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A note on the changes to A New Hope on the star Wars DVD
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Attack of the Clones -
Revenge of the Sith -
The Empire Strikes Back -
Return of the Jedi
A New Hope: The Changes
OK, not all of us were happy with the Special Edition. Sadly it looks unlikely that the original edition will ever be available, but at least GL has removed the rubbish, brown Jabba and replaced it with the greener one we saw in The Phantom Menace. It still looks like the caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland.
Secondly, Greedo still shoots first – kind of. It is more that he and Han shoot each other at the same time. It is an improvement, but not as much as leaving it alone in the first place, George.
Now, there’s a problem with Luke’s sabre when he is training on the Millennium Falcon. Where before it was just a badly done white, now it appears to be green. However, on the Death Star, the Vader/Obi-Wan duel is greatly improved. The lightsabres have been fixed and now retain their colourful glows.
Some dialogue seems to have been added, though. While Threepio and Artoo are on the Sandcrawler, golden-rod now says “We’ve stopped” just before waking up R2-D2. When two Stormtroopers serch the Falcon after it is pulled into the Death Star, one now says to the other, “There’s no-one here”. And Ben Kenobi’s howl that scares off the Sandpeople is very different, sounding more like a ghost train than a wild beast. Apart from the marginally altered dianoga in the trash compactor, the lengthened prison corridors and the writing on the Tractor Beam control panel being switched from the Roman to a more Galactic alphabet, not much else has been changed.
The picture is so much crisper, though, and colours more pronounced. Sometimes it works against the movie, but usually it enhances it.
September 2004