Resurrecting this old thread, since I recently discussed this particular SE change elsewhere on the Internet, and was curious what you all thought:
ETAndElliot4Ever wrote:
Most of the major and many minor changes for the DVD release were documented by DVDActive
here.
The DVDActive site cries
"censorship!" when it comes to the blaster hits the Imperial officers receive being removed in a few shots, but also points out that this is rather inconsistent. Personally, I don't think it was censorship of violence, but perhaps they just cleaned up a couple of sloppy shots. Notice how one little firey splat is cleaned up, but a bigger one is left alone? Maybe the bigger one looked better in the first place. The blast hits that were "censored" always looked weird (to me anyway, even back in 1977). They seemed to blow out, like a squib or something that didn't go exactly right. So maybe, just maybe, that's why they were changed? Just speculating, of course...
And if Lucas wanted to censor the violence, then why leave in the gooey arm on the Cantina floor?
And why pick at a minor detail like that, and ignore lightsaber color issues, Luke's lightsaber retracting sound effect in the cave in ESB, etc...
...Random thoughts for a boring Wednesday...
