Probably the most well known change to The Phantom Menace is the replacement of the on-set puppet Yoda with a CGI model more in-keeping with the one seen in Episodes II-III. Now this may, on the face of it, appear to be a solid alteration; that original Yoda puppet looked a bit off - overworked and a tad plastic-y - and this creates a greater overall coherence across the prequels. And I will allow both those points (even if "coherence" led to Temura Morrison voicing Boba Fett in The Empire Strikes Back), but they don't do enough to justify the alteration. The Yoda in The Phantom Menace wasn't out-and-out bad, and we still have the issue of prequel and original Yoda looking like two different creatures (and the first Phantom Menace one actually looked more like The Empire Strikes Back's). It's like fixing a naked exhaust port with plasterboard. And, once again, when you boil it down it's not a product of necessity or even a desire to better link The Phantom Menace to the later Episodes; it's only included in the Blu-Ray because the work had already been done. As prep for Revenge Of The Sith, where the CGI Yoda played a much larger role and had more complex scenes than previously, ILM went back to The Phantom Menace for a test, pasting their model in. When it came to doing up the Blu-Ray, that well-worn question of "if it's done, why not use it?" reared its head again. Just be thankful they didn't also go and paint over the original trilogy Yoda too. Like this article? What's your least favourite change made to the prequels? Let us know what you think down in the comments.
