The replacement of that awful song is probably the best change in the Special Editions.
It’s “Yub Nub,” by the way.
This is a perfect time to note that even Star Wars purists can [much!] prefer the 1997 SE for Jedi, even though we don’t care for the changes to Star Wars or Empire.
Yeah, my only objection to the rejiggered Jedi is the substitution of the younger Anakin and Obi-Wan at the end. (They did replace Guinness too, right? Shameful if I’m remembering that right.)
But what about the awful new Max Rebo band song in Jabba’s palace…
The Special Edition ROTJ is just as terrible as the others.
The new young Anakin ghost was out of place. And the original Jabba palace music and the ending Ewok celebration theme was way better than the new bland crap. Truly a low point in John William career.
(Full disclosure: I’ve always liked the ewoks. Sure it would have been much better to have the originally envisioned Wokiee planet, but I have a soft spot for the little furry primitive cannibals that kicks empire´s ass)
BTW, not only the SE changes were hideous, also the image quality was unworthy of ILM. Incredibly bad saturated color correction and still a lot of white rectangles around TIE fighters.
They only replaced Anakin, which is actually the correct decision…from a certain point of view. They’re (now) meant to be six films watched in numerical order. If they were made in story order, you’d put the actor who played young Anakin in as the ghost because that’s who people would associate with the unarmored character. It makes no sense to have the fourth actor to play Anakin/Vader, who was only in one scene under heavy makeup, be the guy who shows up as the redeemed ghost at the end. It’s only weird to us because we remember the original version. Kids watching the films for the first time will not see anything out of the ordinary, and I will bet money that the original version would draw “That’s not Anakin” comments from them. Inoffensive change at worst. Obi-Wan is still Alec Guinness, which makes sense because Guinness has adequate screen time as the character to be recognizable.
The actual crime in Jedi SE is the “Jedi Rocks” song with the Max Rebo Band in Jabba’s Palace, which may actually be my pick for worst SE change after the Han/Greedo scene.
Luke’s scream was removed from the DVD version, but yes, that was pretty awful. The “prepare my Star Destroyer” scenes are completely unnecessary and damage the pacing of that sequence. Plus they’re blatantly re-used shots from RotJ and are clearly the Death Star, not a Super Star Destroyer. You can even see the officer from RotJ waiting to greet him. It doesn’t even make sense. They’re at battle stations trying to catch the Falcon, are we really supposed to believe they assembled a 40+ man honor guard to stand there and make Vader feel important just because he flew home? Fucking stupid.
Overall, Empire’s changes are positive ones, though. Even the Star Destroyer thing is worth it to have fully opaque snowspeeder cockpits, and Cloud City looks much better with the open air sets.
I’m hoping they’ve fixed some of the ridiculous lightsaber errors that cropped up in the DVD releases for no reason. Vader and Luke’s sabers through much of the RotJ duel are flat and incorrectly colored, and Luke’s saber in the original film’s training sequence is inexplicably green in the DVD version of the SE. It’s not RotJ green, but the blade is clearly not blue and more of a sickly green. How the hell that gets through to the final output I can’t even comprehend. How is there a single person at ILM who doesn’t know what color Luke Skywalker’s fucking lightsaber is supposed to be?
Edit: Figured I should add some visual aids.
RotJ SE 1997 (VHS release):
RotJ SE 2004 (DVD release):
As you can see, the white cores of the saber effects are gone from the 2004 version, and Vader’s saber is pretty much pink. This persists throughout the duel sequence. The problem is also present in some shots of the Empire duel.
ESB SE 1997 (VHS release):
ESB SE 2004 (DVD release):
The only thing I liked from the SE of ANH was when Han and Chewie chasing after the Stormtroopers only to stumble upon a hanger bay full of Stormtroopers.
And here’s the mind-boggling screw up on the Falcon in the first film:
ANH SE 1997 (VHS release):
ANH SE 2004 (DVD release):
I remember noticing when I saw Ben and Luke ride into Mos Eisley that the CGI R2-D2 and C-3PO were rather low-res models.
Of course, the worst thing the Special Editions did was to make Greedo shoot first.
The ten worst crimes against the original Star Wars movies.
Yeah, the light saber color errors also reinforces Red Letter Media’s evidence about Luca’s laziness. I picture him reviewing the SE before they were finally released with a bored look on his face.
In a couch.
Why should he care? He knows geeks would buy it (I must admit I bought the DVDs) and besides, he knew he would re-release them again much like he did for the laser disc format then VHS then DVD and now Blu-ray.
Dunno. I’m not going to use the stupid “he owes us” argument, but I can think of several good reasons: simple professionality, self-respect, caring for his own legacy… etc
And I bought the DVDs too, even knowing beforehand of the SE’s changes, I still felt cheated when I saw the terrible image quality and color correction errors.
I bought the DVDs, too, but only after they released them with the relatively-untouched, no-frills, original theatrical cuts on the bonus discs. Sure, it would have been nice to get those in anamorphic widescreen, but even then they look a heck of a lot nicer than the grey-market laserdisc transfers that somehow found their way onto my shelf years ago…
Still have my pan-and-scan VHS tapes, though, and a VCR to play them on, but I haven’t watched those in years.
The only thing I’m really looking forward to with the bluray release is the improved sound quality of the uncompressed audio track.
OMG, Jedi Rocks in DTS-HD MA? Awesome. Worth the price of purchase right there.
Wait a minute, what the hell am I saying?
Jedi Rocks
God, what a retarded song, and also totally stupid from a in-universe perspective.
I bet Lucas himself composed it, from a couch.
Any chance they’ll be sneaking in some new surprise “enhancements” such as the RotJ lightsaber construction scene, or the all-digital Yoda in Phantom Menace, or the Princess Leia changes into her gold bikini scene that my friend who lives in another state totally saw at preview screening yeah huh.
The SEs were about erasing the memory; the prequels were about getting over the marriage. Substitute Anakin for George.
I’m kidding, of course. Though I don’t expect to ever do any post work at the ranch.