10 Classic Movies The Directors Won't Stop Changing

George Lucas has been making changes to Star Wars since the original was re-released in cinemas following the success of The Empire Strikes Back, now accompanied by the subtitle "Episode IV: A New Hope" during the opening crawl.

It was a fairly innocuous change and one that most fans are happy with, bringing it in line with other parts of the series, but it precipitated decades of using new technology and reissues to make the earlier movies fit together with the later ones.

For the twentieth anniversary "Special Edition" theatrical re-release of the original trilogy in 1997, Lucas made use of the advances in CGI that ILM had demonstrated on movies like Jurassic Park to add effects shots that could never have been possible in the 1970s and, along the way, make a few narrative tweaks that Lucas had changed his mind about since the original.

The 2004 DVD release and 2011 Blu-Ray release allowed for further changes, often correcting issues that the 1997 Special Edition had caused (the CGI Jabba sharing a scene with Han in the 97 version had a bizarrely shaped head and eyes, so was reworked in 2004 to look more like his Return of the Jedi self) or controversial changes it had made (the scene of Greedo shooting before Han in the Cantina being changed once again to have them shoot simultaneously).

Many of the changes have been incidental (a "clump" sound added to the accidental scene of a stormtrooper banging his head on a door frame) or even an improvement (getting Ian McDiarmid back to play the Emperor as a hologram in Empire Strikes Back), but it's hard to argue that Lucas is doing much good overall with these constant tweaks to an established classic.