When most films are released, they are left alone. But George Lucas made the Star Wars original trilogy films living, breathing breathing pieces of work, ripping the films out of our hands. The films that originally caught the imagination of audiences around the world are no longer available to us.
Of course, everyone knows about the changes that have been made to Star Wars. Some of them are glaring and frustrating, while others are tweaks that only obsessives (like myself) would notice.
The truth is, only people who saw the first Star Wars in theaters between 1977 and 1980 saw the original film that was nominated for Best Picture at the 1977 Oscars. In 1981, after the release of The Empire Strikes Back, Lucas added “Episode VI - A New Hope” to the title crawl. Since then, A New Hope has undergone a myriad of changes.
All these changes have been put together by YouTube user Marcelo Zuniga in a fascinating group of videos. There have been so many changes to A New Hope that he actually had to make two 12-minute videos to show them all.
A New Hope - Part 1
A New Hope - Part II
The Empire Strikes Back’s changes are few and far between. Since Empire is as perfect a film as possible, the changes are mostly visual and don’t have anything to do with the story. Unlike A New Hope or Return of the Jedi, there are no added scenes. The biggest changes are the addition of a more realistic wampa and the changed Emperor Palpatine hologram.
Return of the Jedi got the bonus, awful “Jedi Rocks” song and a couple of other minor changes throughout. Other weird changes include Darth Vader yelling “No” as he picks up the Emperor and Hayden Christensen replacing Sebastian Shaw as Anakin Skywalker’s ghost.