OK, so we just finished watching Return of the Jedi from the new DVD box set, and sure ’nuff, George played a little too hard with the film…. again.

This time — and this could be a spoiler to some folks out there — in the final scene with the ghostly Yoda and Obi-Wan, is a youthful Anakin Skywalker….. played by Hayden Christensen, and looking just a few years older than he was in Attack of the Clones. Surprise! Obi-Wan didn’t get younger as a spirit, and who knows about Yoda, but Anakin drops about 50 years by crossing over to the spirit realm — amazing!

What that tells me is that if you’re an English Knight, as Sir Alec Guinness was, you don’t get bumped off the film. If you are — by comparison in US eyes — a nobody, such as Sebastian Shaw was, then your days are numbered in a Lucas film. 🙂

I think this thread on IMDB really sums it up: “Where are the movies I fell in love with?”

Inside the thread is a link to originaltrilogy.com, which quotes Lucas, in speaking out against the colorization of black and white films:

“I am very concerned about our national heritage, and I am very concerned that the films that I watched when I was young and the films that I watched throughout my life are preserved, so that my children can see them.”

So, here’s bone thrown out to those guys. 64,000 signatures on a petition can’t be wrong! (I am number 64,541)

BTW, if you want to see some of the big changes, go to The Digital Bits — they’ve got a lot of it there.