Games and Movies and Comics and . . .: Star Wars Changes (part 1)

Editor’s note: Despite the fact that my enthusiasm for Star Wars has been effectively killed off (thanks, Disney!), I had meant to do this post years ago when there was some anticipation for the new round of movies, and still feel the need to finish the project.

Many movies have different versions, like a director’s cut or an extended edition, and often a small debate over which version is superior emerges in fandom. Lord of the Rings theatrical or Extended Edition? Which version of Blade Runner is definitive? Richard Lester or Richard Donner cut of Superman II? And so on.

However, while some movies may have 2 or 3 alternate versions, none of them even come close to what has been done to Star Wars. Originally, Star Wars was just going to be the one movie. Lucas had written a far more extensive and detailed story, but had to cut out most of it to fit into a single film (which he thought would do terribly at the box office). But once he had a legitimate blockbuster on his hands, he set out to somewhat complete the tale. The first change made was in the 1981 re-release, where he re-did the Lucasfilm title card, and then retitled the movie as Star Wars, Episode IV: A New Hope (ANH). In the subsequent years, he would release Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (TESB), and Episode VI: Return of the Jedi (RotJ). Despite the name change, most people referred to the first one as just “Star Wars” and the sequels by their subtitles (“Empire” and “Jedi”).

Between the theatrical release and the VHS or laserdisc release there were minor audio changes like mixing stereo to monaural, but they more or less stayed the same. However, when he was ramping up production to get Episodes 1, 2, and 3 going 20 years later, Lucas decided to fix and redo some stuff in the Original Trilogy that he wasn’t able to do for one reason or another (cost, technology, studio interference, etc.), remove some errors/goofs, and make them more consistent with the prequel films.

These movies were released in late 1996 and early 1997 and were known as the Special Editions. ANH got the biggest treatment, since it had the most studio interference and so much of the crew and technology was new at the time so some of the effects shots weren’t as good compared to the two sequels. Further muddying the waters is that there isn’t just one round of changes and fans debate over “Original Flavor” or “New” Star Wars - additional changes were made to the DVD release (some of which changed things BACK to their original form, and then even MORE were made for the Blu-Ray and 4K releases. .

Whenever multiple versions exist, there are always staunch original edition supporters because of the whole primacy bias which I’ve already written about. But I don’t mind some revisions, and while I was on board for most of the changes, there were a few that kinda made the movie worse for me.

What follows is a list of the major and medium changes to the films, most of which I’m perfectly ok with. There are many extremely minor things like an extra quarter-second pause in a line of dialogue that take weapons-grade autism to notice and aren’t worth mentioning. The ones in ORANGE ALL CAPS are changes that I didn’t like, and will be written about in the second post. And since this isn’t intended to be a definitive list or anything (a simple Google search or a visit to Wookieopedia will result in one of those), I’m going just organize them by movie instead of by each release - meaning that under the ANH changes will be some that were part of the Special Editions and some that are part of the DVD release or Blu-Ray release.