The first reviews are going up in the media for the upcoming original "Star Wars Trilogy" DVD boxsets, and answers are at last coming through about all the rumoured new changes in regards to certain shots and scenes in the movies.
The biggest change that will have fans screaming is the confirmed replacement of Sebastian Shaw with Hayden Christensen as Anakin's ghost at the end of "Return of the Jedi". Why Christensen is there but McGregor hasn't replaced Obi-Wan seems a glaring continuity error but one which will probably be explained in the last prequel (or on the commentary track).
Other changes will receive a more mixed reaction. The hologram of the Emperor in "The Empire Strikes Back" done by Clive Revell has been replaced by Ian McDiarmid who played him in the prequels and "Return of the Jedi". The speech has been changed too and hints at the Luke-Vader connection early on.
Most other scenes have just been cleaned and tidied up a bit with more detail - the lightsabers, the Jabba the Hut scenes in "A New Hope", Naboo being included in the Jedi celebrations, Luke no longer screaming during his Empire fall, some smoother matte line removals (most notably the Tom-Toms) and now Greedo and Han fire at the same time.
Pics of the assorted changes can be found at Digital Bits. Mark Hamill talked about the release recently (and potential future films), his speech can be found at IESB.
Naturally the changes are causing a huge amount of reaction from the SW nutters, so Lucasfilm reps are already out and spoke to Sci-Fi Wire about the changes and why they happened: "It comes down to what [Lucas] has said constantly, which is that he very strongly believes in an artist's right to have his work presented in the way he wants it presented. In terms of your own personal art, and how you want it to be presented, the artist has that right. With the '97 version of the film, or what he feels is closer to his original vision, he couldn't accomplish [certain things] back in 1977, and people either like it, or they don't. We respect that point of view. But at the end of the day George feels very strongly about artists' rights".
Thanks to 'TVsHenry', 'Brandon', 'Mike', 'Gustavo' & 'KarlChilders'
