NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

As my close friends and family know, I'm a huge Star Wars fan. I got the "Star Wars" bug at the age of 8, and it really hasn't let go since. I've seen all the movies dozens of times (I watch the original trilogy at least once a year), and I even went to the Star Wars exhibit at the MN Science Museum and Star Wars in concert in recent years.

With that being said, the original Star Wars trilogy are still some of my all-time favorite films. My favorite movie of all-time is "The Empire Strikes Back," which several critics have rated one of the best sequels of all-time too. When I heard that Star Wars creator George Lucas was tweaking some of these movies for the Blu-ray release, my first thought was "not again," remembering how he'd altered selected scenes for their intitial DVD release.

Some of the Blu-ray changes being made to these films include blinking, clicking Ewok eyes on "Return of the Jedi," some minor cosmetic changes in "A New Hope" and fixing the Wampa arm in the beginning of "The Empire Strikes Back." I'm OK with Yoda being changed from the Frank Oz puppet to a more in-sync CGI version in "The Phantom Menace," but the thought of Darth Vader crying "NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!" as he throws Emperor Palpatine down the Death Star shaft to save his son in "Return of the Jedi" rankles me. That scene was perfect the way it was - why, George, why, do you insist on changing things again? I know these films are his creation and his vision, and he has the right to do with them what he wants, but every time he tweaks one of them, I reflect back on Darth Vader's quote to Lando Calrissian during "The Empire Strikes Back": "I'm altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further!"

To me, the worst changes to the the last release were:

1. Greedo shooting first in the famous "A New Hope" cantina scene.

2. Replacing Sebastian Shaw with Hayden Christensen as Anakin Skywalker as Luke sees his father, Ben Kenobi & Yoda's ghostly images at the end of "Return of the Jedi."

3. Having Temeura Morrison (Jango Fett) replace the lines spoken by the original Boba Fett actor Jeremy Bulloch in "The Empire Strikes Back." I know Boba is Jango's clone, but I still liked Bulloch's voice in that role better.

4. Having a lame voice-over replace a line by James Earl Jones after the famous duel with Luke in Cloud City in "The Empire Strikes Back" and worse yet, recycling footage from "Return of the Jedi" to show Vader's shuttle landing in his Star Destroyer in a totally unnecessary added clip.

5. Removing the Ewok song at the end of "Return of the Jedi" and replacing it with a generic song being played while other planets celebrated the end of the Empire. Come on, I mean, that Ewok song was a single on the radio in 1983!

6. Replacing the original Sy Snootles and the Max Rebo song in "Return of the Jedi" with a worse song featuring a very fake-looking CGI alien.

I imagine at some point I'll end up buying the Blu-ray release because of the 40-plus deleted scenes and additional material, but with the knowledge that Lucas will release these films in 3-D beginning with "The Phantom Menace" next year (Jar-Jar Binks in 3-D? Who asked for that, really?) and the corresponding DVD or Blu-ray releases that will follow, I hope Mr. Lucas can understand why many diehard fans like myself wish he would stop tinkering with what were already great films, and just go ahead and release the original films on disc for us to enjoy unfiltered. Didn't he get the hint with the South Park parody? Enough already, George!