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The recently released Blu-ray edition of Star Wars has a few changes made personally by George Lucas. The most striking is Darth Vader's "No!" in episode VI. Why were these changes made, and do such changes affect viewers' understanding of the plot?

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    After watching the linked video, I shouted: Nooooooooooooo!
    – kapa
    Commented Dec 1, 2011 at 11:09
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    +1 karthik - I for one will not be buying the blu-rays and I was a big star wars fan. Over the years I've come to realise the movies aren't that great, they're kids movies really. It doesn't help that GL keeps messing with them, perhaps on some level he is trying to fix them, but IMO they cannot be fixed and should be left alone so at least our "rose tinted" memory of them isn't tainted
    – Antony Scott
    Commented Dec 11, 2011 at 5:13

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I would like to just sum this up as the jumbled effect. Lucas basically wants as much action going on in his movies as humanly possible. Adding attention to items that we already know are there. This can be seen more vividly in Star Wars 1-3 where he adds more characters and objects to the set.

A lot of inference is lost because of this. Instead of asking oneself why an object is on the screen just offset from center, we have the object in plain view center focus, distracting from what is important, establishing the plot and following through with that plot.

  • Ewoks blinking
  • Adding more rocks to where R2 was hiding

Items like these distract the viewer from what is actually going on.

The most controversial change with Darth Vader, changes the emotion and environment of the scene completely.

Nooooooooooooo!

To who? himself? the emperor? the dark side? to his son dying? Too many questions it was better left mute and let the background music take care of adding in the emotion as well the turning point to that scene, making that scene appear longer than it really is. Now that "no" extends across this entire section, the turning point is now a sharp inflection leading the viewer wanting the scene to be over as quickly as possible.

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  • As far as I remember, "noooooo" by darth vader was in the original theatrical release, but Lucas changed the sound to be shorter in the blu ray release. starwars.wikia.com/wiki/…
    – Jared
    Commented Nov 28, 2013 at 20:48
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    @Jared The "no" in question is in Return Of The Jedi, perhaps you're confusing with Revenge Of The Sith. It was not in the ROTJ theatrical release.
    – Schwern
    Commented Dec 26, 2014 at 1:40
  • Reminds me of Calculon, the robot actor from Futurama in their in-universe soap opera "All my Circuits"
    – m1gp0z
    Commented Feb 27, 2019 at 19:32

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