George Lucas Lacks Creative Restraint Yet Again

Next month will mark the official release of Star Wars: The Complete Saga on Blu-ray. Like many of you, I’ve spent the last several years anticipating this release and was a little disappointed to hear that the discs wouldn’t include the original theatrical releases, but rather the updated “special editions” of the original trilogy.  A shame, considering that many of those cosmetic changes did little to improve the original films and most of the new content seemed out of place and even distracting times.  To add insult to injury, Lucas has once again taken to editing his films for their upcoming  Blu-ray release.

The first major change was recently reported by the guys at io9 and later confirmed. In Return of the Jedi, during the scene Darth Vader turns on the Emperor, Vader now belts out his infamous “Noooo!!!!!” before tossing the emperor down the pit. Rather than retaining his dignified demeanor, Vader is now overcome with grief, having seen his son suffering at the hands of the emperor. Sure, you can argue that its just a couple lines of dialog, but it completely changes the tone of the scene. Needless to say, fans don’t seem too pleased with the change. Apparently there were also a number of changes to the soundtrack throughout the rest of the original trilogy, though I imagine most of those just feature alternate cues. For more information on potential changes, I would suggest heading to TheForce.net, as they’re still in the process of dissecting them.