STAR WARS FANS SAY NO TO ADDED NO’S

Star Wars fans who like their movies just the way they originally were are up in arms once again over George Lucas’s latest tweaks to their beloved films. The latest uproar was ignited earlier this week when the BadAssDigest blog reported that Lucas has changed the audio in a crucial scene in Return of the Jedi, so that Darth Vader screams “No!” (twice) as he intervenes at the end of a battle between Luke Skywalker and the Emperor Palpatine. The change was noticed in review copies of the latest Blu-ray version of the Star Trek movies. Also, the eyes of the Ewoks in Return of the Jedi now blink. And Yoda, a puppet made in the Muppets workshop, has been replaced by a CGI version in The Phantom Menace. (The website slashfilm.com has posted side-by-side versions of the two Yodas.) But the added Vader audio is what has drawn most of the anger. One fan on the BadAss site who viewed the video posted on the Web commented that he could “see what a dumb move this is. Not only does the tension of the scene die the moment Vader does the first no, it knocks [soundtrack composer John] Williams’s score out of whack. … Adding in these nos makes no sense, ruins what is a very delicate scene.”