RotJ - The shot of Han hitting Boba's jetpack is now zoomed in with a new explosion.

Woah really? Possible to get a screencap? Just when I thought most of the changes had been found..

true.

Nice! Is that shot actually zoomed in, though? Or is it just a new 'splosion?

Yeah, it's a different shot.

Well, I'm guessing that the reason for the change would be this:

The Sandpeople are basically the hoodies of Tatooine. You don't want to be out at night, because these bastards will gaderffii you over the head and rob you for eveything you have. So, we see them clobber Luke and start tearing his speeder apart and going through the belongings... before Obi-Wan interupts.

It makes sense that an astrodroid might be pretty valuable to the Sandpeople, if looting is what gives them their kicks. And yet there is Artoo, just a matter of metres away, standing in a little alcove, chirping away - so why don't they see him and take him, rather than wasting time rummaging through Luke's glove compartment?

As the shooting script says:

Artoo forces himself into the shadows of a small alcove in the rocks as the vicious Sandpeople walk past carrying the inert Luke Skywalker, who is dropped in a heap before the speeder.

A pedant might point out that Artoo lurking in the shadows, where the Sandpeople can't see him, is not exactly how it comes across in the finished scene. So, I presume, that is the justification for the change, that the Sandpeople just seem to ignore him.


Dumbing down seems to be the manifesto here.

Just in case you can't work out that Artoo is hiding from the Tusken Raiders - here is a big crappy looking rock dropped in front of him. Not sure what Vader is thinking about as he picks up Palpatine and dumps him down the reactor shaft? Confused as to what is going on there? - here, now he says "Nooooooooooooo!" just to make that clearer.

Wondered why everywhere you go on Tatooine, you tend to see the same ten or so offworld species who are approximately humanoid with rubbery mask-like faces - but don't see so many of those little back-to-front CGI-looking ones 30 years down the line?

Can this be the same Tatooine we see in ROTJ, that we saw in TPM? I mean, it has Quarren, Aqualish, Niktos, Weequays, Hutts, Greedos, lots of sand, a family of Skywalkers... but I'm still not sure... wait - phew - there goes a Dug. That's it, continuity is saved. This is the same Tatooine and not some parallel dimension.

Honestly, all of the changes are just retarded effort to fix things that never needed fixing. In fact, no, they are changes that presume the audience is retarded, which is even worse.

I've known that he was hiding since I was a child. The original version is better. Not just because I saw that one first, but because the rocks actually seem made to fit Artoo and there also seem to be Jawa eyes next to him. Awesome. Now it's just rocks.