A Sith Lord Neutered

Since my commute home from work lasts about an hour, I tend to have a lot of time to get lost in thought. Last Friday, my train of thought made a stop in StarWarsville (as it often does), and I happened to think about a little thing in Empire Strikes Back that got changed when George Lucas (hereafter referred to as GL) cranked out the Special Edition. It's a little thing, but it really shows what kind of a hack we're dealing with here.

OK, so there's the scene wherein Darth Vader has turned Luke Skywalker into a southpaw and has backed him into the metaphorical corner (in this case, clinging to an outcropping over a bazillion-foot drop). He goes into his spiel about how Luke really oughtta join the family business of ruling the galaxy, and he gets pretty passionate about it. Luke just gives him a look that suggests where Vader can stick his iron fist, and he lets go to fall to his seeming demise.

Then we get a few scenes of Luke hanging from a weather vane and the Millenium Falcon escaping Cloud City, and then we go back to Vader walking down the hall with some stormtroopers.

Here come the changes.

In the original version, Vader says (growls, actually) "Bring me my shuttle". He's just watched his son choose death over being Co-Emperor of the whole galaxy (assuming, of course, that they would have suceeded in offing the current Emperor), and he's one pissed off Sith Lord. And you can hear that in his voice as he spits out the short and to-the-point command. A nice touch, really.

In the Special Edition, he says something along the lines of (I don't remember exactly), "Inform my Star Destroyer of my arrival" in a tone of voice that suggests that he was doing nothing more than kicking back in his office reading TPS reports before deciding it was time for some new scenery and coming out into the hallway to walk with some stormtroopers. (Also, in the 1997 version, but, thankfully, not in the 2004 DVD version, Luke screams like a little girl while he's plummeting away from Vader. Just thought I'd throw that in there)

So why the change? GL says he thought people were confused that, in a later scene, Vader is on the Star Destroyer, but there was nothing showing him leaving Cloud City, so he put in footage of Vader flying in a shuttle back up to the ship. Bwahuh? Doesn't "Bring me my shuttle" indicate that he's leaving Cloud City? Even if that's not good enough to convey "Vader is leaving Cloud City to go to the Star Destroyer", isn't it still a good enough preface to all of the tacked-on shuttle footage?

Also, does GL think we, the viewing audience, are too stupid to just figure out that Vader must have, at some point, gone back to the Star Destroyer, given that we can now see him standing in front of a big window filled with stars in black space? Did we really need to see him doing it? Were people actually sitting around wondering where all the pretty clouds went? I think not.

This is as bad as Greedo shooting first.

[end rant]