What do you think is the worst change in SW Special Editions?

[kerowack]

This is an easy one. THE worst change in any of the Star Wars SE's is changing the original Max Reebo song from Sy Snootles to the cockroach muppet in Jabba's Palace. Line changes, color tints, and who shot first are bad and unnecessary but the "updated" song is terrible and long. You cannot look away. You can not pretend it didn't just happen. It's in your face for what feels like forever. It's so glaringly out of place that of all the changes it's this one that looks like it stepped off the set of Phantom Menace and wandered into Return of The Jedi the most. It single handedly, retroactively, ruins what is actually the greatest 45 minutes in the original trilogy. There is no worse sequence in all of Star Wars.

And that's what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.

[huedell]

"Greedo shooting first" is the only thing that bothers me as far as the new additions.

The new Jabba song that many in this thread think is inappropriate can't even begin to compare.

The new Jabba song is actually Jabba's personality part and parcel---gluttonus "sex, drugs and rock n' roll" Tatooine-stylie, while "Greedo shooting first" is a notable misstep that just contorts (in an extreme way, mind you) what the Han Solo character was all about when we first met him--- and ultimately misrepresents that arc of what the Han character metamorphoses into by the end of that trilogy.

[kerowack]

"Greedo shooting first" is the only thing that bothers me as far as the new additions.

The new Jabba song that many in this thread think is inappropriate can't even begin to compare.

The new Jabba song is actually Jabba's personality part and parcel---gluttonus "sex, drugs and rock n' roll" Tatooine-stylie, while "Greedo shooting first" is a notable misstep that just contorts (in an extreme way, mind you) what the Han Solo character was all about when we first met him--- and ultimately misrepresents that arc of what the Han character metamorphoses into by the end of that trilogy.

Well when jabba arrives, you can reenact the scene from jedi and knock yourself out. But the next time I see that scene with the new song, I'm gonna knock myself out. It just kills the mood of the location for me.

[spacecaps]

The new Jabba song is actually Jabba's personality part and parcel---gluttonus "sex, drugs and rock n' roll" Tatooine-stylie

I didn't see it like that at all. Tatooine is hot. Everything moves slow. In ANH, the cantina creatures at the bar just kind of veg. In the streets they amble slowly. There's no urgency because the place is a desert. That original song in Jabbas palace has more sex drugs & rock & roll in it than the redux version just not in a loud in your face way. Half of Sy Snootles character is made up of a massive pair of DSL. She's hideous, sure, but she's all lips & snout. Subconsciously, she's about a disturbing sexual image as they come. So is the heavy set he/she thing in the background doing some kind of prancing walk-dance while Jabba sloshes his tongue wetting his slug like lips, eats a frog and yanks on a slave girl chain (which he soon feeds to a large carnivorous monster he keeps in his basement.) All that imagery there is gluttonous and sexual. That's Tattooine style. Dark and seedy. Jabba's Palace is a place for the underbelly of the planet to gain refuge from the heat and be amongst their own kind with a soundtrack provided by a blue elephant, a wrinkled scrotum, and a yellow snout ball with painted lips. Jabba's Palace in the original cut felt like the kind of place that you feel uncomfortable in the moment you set foot in the joint. The Palace makes Obi-Wan's assessment of, "You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy..." at the cantina seem a bit off the mark. For the most part, ROTJ SE had that same feel to it until we get what looks like an animated reject from a Raid commercial showing us what it be like if Animal from the muppets stepped out from behind his drum set and tried to croon Sinatra while on his 3rd LSD tab. It's all so uncomfortably wrong. The characters personality clashes with the environment and the imagery that environment has presented thus far and musically the sound is too loud for the room. It's dank and dim. The music from the original matches the setting. The music in the SE is bombastic and overpowering. It's a cartoon break in an otherwise climactic scene that takes three quarters of an hour to build. There's palpable tension mounting from the moment R2 & 3PO approach the door to this place that doesn't stop till the skiff hovers off with the barge erupting in flames behind it. The stakes are raised too high here and in the middle of it all we now get comic relief when we don't want or need it. That added scene is the very genesis of the phrase "Read the room."

