There's a review with pictures of changes here. I'm still getting it regardless for the sake of better picture and sound. All of the changes mentioned by fans are true, except I don't think the reviewer said anything about the jango fett voice for stormtroopers. Also, Greedo and Han shoot at the same time. Oh and A&E is currently showing (8:00 pm eastern) a special on Star Wars. Watch it, it's strange seeing Lucas as a thin person...

Morrison never voiced all the Stormtroopers, nor do I think it was planned, just Boba Fett.

good, b/c once the empire gained control of the galaxy, they had lots of planets to draft stormtroopers off of, so there was no real reason to continue using clones.

i saw a guy that'd be the perfect Lucas clone last weekend

Most of it seems ok to me, except adding Hayden at the end of RotJ and re-voicing Boba.

Were the color and contrast touch-ups included?

He's thin now? You mean he doesn't look like a Hutt?

...

Are you sure he didn't just CGI himself?

they are putting hayden in at the end of RotJ!!!. no, bad lucas, bad!

An artist has the right to envision his creation the way he wants too, nuff said.

I'm not sure I like the size of the new lightsaber blades, something about the white core just seems...weird

/nitpick

The explanation for putting in Hayden as Vader's ghost seemed like a bit of a stretch to me until I remembered the midichlorians :rolleyes:. I don't mind the changes since they are all pretty superficial (it's not like Vader slices off Luke's leg in the new versions), but I'd still like the OT on DVD, purely for nostalgic reasons. ESB is the first movie I can ever remember seeing and what got me hooked on SW in the first place. Oh well, better than nothing and it'll still pine for a copy.

Yesh...This is the point I've been trying to make.. It's lucas' creation, don't buy it if you don't like it. It's not gonna make a difference in his pocket. You're still gonna watch Star Wars regardless...So stop complaining.

and we have the right to be art critics

How about we avoid the umpteenth million argument over whether or not they should be changed? Seriously we could put this to music by now...

At the end of the day, 95+% of us here are SW fanboys anyway.

Meh, I'd rather have the original versions, but the changes look quite a bit better than how I had envisioned them.

Thank God, they're not replacing the unhelmeted Vader.

I think it's interesting that having Greedo shoot at all was a big contraversy with fans in the 1997 remakes. Is it just a matter of wanting to view Han as someone wary enough to fire first, or do we want him to fire first to more assuredly place him in the role of the scoundrel?

I don't want Han to be a hero or someone who in any way feels bound to operate within the confines of the law. I like him as a scoundrel and a rogue, but - I want Greedo to fire first. That way, we either accept Greedo as an incompetent bounty hunter or we see Han as lucky after the shot misses. When Han fires first I see it as his character jumping the gun. He's much more appealing after he's been shot or nearly shot (either way he must survive with luck) and then follows up by one shotting his enemy (also lucky?).

As for Greedo, I'd like to feel that he's competent and that this situation was a fluke. It would make Han more appealing if he got the better of someone who's good at what they do than someone who isn't. You don't brag about kicking someone when they're already down (if you want to remain a goodguy anyway). If Greedo is competent, the situation is more similar to Han's evasion of the star destroyers in a later scene. Insurmountable odds, but luck and skill see him through. It doesn't hurt that the SDs fired first as well.

Sorry, rambling.

I like most of the changes, except having hayden playing the ghost, he just seems to young to be darth vader.

You know, I don't really mind the re-voicing, and since Hayden won't be saying anything as a ghost, I am happy.

Uh, George Lucas said explicitly that stormtroopers are clones.

I like Star Wars.

Cool!

The Anakin change sucks, however... I'll have my original VHS' to watch when I need them.

Luke: "So... what's being a ghost like?"

Anayden: "It's coarse and rough..."

Greedo had never come close to collecting a bounty before he got Han, and we all know how that went. "Competent" isn't quite the word I'd use.:p

I recorded that A&E special, and since it was going to be on the DVD, I have no reason to buy it now. I'm sure at least one of my friends will get it, and I'll watch it once just to see the changes.

After reading that, I'm more confident about the DVDs. At first, I wasn't going to buy them, but now I think I will. The only change I can't stand is the one with Hayden Christensen at the end. IMO, he doesn't have the right to be there. But hey, I still have the original ones on VHS, so I can always watch that. Or the Special Edition, either way, I can skip that part at the end.

