Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back

THE EMPIRE'S EMPEROR There's a scene where Darth Vader communicates with the Emperor via long distance hologram transmission. In the original version, the actor who plays the Emperor in the scene is not Ian McDiarmid (who plays the Emperor in every other Star Wars movie). In the DVD version, they replace that hologram with Ian McDiarmid's image. However, they also change the dialogue of the scene. Now, the Emperor gives a lot of info about Luke Skywalker in his transmission:

THE RETURN OF THE OPENING SCENE In Special Ed. and the DVD version, there's an added scene showing Darth Vader leaving Cloud City and arriving at his Star Destroyer. The shot where Darth Vader arrives at his Star Destroyer is actually a re-used scene from The Return of the Jedi (ROTJ). The re-used shot is Vader's opening scene in ROTJ, where a Commander greets Vader on the Death Star. Let's go over the film sagas in history that have re-used scenes from their own films: Death Stalker II Fearless Hyena II Return of the Jedi

Although they get rid of the sound in the shot for Empire, you can see the Commander mouth out his line, "Vader, this is an unexpected pleasure, we are honored by your presence." This shot happens, by the way, after Vader says, "Alert my star destroyer to prepare for my arrival." Sort of makes it baffling for the Commander to say his line. (While we're on the topic of re-used material, we should point out an improvement made for the DVD's. There's a scene in Empire in which Luke Skywalker falls through Cloud City: Luke looks Vader in the eyes and defiantly steps off a Cloud City platform, knowingly falling to his probable doom. In Special Ed., they play the sound of the Emperor's screaming from ROTJ as Luke falls, making it seem like Luke is screaming. This suggests that Luke actually fell completely by accident. In the DVD version, they thankfully remove that scream. Whether or not they turn him into the two split halves of Darth Maul for the fall in later versions of the film remains to be seen)

The consensus: George Lucas is slowly trying to phase out Return of the Jedi completely.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE REVIEW OF THE RETURN OF THE JEDI >>

<< CLICK HERE TO RETURN TO THE REVIEW OF A NEW HOPE