I remember hearing that the reason they changed this scene in the first place is because they felt they didn't get enough mobility out of the Snootles puppet in '83 and felt like it was too stiff. Originally they had planned for a more elaborate song. Sometimes things work out even when they don't work the way you want them to and that is what happened here. The original Snootles song was the Star Wars rendition of Indy pulling a gun and shooting the Swordsman in Raiders. It wasn't supposed to be but it's how it went down and it works. Less is sometimes more. It's like comparing Jefferson Airplanes,White Rabbit, to...I don't know, The Bay City Rollers, Saturday Night, and saying Saturday Night rocks harder because it has a faster tempo while at it's core it's a vapid hollow song that has none of the imagery or subtext White Rabbit has.

[apes3978]

If this forum had a way to "like" messages, I'd be clicking that option on almost all of these posts... What you guys are saying ruined things in the SE is right on...

[MIB41]

I didn't like the CGI Jabba being added to " A New Hope", where he is having a discussion with Han Solo. The effect wasn't convincing when it was new and even less so now. Plus his scale is way off. He looks almost like Looney Tune character as well. Just doesn't work.

[Gorn Captain]

I hated the fact that Star Wars became "A New Hope".
As a kid, I would have hated that even more...yawn...

[huedell]

I didn't see it like that at all. Tatooine is hot. Everything moves slow. In ANH, the cantina creatures at the bar just kind of veg. In the streets they amble slowly. There's no urgency because the place is a desert. That original song in Jabbas palace has more sex drugs & rock & roll in it than the redux version just not in a loud in your face way. Half of Sy Snootles character is made up of a massive pair of DSL. She's hideous, sure, but she's all lips & snout. Subconsciously, she's about a disturbing sexual image as they come. So is the heavy set he/she thing in the background doing some kind of prancing walk-dance while Jabba sloshes his tongue wetting his slug like lips, eats a frog and yanks on a slave girl chain (which he soon feeds to a large carnivorous monster he keeps in his basement.) All that imagery there is gluttonous and sexual. That's Tattooine style. Dark and seedy. Jabba's Palace is a place for the underbelly of the planet to gain refuge from the heat and be amongst their own kind with a soundtrack provided by a blue elephant, a wrinkled scrotum, and a yellow snout ball with painted lips. Jabba's Palace in the original cut felt like the kind of place that you feel uncomfortable in the moment you set foot in the joint. The Palace makes Obi-Wan's assessment of, "You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy..." at the cantina seem a bit off the mark. For the most part, ROTJ SE had that same feel to it until we get what looks like an animated reject from a Raid commercial showing us what it be like if Animal from the muppets stepped out from behind his drum set and tried to croon Sinatra while on his 3rd LSD tab. It's all so uncomfortably wrong. The characters personality clashes with the environment and the imagery that environment has presented thus far and musically the sound is too loud for the room. It's dank and dim. The music from the original matches the setting. The music in the SE is bombastic and overpowering. It's a cartoon break in an otherwise climactic scene that takes three quarters of an hour to build. There's palpable tension mounting from the moment R2 & 3PO approach the door to this place that doesn't stop till the skiff hovers off with the barge erupting in flames behind it. The stakes are raised too high here and in the middle of it all we now get comic relief when we don't want or need it. That added scene is the very genesis of the phrase "Read the room."

I remember hearing that the reason they changed this scene in the first place is because they felt they didn't get enough mobility out of the Snootles puppet in '83 and felt like it was too stiff. Originally they had planned for a more elaborate song. Sometimes things work out even when they don't work the way you want them to and that is what happened here. The original Snootles song was the Star Wars rendition of Indy pulling a gun and shooting the Swordsman in Raiders. It wasn't supposed to be but it's how it went down and it works. Less is sometimes more. It's like comparing Jefferson Airplanes,White Rabbit, to...I don't know, The Bay City Rollers, Saturday Night, and saying Saturday Night rocks harder because it has a faster tempo while at it's core it's a vapid hollow song that has none of the imagery or subtext White Rabbit has.

Although nothing you say reads false to me, I guess I just have a higher tolerance for the "tone-breaking-ness" of that musical number---then again, I think it sits well in a movie that also includes the more "light-hearted"/"cartoony" Ewoks---who I also do not have a problem with.

I can also concede that if enough people hate that new musical number, then there's more than "just a little wrong" with it.

Really, I guess in some ways I'm just surprised that more people seem to be bothered by the new Palace song rather than Greedo shooting first---I mean, that particular redux recalibrates the whole character arc of Han Solo, one of cinema's most celebrated characters.

[Werewolf]

Jedi Rocks just mercilessly drags on and on. From the in your face close ups of the terrible new CGI Sy Snootles to horrendous down the throat tonsil shaking shots of new CGI character Joh Yowza to the way worse than 1983 make effects on the new back up singers, it brings the movie to a dead stop while you are forced to painfully endure it.

