Star Wars: 10 Nonsensical Changes In Various Special Editions

6. Luke€™s New Scream (The Empire Strikes Back)

1980-empire-strikes-back The moment when Luke refuses to bow down to Vader€™s wishes €“ when he refuses to join his father in €œruling the galaxy as father and son€, when he chooses to instead throw himself to certain death €“ is one of the most powerful and (perversely) inspiring in the entire trilogy. In one of his more bizarre moments of complete insanity, George Lucas decided to mar this particular moment in the 1997 special edition by having Luke scream like a character from a Scooby Doo cartoon as he hurls himself down the Cloud City central shaft, transforming a sublime moment into one of (intentional?) hilarity. Making this whole thing even more surreal is the fact that this scream is apparently the Emperor's death scream from Return of the Jedi (!), lazily dumped over footage of Mark Hammil falling. Thank God Lucas came to his senses in time for the 2004 DVD release, where the scream was removed.
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C.B. Jacobson pops up at What Culture every once in a while, and almost without fail manages to embarrass the site with his clumsy writing. When he's not here, he's making movies, or writing about them at http://buddypuddle.blogspot.com.