Previously on the SDP, I reviewed
Star Wars: Episode VI: Return of the Jedi, where I made a few passing comments about the Special Edition changes. Since those took place, chronologically, before the next movie, let's deal with them now.
If you have been reading along with my
Star Wars movie reviews and decided to follow along by watching the movies themselves, odds are good that you will not be seeing them as they were originally presented in the seventies and/or the eighties. See, in the winter of 1997, in the lead-up to
Episode I: The Phantom Menace a few years later, Lucasfilm went back and did some work on the original trilogy, re-releasing them in theatres under the "special edition" banner. These versions became the standard for all home-video releases from then on. Further changes were made for the DVD release in 2004, and the Blu-Ray release in 2011. Far from just simple restoration jobs, the changes that were made for the Special Editions have divided fans, so speaking as a
Star Wars fan myself, where do I stand on the issue?
Now, it is quite common for old movies to be updated in some form or another, especially when they are prepared for a new video format. Sometimes, they also re-cut the movie, adding or deleting scenes, in what is often known as a "director's cut". Off the top of my head, one of the best examples I can think of is Ridley Scott's
Blade Runner (1982), which got not only a director's cut 10 years after its first release, but a "Final Cut" after 25 years. But what Lucasfilm did to the
Star Wars trilogy transcends all that. With the increased abilities of computer-generated imagery, they used this technology to add and change various elements throughout the movies. Now, speaking as an artist of various formats, I do like this idea on principle. As
Yahtzee once said, "99% of creators claim to loathe everything they made more than five years ago, and the remaining 1% are liars". But creative freedom is only as valuable as what you do with it, so let's go over their decisions. If you'd like to follow along, someone made a (rather biased) list of changes made across all four versions for each of
A New Hope,
The Empire Strikes Back, and
Return of the Jedi, plus
the prequel trilogy, which also got some changes of its own.
(NB: All screenshots below are from the 2004 DVD editions.)
I suppose I should get the big ones out of the way first. In
A New Hope, a scene where Han Solo is cornered by and shoots the bounty hunter Greedo (1977) was changed so that Greedo shoots first (1997), or both shoot roughly at once (2004). The problem everyone has with this is that it lessens Han's evolution throughout the film from anti-hero to hero. I, for one, think it's all overblown. One, the affected scene lasts less than a second. Two, there are other ways that Han establishes a less-than-reputable reputation, such as when he expresses reluctance in saving Princess Leia, until Luke floats the idea of getting a reward from her. Personally, I'm more offended with how they made that edit in the first place, by shifting Han's head in such a way that no neck could comfortably re-create on such short notice. But that was for the first Special Edition; in the DVD version, both Han and Greedo shoot at almost the same time, and Han's upper body shifts along with his head. Well, it's better than nothing, I guess.
Speaking of
A New Hope, they put a couple of deleted scenes back in. One of them is a conversation between Han and Jabba the Hutt, the latter added by CGI. It was originally shot with a human stand-in for Jabba, and they meant to add the creature with a model during post-production, but they couldn't make it work back then. There's a bit when Han walks behind the stand-in, but Jabba's character design was later settled on as a fat slug creature, they made it so Han appears to step on Jabba's tail while doing so. The Jabba model, as it originally appeared in 1997, wasn't all that great... okay, it was totally off and also kind of creepy, but it was updated in 2004, to better match the real thing.
In a few other scenes, various alien creatures were added to the backgrounds. It does try to flesh out the world on screen, but they way they're animated sticks out like a sore thumb, due to the relatively primitive rendering technology of the mid-90s. It's not all bad, however. Some of the best changes were made to the space battle scenes, where they were able to animate more ships and with more complex camera angles. I said before that the original effects were good enough because they didn't bite off more than they could chew, and the same is true of these particular CGI additions. After all, the best CGI is the kind you don't notice.
The Empire Strikes Back got off the easiest in terms of changes. They added a few brief scenes with the Wampa, the snow monster that captures Luke early on, as its costume could not be completed in time for initial filming. The hologram of the Emperor was re-shot with Ian McDiarmid, the same actor who would play him in
Return of the Jedi and the prequels. In the DVD version, Boba Fett's voice lines were re-recorded by Temuera Morrison, the New Zealander who played his identical father Jango Fett in
Attack of the Clones. And some hallway shots on Bespin's Cloud City had windows added, fleshing out the backgrounds. All in all, the changes are largely subtle, and do a fair job of expanding the world.
There was a bit of a row with how they adjusted some of the colours for the DVD version of this and
Return of the Jedi (pictured), so that Darth Vader's lightsaber appears solid pink, instead of a white core with red glow as with most other lightsabers. A careless mistake, I must say, but ultimately minor.