Whether you like the Hayden change or not, it makes the connection of the two trilogies smoother. You have to admit, the new movies don't have the same feel as the older movies. Adding elements of the new films to the old ones will without a doubt help bind them together as one series in the future. I think it was a good choice to make.
It's just like adding elemnts of the old trilogy to the new trilogy, such as the Lars homestead, and the Tantive IV and the Star Destroyer Bridge in EpIII. It's going to really help bring them all together.

Also, the documentary that was on TV was only an hour or so of the documentary. The one on the DVD is two and a half hours long.

If he wanted the new movies to mesh better with the old ones, he should have FIXED THE NEW MOVIES, not fiddled with the old ones. All this stuff about his "original artistic vision" is crap - he obviously has CHANGED his vision since the original movies. He hasn't just done cosmetic fixups, he's done major changes to the movies. It's not "star wars" anymore, it's "crap wars." It's like taking the mona lisa and the original guy putting a mustache on her and saying that was his original vision, he just ran out of paint or something.

Funny you should say that...

<3

Yea, your right, it does connect the older movies with the newer movies and vice versa. I personally liked the Special Editions a lot, but he should have just toned up those versions, not go and change things like the ending of RotJ (Now I understand it's not that big of a change, but it's big enough for me to have a problem with =\). Episode 1 was good, but I personally thought Episode 2 was crap. I thought he could have done better with it. And I am worried about Episode 3, but I digress.

If he wanted to make the movies connect more, he should have made the new ones around the old ones, not change the old ones to fit the new ones.

if the jabba CGI thing is real, I'm going to throw up.

oh jesus, get over it, a few tweaks to the effects essentially means nothing , its still the same story and the same characters doing the same thing, its not as if he rewrote the plot or deleted a character.

I changed my mind last night. I'll get them just for the purpose of hearing it in 5.1 and seeing the restored footage.

However, I ain't paying for them. I'll wait for the library to get them. I'll let you guess what I'll do from there.

It's been confirmed for a few weeks now. The video of it has circulated the web and I (and many others on here) have seen it. It's much better than the '97 version. Jabba doesn't look like a pushover when Han steps on his tail anymore, he gets pissed and is ready to clobber Han, but his mood changes when he finds out his cut of the profits.

Still a redundant scene, but at least it looks good now.

Two days ago I saw a commercial for the trilogy on dvd, and it said there were new special features, so I think they are official...

My whole thought proces on this is, what's the big deal. The changes are very superficial, and don't affect the plot at all. It also helps the series to flow together, and become more connected. I don't care if greedo shot first, that doesn't ruin the movie for me. If it does for you, well I don't know what to say.

It's quite hard to start a story in the middle, then do the end, then do the beginning and there'll always be consistancy issues if no changes are made after the beginning has ben done. I'm actually impressed with how few changes are being required to make the prequels fit. However many decades ago Lucas left the option of having 3 prequels available to him, and he's trying to make them fit with lets see... exactly 2 proper changes to the original? Both relatively minor?

Maybe what's being released doesn't exacty match the vision Lucas had in the 70s, but you have to admit that his definitive versions are very similar to the originals with only a few changes.

What I always liked about Shaw doing the ghost of Anakin in RotJ was that it showed what Anakin would of looked like as an old man, had he of not become Darth Vader.

I always thought it was funny to see greedo talking and then... out of nowhere Han fries his green little head into a melting mass of plastic.

Han should fire first. The onther changes look okay, except for the hydan thing; it just seems... wrong.

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I'm actually pretty happy with most of the changes, especially the replacement of the Emperor. Boba Fett's revoicing... I'm not entirely convinced, but I'll reserve judgment on that until I see it.

The only thing I really object to (like everyone else) is the Anakin change. The implication of having an old Anakin appear as a ghost is that his soul has existed and continued throughout the time when he was Vader, which makes him more of a pathetic character... his good side was trapped in and had to see all the evil that Vader wrought upon the galaxy. So it means more that Luke finally redeems him.

Throwing Hayden in feels like we're going back to Anakin's days as a whiney padawan who's about to fall to the dark side. It doesn't seem an progress has been made.


As for Lucas being able to do whatever he wants for his artistic vision: yes, fine, he can. But it's perfectly acceptable for us to feel that the older versions coincide better with our own vision of what the films should be. If Beethoven went back to his 5th symphony 20 years after writing it and replaced the first movemetn with happy birthday, that doesn't mean we have to consider the final version a better work.

(Besides, Hayden Christensen was not part of Lucas's original vision. He chose to put an old Anakin in, the first time; if he had wanted to imply whatever he's claiming now, he could have put in a younger actor back then, too.)