There's a Right Way and a Wrong Way to Tinker With Star Wars Movies

MTV showed all six Star Wars movies this weekend. I thought watching 18 hours of Star Wars would be a nice treat on a long weekend. (I have no idea why I look forward to watching movies I own on DVD on basic cable, where they'll be edited and interrupted by commercials, but I do.) But my holiday Star Wars viewing was as annoying as it was enjoyable. Watching the most current versions of all six films in canonical order reminded me of all the problems I have with the prequels and with the Special Editions and DVD versions of the original trilogy (most notably the pod race announcer(s) and Lucas's insertion of Hayden Christensen into the 2004 DVD edition of Return of the Jedi). Rather than make a list of my grievances, I'll defer to this Robot Chicken short.

Many of the problems I have with the Star Wars franchise since 1997 involve material (some of which was swept up off the cutting room floor) added to the original films and the lengths to which Lucas went to incorporate characters from the original trilogy (Chewbacca, Boba Fett, C-3PO, etc.) into the prequels. But after digging around on the Internet, I stumbled upon the following clip that would have made a nice addition to the Episode IV special edition but that was not included:


This dialog between Luke and Biggs does a nice job of setting up the story and letting the viewer know what is at stake. It emphasizes the risks involved in trying to overthrow a tyrant. (And it doesn't involve a CGI Jabba the Hutt.)