10 Most Pointless Changes To The Star Wars Movies You Never Even Noticed

1. The Phantom Menace Additions

The Original Trilogy aren't the only Star Wars films that have suffered copious after-the-fact changes; each one of the prequels was subject to alterations after their original release. Of course, as those films have been wholly dismissed by the fans, very few people actually realise this.

Revenge Of The Sith saw Vader's "Nooo" shortened in response to the fan backlash by the time it rocked up on DVD and a few shots were reordered in Attack Of The Clones for its VHS release, but by far the most extensive are the alterations to The Phantom Menace.

It's been well covered that the creepy Yoda puppet was made CGI to better fit in with Episodes II and III in the Blu-Ray (built from a VFX test for Revenge Of The Sith), but that's just the latest in a long line of adjustments that have plagued Episode I since its very first release.

Most notably, the extended introduction and second lap of the podrace and the Coruscant taxi sequence were both added for the DVD version, dragging out random scenes to better show of the special effects. They don't have a massive impact on the film as whole - they only extended the film by a couple of minutes - but it's worth being aware this is after-the-fact tampering.

As The Phantom Menace is a different tier of filmmaking to the originals (I broadly quite like it, but, regardless, it does have some serious issues) it's easy to be rather blasé about such alterations, but that misses the precedent it's setting. You can longer see the 1999 version of Episode I that an entire generation pinned their hopes on, and that just as bad as not being able to see the unedited Star Wars trilogy.