10 Movies That Blatantly Troll The Audience
1. The Star Wars Special Editions
Considering the millions of people who grew up loving the original Star Wars trilogy, there is no greater case of audience trolling than George Lucas' decade-plus refusal to allow people to see the original versions of those movies. Starting in 1997, Lucas updated the original trilogy by adding new effects and new sequences. Most of these changes were poorly received, particularly the infamous "Greedo Shot First" scene in Star Wars where awkward CGI makes Han Solo dodge a laser blast fired at point-blank range.
He continued to tweak the movies up until the Blu-ray release in 2011, where things just got petty, including changes like adding digital rocks in front of R2-D2 when Obi-Wan discovers him in Star Wars, making the Ewoks blink in Return Of The Jedi, and adding Darth Vader over-dramatically yelling "Nooo!" when he attacks the Emperor on the Darth Star (because Vader's "Nooo!" in Episode III went over so well with fans, right?)
What makes this a supreme example of infuriating the audience is that high-quality versions of the original movies - the ones that made them love Star Wars in the first place - are unavailable. Aside from poor quality non-anamorphic widescreen versions of the original trilogy released on DVD in 2006, Lucas has not allowed a release of the original versions. In fact, he didn't even allow screenings of the original versions in retrospectives.
If you wanted to own the original Star Wars trilogy, you had to accept his "new and improved" version or none at all. It's ironic - while Lucas had no issue putting Star Wars branding on every conceivable product, he refused to sell the one product Star Wars fans want most of all. Since Disney purchased Lucasfilm in 2012, fans have hoped that Disney would release the original versions on Blu-ray. However, because 20th Century Fox still owns the distribution rights to the original Star Wars it seems unlikely that this will happen any time soon, and probably won't happen until 2020 at the earliest because of legal issues.
What is the worst example of cinematic trolling? Share your thoughts in the comments!