Never content to leave anything untweaked or untouched,
Star Wars creator George Lucas has apparently made even more changes to his space saga in the upcoming release of the series onto BluRay. He is renowned for making tweaks any time he does something, constantly seeking to improve upon what he has already created in order to justify it more to his artistic vision.
Some of these changes are good ones--editing out some bloopers, enhancing lightsaber images, solving the Yoda-looks-weird problem in
The Phantom Menace. Other changes are based more on content than quality, which is where he starts to lose people. While Lucas has notoriously made tweaks and changes that have riled up the fanbase (inserting Hayden Christensen's ghost in
Return of the Jedi, having Greedo shoot at Han Solo first in
A New Hope, cursing us with Jar Jar Binks), I've usually not really cared too much. One of these new changes, though, is quite disappointing.
In the climatic final battle between hero Luke Skywalker and the evil Emperor Palpatine, Darth Vader has an epiphany and famously saves his son by picking his master up and throwing him down a seemingly-endless pit. It is a powerful scene, and tremendous that there is so much feeling in it when you can neither see Vader's true face nor listen to him say anything. It is a wordless sacrifice of the father for the son. Apparently, though, Mr. Lucas does not think that we are capable of understanding that Vader suddenly disagreed with the Emperor's electrifying his son. As a result,
dialogue has been inserted to have the Dark Lord of the Sith yell, "Nooooo!", as he throws Palpatine down the pit. Silence is often far more powerful than words. An auteur like Lucas should have known that.
What is the worst of it?
Rumors are circulating that Lucas has given Ewoks in
Return of the Jedi the power to blink. That sounds terrifying, and is a line too far, Mr. Lucas. Sometimes, George, you just have to let go and let your creation wander free. If it's been successful this long, there is no need to dramatically alter such things. While some change is certainly for the better, a blinking ewok is change I can't believe in!
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