Speaking of
Return of the Jedi, that one got hit pretty hard as well, and this time I'll work backwards... you'll see why. At the end of the movie, we see Force ghosts of Obi-Wan, Yoda, and Anakin Skywalker look upon our heroes. In the original and special editions, they were played by Sebastian Shaw, who played the unmasked Anakin/Darth Vader in that same movie. But from the DVD version on, the Anakin ghost was replaced by Hayden Christensen, who played him in Episodes II and III. Maybe it's because this was the last "snapshot" of Anakin, so to speak, before he turned to the dark side of the Force. But really, we all know the real reason this was done: to advertise him in the then-upcoming
Revenge of the Sith.
Apart from Greedo shooting first, this one little change seems to have garnered the most virulent hatred from what I've read. For starters, it's one of the very last scenes in the original trilogy, leaving viewers with that as the figurative taste in their mouths. But on a more substantial level, people say that it undoes the character arc Anakin/Vader just went through, because him turning back and killing the Emperor should still count as another "snapshot" of him being on the light side of the Force. I mean, yeah, this scene still raises a lot of questions, but ultimately it's short enough that I can let it slide. They also replaced the song for the ending celebration, and added a montage of post-imperial jubilation across other planets in the Star Wars galaxy. I actually like both of these changes, for the added world-building and for bringing more impact to the victory we've just witnessed.
But then... back at the beginning, there was a musical number in Jabba's palace. In the original version, the song was performed by a band of three fursuited or puppeted aliens. It was dated, perhaps, but in a delightfully 80s kind of way, and didn't stand out any more than the band from the Mos Eisley cantina, for example. But for the special edition, they re-did this scene with a new song and a new band of CGI creatures. Both this new song and the new effects are way in-your-face this time around, literally even, in the case of the two singers who go mugging at the camera. It is just excruciatingly painful to sit through. Out of everything changed in the name of George Lucas's artistic vision, this is the one change I have the biggest problem with. Greedo shooting first? Fine. Han Solo stepping over CGI Jabba's tail? Fine. Hayden Christensen Force ghost? Fine. But this, ladies and gentlemen, is where I draw the line.
Quite a few of these changes, particularly in
Empire and
Jedi, were made as connections to the prequel trilogy. I've read opinions from
Star Wars fans who hate these changes for trying to tie the two trilogies together. I don't know, there's just something... self-righteous and possessive about that statement. Yeah, the prequels aren't the most respected films in cinema, especially not when compared to their predecessors, but who are you to decide what is canon? Honest to blog, youse guys are worse than
Sonic fans sometimes, and I'm speaking as a fan of both myself!
That's not to let Lucasfilm off the hook, either. Creative control is only as good as what you do with it, and while I'm tolerant enough to write most of these changes off as inconsequential, a lot of them were still careless in their planning and/or execution. They embraced CGI without considering the limitations of the time, which made some of its creations look completely unnatural, especially when juxtaposed against live-action footage. And when the time came for additional revisions, their priorities seemed all over the place. They broke the lightsaber colourings and couldn't fix them across the board, but they had the time to make the Ewok's eyes blink? Man, I would love to know what was going on in their heads of theirs...
All of this wouldn't be so bad if we had the original, unaltered versions to compare the changes against, but Lucasfilm has been quite reluctant to provide us with that. The last time they were made available was in the 2006 DVD reissues, where the original versions were bundled with the special editions as a bonus disc. I myself was lucky enough to snap them up, and having taken in both versions for myself... their execution left something to be desired. It was just a copy of the LaserDisc prints they made back in the '90s, so the picture quality is a bit scratchy and faded. Plus. the image is a letterboxed 4:3 ratio, meaning if you're watching it on an (increasingly common!) widescreen TV, you'll have to digitally zoom in, making the picture quality suffer further. Again, I have no understanding of Lucasfilm's priorities.
That said, it was quite interesting to witness this evolution for myself, having not been alive when these movies first premiered in theatres. And now that I've had the chance to compare the two versions, I do have some degree of appreciation for what Lucasfilm were trying to do. While the effects in the original version were innovative, they still had some rough edges here and there. Literally, in some cases, such as the slightly off-coloured "boxes" surrounding objects that were composited onto the base footage, such as the ships in space scenes. In an ideal world, someone would go back to the original version and do a fresh remastering of it, making the subtler changes needed to improve the general picture and sound quality, while leaving out the more in-your-face but out-of-place CGI additions made for the official special editions. Hey, a guy can dream... But in the end, let us not forget that it's still Star Wars. I had to re-watch these movies again to prep for my reviews, and even with all those changes, I still found lots to love. And in the end, that's what's important, eh? I'm not saying we shouldn't ask for more, that we shouldn't demand better handling of our beloved franchise. But we should still be strong enough to recognise and take the good with the bad.
Oh, and about that prequel trilogy... You'll find out what I think about
that soon enough, starting with
Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace, next time on the SDP!
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