars Original Trilogy on Blu-Ray, but now several videos are out (see detailed list below) about several other changes Lucas made to the originals [at least some of which have been confirmed by LucasArts], because that’s what these films needed: more resemblance to the prequels. Excuse me while I scream a multitude of profanities into a pillow. By pillow I mean megaphone.
[Sources: /film, NYTimes, io9 (1, 2), ToplessRobot]
(Note: many of the following videos are leaked audio synced with previous footage. The Blu-rays may be different, and only some of these changes have been confirmed by LucasArts so far.)
On the Blu-ray for Return of the Jedi, Darth Vader now cheesily yells “Noooooooooo” when he hurls the Emperor to his death, rather than being awesomely silent. Way to take some of the poignancy right the hell out:
Jabba’s front door now looks huge (but fake). Because Jabba’s fat. Hardy har har.
Obi-Wan’s call of “Krayyt Dragon” when he scares the Tusken Raiders away from an unconscious Luke has been replaced with . . . whatever the hell this is:
Fittingly, one of the top YouTube comments is:
“SPRING BREAK!!! WOOOOOOOHWWWOWOWOHHHOOOO!!”
The scene in the first movie where R2D2 is hiding has been changed to make the rocks around him larger. How’d he get back there and how can he get out? Laws of physics don’t matter when you’re George Lucas.
More X-Wing fighters added to the Death Star battle sequence in Return of the Jedi:
Wicket can blink now: