Ruining the Original 'Star Wars' Trilogy, Part 2

Another rant from the purist...

Last week, I shared with you my rants about George Lucas’ changes to the first film in the original Star Wars trilogy based on a meme I saw that posed the question: Which of George Lucas’ edits to the original trilogy were the worst?

At the end of that post, I pointed out that there weren’t any changes to The Empire Strikes Back that I could think of that bugged me, but Return of the Jedi is another matter. Here’s how George Lucas ruined parts of that movie.

"Lapti Nek”

In the original version of Return of the Jedi, the Max Rebo Band and vocalist Sy Snootles perform a song that’s sort of a disco-new wave hybrid called “Lapti Nek.” (Fun fact: composer John Williams’ son Joseph, who went on to join the band Toto, wrote the music, while sound engineer Annie Arbogast wrote the lyrics and voiced Sy.)

Ok, so it’s not one that’s going to be on your weekly playlist, but it’s catchy and works for the scene. But for the “special editions,” George Lucas replaced “Lapti Nek” with a song that he thought would be “less dated.”

The new tune was entitled “Jedi Rocks,” and the song itself is even dumber than its title. Pay special attention to the egregious 3D effects in the clip.

It’s so stupid that I can’t watch it. Even if you don’t like “Lapti Nek,” replacing it with this clunker was a bad decision.

“Noooooooooo”

For the Blu-ray releases of the original trilogy, when Darth Vader throws Emperor Palpatine into the pit near the end of Return of the Jedi, saving Luke Skywalker’s life, George Lucas added Darth Vader saying, “No. Nooooooo!” as he threw the emperor to his doom.

Even with a brilliant actor like James Earl Jones voicing Darth Vader, the, umm, lines fell flat, and fans and critics panned the change — understandably so.

Anakin Skywalker’s Force Ghost

After Darth Vader saves Luke’s life, Luke wants to return the favor to his father by getting him out of the Death Star to safety, but it’s clear that Anakin Skywalker is not much longer for this galaxy. Anakin asks Luke to unmask him so he can see his son with his naked eyes.

Sebastian Shaw plays the unmasked Anakin in a brief, tender scene. It’s a touching moment, and it ends with Anakin passing away and Luke loading his corpse onto a shuttle to take him down to the forest moon.

In the original version, once the Alliance has destroyed the Death Star and everyone is celebrating, we see Shaw as Anakin’s Force Ghost, alongside the Force Ghosts of Yoda and Obi-Wan Kenobi, played by Sir Alec Guinness.

For some stupid reason, George Lucas replaced Shaw as the Force Ghost in the “special editions” with Hayden Christensen, who played Anakin in the execrable prequel trilogy.

The problem with this is that Christensen is a much younger actor than Shaw was at the time, and Lucas didn’t replace Guinness with Ewan MacGregor, the prequel trilogy’s Obi-Wan.

It just doesn’t make sense to replace one actor and not the other, and it’s disrespectful to Shaw’s wonderful performance.

Photo: National Park Service (NPS), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons