Personally, I've never felt the SEs changed the movies that much. To me they're the sames movies, but with some cosmetic differences. It's like if someone colors a black and white movie. Sure you can argue about whether that's right or wrong, but regardless of all that it's still the same movie. I kind of see the changes he's made as just a step beyond adding 5.1 surround sound and digitally remastering the picture of a movie. It's all cosmetics to me.
There's also the fact that I've always sympathized with what George went through to make the OT and the fact that he wasn't always able to do what he wanted to do, so the idea of him being able to go back and do those things has always been cool to me.
The only changes, in my opinion, that make a serious impact on the films are Greedo shooting first, the Jabba the Hutt scene, and now Hayden playing Anakin's ghost.
The Han thing has always been weird for me, but my biggest problem, like with most of the SE stuff, was from the technical side. It just looks dumb now. I never felt this was a defining moment for the character. Whether he shoots first or not he's still a scoundrel, loner, and a bit of a jerk. Of course George's argument that Han shooting first makes him a murderer is kind of BS to me too. Even if that's the case he still redeems himself at the end of the movie by saving Luke and becoming a good guy.
The only problem I have with the Jabba scene is again with the technical. The CG Jabba they used looks like ass, but this is supposed to be remedied on the DVD versions.
My opinion of Hayden playing Anakin's ghost is still up in the air at this point. If George has a good solid reason for doing it, then it's fine by me. I never had any special attachment to Shaw, and he's still in the only scene in which he had dialog anyway.
By the way, I was reading a really great interview at
filmforce.ign.com with Gary Kurtz who produced A New Hope and Empire, and he explained what the problem is with George's writing and directing. Basically, George's background in film is documentary, so his style of writing and directing is fairly cold and emotionless. This of course explains why the mood in Menace is so serious and boring and why the acting is so wooden.
Also George didn't write the A New Hope script completely by himself. The Huycks, who wrote the script for Temple of Doom, added a lot of the warmth and humor that we see in the movie.
Topic: More insanity from George Lucas (Read 13977 times)
