Just did another viewing of the original scene to refresh my memory... it segues in at the beginning with like seconds of decent orchestra, but then the campy (IMO) Yub Nub song starts and then the mood kinda gets ruined a bit for me until the SW theme in the credits. I still got the underwhelming feeling I had when i first heard the Yub nub song.

So while the new victory celebration music had some bass guitar, the flute and chanting sounded serene and spiritual and emotionally right.. and it actually builds up with a bit orchestral joining in before the star wars theme too.

But yea... def. YMMV.  

the first change that made me cringe was greedo.  the first change i found unacceptable and disastrous was the stupid re-cutting of ESB.  However, this was the first change that wanted me to forget the SEs and go back to the originals.

It doesn't make sense.  It proves beyond any doubt lucas is making everything up as he goes. and hayden looks like he got away with murder.

If the idea was to have him reflect anakin when he was not on the dark side, then it still should have been shaw - thats how he looked when he came back from the dark side! the way lucas has it now indicates that your physical likeness is frozen in time, and thats ridiculous. not to mention lame storytelling.  then again, lucas explains next to nothing regarding the ways of the force in the PT.

I remember on one forum, some apologist insisted it made sense and basically regurgitated what lucas said. i kept thinking -'no, it doesn't make sense,  you just found a way to rationalize it. and anything can be rationalized'.  wonder if he is still hoping that one day lucas will insert jimmy smits into ANH freaking out because he sees the death star ready to blow him away.  :(

My reaction was sheer utter confusion the last time I saw it, which was I think at least three years ago.

I admit it, though, when the 2004 special edition came out, I was 13 and I thought it was a really cool change.

I never understood what Lucas was trying to achieve when replacing Sebastian with Hayden.

I've heard that Lucas wanted the face that was a Jedi, but even then, that face turned to the dark side.

If anything, it makes more sense to keep Sebastian. That face made the sacrifice, killed the Emperor and redeemed himself. 

I actually cannot remember the last time I watched the Special Editions.

I have started to watch Star Wars a few times, but end up turning it off and putting the OOT on instead.

I remember at a convention, Brian Blessed was talking about Sebastian Shaw. Brian asked him at one time what he was doing, and Sebastian said that he was filming something called Star Wars and was playing a charactor called Darth Vader or something ! Brian said to him how fantastic it was to be this cinematic villian, but Sebastian really had not a clue what a great role this was to be. I think it was something that he did in between stage work.

Paramecium302 said:

I'm the type of guy that can normally just take the changes with a grain of salt and say "oh fxcking well" and move on with my life. This alteration was a little bit much though. Despite the fact that Hayden had an awkward look of "Yeahhh, sorry about all that killing stuff..." on his face, it was just insincere. When I was little, I would cry when I saw Anakin at the end because he looked so peaceful, and so happy.

They should have done something with like, Hayden Christianson fading into the old-guy Anakin. That would have been an acceptable change in my books.

Speaking of which, is there any truth to Hayden Christensen's claim as to not knowing he was going to be edited into the end of "Jedi"; I read that some where

Paramecium302 said:

Hmm, not sure. I didn't hear that one. I did however hear that Hayden got all butthurt when someone made fun of him in some parody, and apparently actually called George Lucas to tell him lol. I think George just said something along the lines of "Get used to it."

I'll bet it was that scene in Robot Chicken where they call him "you special edition motherfucker"... heh

Paramecium302 said:

But no, I didn't hear this rumor. Interesting thought, though, but it looks like it was filmed intentionally for that scene... so I feel like he would have had some idea of it.

It was recently discovered that it was an alternate angle from a scene in one of the prequels. I wish I could find the thread for it.

My first reaction upon seeing him?  Honestly, it was "Who the hell is that?"  I really had no idea who this goober was, but I was able to piece together from context that it was supposed to be Vader.

The two or three scenes I can actually remember from the prequels do not feature Hayden Christensen, which actually speaks well of him because my only memories of the PT are of the bits that caused me to leave the theatre.

Uhh. Ok.

I registered to this forum just to express my utter disappointment with this change.

I have the early trilogy on VHS, and that's where I saw it years ago. It wasn't the very first version, but it was the version where in ROTJ, the music is changed but it's still Shaw as the ghost. I liked that scene. I liked to see the guy, who had been the bad one for 3 movies, redeemed.

I saw the prequel a few years later. Ok so that's what Vader looked like before becoming the cyborg. Ok cool. I can live with that.

Just this weekend, in a fit of nostalgia, I bought the DVD's of the original trilogy and rewatched it. I saw some changes that I didn't bother.
But then I saw Shaw being replaced... WHAT IN THE F* IS THAT!! I'm not even gonna discuss the possible reasoning behind it, but... just look at Hayden's face! He has a creepy, uninterested look! Compared to Shaw's warm, cheerful, fatherly look, Hayden's ghost is just terrible.

Why replace Shaw? He was just fine! Hayden... just doesn't fit. he doesn't look like he became good again there... Damn I'm so disappointed. Time to convert those VHS to DVD and just watch those...
I don't even give a crap about the whole reasoning behind the change. I just preferred Shaw's heartwarming, loving smile towards his children.

Sorry to bump this old thread, but I just found it by googling this change and I wanted to express my disgust with it.

You will not find many people around here who will disagree with you...

An original version - before all the 1997 Special Edition extra's - is already available on DVD as part of the Limited Edition releases of 2006 as a "bonus disc" to the versions you already have. These are are from perfect but better than the other DVD release.