In comparison, the infamously bad Greedo shooting scene is so sped up on the recent Blu-Ray it's over in a blink. It still sucks but at least it is over fairly quickly now.

[spacecaps]

I guess I just have a higher tolerance for the "tone-breaking-ness" of that musical number---then again, I think it sits well in a movie that also includes the more "light-hearted"/"cartoony" Ewoks---who I also do not have a problem with.

Those "cute" Ewoks that get a lot of flack for being adorably cuddly fuzz-balls are totally carnivorous man-eating dwarf bears. Check it:

Star Wars: Return of the Jedi introduced the Ewoks, a race of walking teddy bears whose primary galactic mission was to sell as many action figures as George Lucas could force his foreign labor department to produce. Despite being less than 3 feet tall and possessing the frightened, awestruck intelligence of time-traveling children, the Ewoks managed to destroy the technologically superior Galactic Empire with rudimentary log traps and can-do scrappiness.

Thanks to their adorable heroism, the Rebels warm up to the Ewoks and join them in their postwar celebratory banquet, completely forgetting that, at one point, the Ewoks tried to eat Han Solo. It's literally the first thing that happens when they meet him.

Remember the victory banquet, where the Ewoks sing that annoying song and play the bongos on hollow Imperial helmets?

Where did the bodies attached to those helmets go? Look around that campfire -- do you see any prisoners? No, you do not, because we have seen exactly what the Ewoks do with their prisoners -- they ceremonially roast and consume them. They were prepared to eat Luke, Han, and Chewie in celebration of discovering a golden butler robot in the middle of the forest. For all we know, the Ewoks were already planning on eating them before they confused C-3PO for a god, which raises all sorts of unanswerable questions about their belief structure. An event as big as the downfall of the Galactic Empire probably requires the Ewoks to gather up and glaze every dead body on the battlefield for an intergalactic pig pickin'.

[huedell]

Those "cute" Ewoks that get a lot of flack for being adorably cuddly fuzz-balls are totally carnivorous man-eating dwarf bears. Check it:

Star Wars: Return of the Jedi introduced the Ewoks, a race of walking teddy bears whose primary galactic mission was to sell as many action figures as George Lucas could force his foreign labor department to produce. Despite being less than 3 feet tall and possessing the frightened, awestruck intelligence of time-traveling children, the Ewoks managed to destroy the technologically superior Galactic Empire with rudimentary log traps and can-do scrappiness.

Thanks to their adorable heroism, the Rebels warm up to the Ewoks and join them in their postwar celebratory banquet, completely forgetting that, at one point, the Ewoks tried to eat Han Solo. It's literally the first thing that happens when they meet him.

Remember the victory banquet, where the Ewoks sing that annoying song and play the bongos on hollow Imperial helmets?

Where did the bodies attached to those helmets go? Look around that campfire -- do you see any prisoners? No, you do not, because we have seen exactly what the Ewoks do with their prisoners -- they ceremonially roast and consume them. They were prepared to eat Luke, Han, and Chewie in celebration of discovering a golden butler robot in the middle of the forest. For all we know, the Ewoks were already planning on eating them before they confused C-3PO for a god, which raises all sorts of unanswerable questions about their belief structure. An event as big as the downfall of the Galactic Empire probably requires the Ewoks to gather up and glaze every dead body on the battlefield for an intergalactic pig pickin'.

One quick clip of an Ewok creepily eating some intestine out of Stormtrooper armor, would've certainly made me think twice about my easy acceptance of the over-bloatedly cartoony Jedi Rocks number

[The Bat]

Mine is of course..."Han shoots first." Han is by nature a Scoundrel...but he knew Greedo was going to kill him, so why not beat him to the punch? Other than that, a lot of the other changes didn't bother me.

[samurainoir]

[kept back]

I used to be known as "THEE" Star Wars guy among my friends. When SW: Trivial Pursuit was played, it was the entire room versus me. Sometimes up to two dozen people, several of which came in rolling their eyes saying "I could beat you one on one."
I was never defeated. Never even came close.

Between the special editions and prequels, I have absolutely zero interest in the Star Wars product these days.

The worst part of the Special Editions? That they even exist.

[Gorn Captain]

If memory serves me, I though that the Empire SE was ok, except for that silly scream Luke made when falling.
They didn't make that many changes.
I though that the editing on Jedi made the SE a bit smoother, and let's just skip over Jedi Rock...