Originally posted by: auraloffalwaffle I don't know if anyone's talked about this on this site before, so apologies if I'm covering old ground - please point me to the apropriate thread if I am.

The scene in the original cut of ESB where Mr Vader has a chat with Mr Palpatine - did Lucas change the performance to one from Ian McDiarmid for the current incarnation of his "artistic" "vision"?

This is one change that I actually would have welcomed in the 1997 SE.

I probably wouldn’t have major issues if “monkey woman” was replaced by Ian, but George didn’t stop there he also altered the dialog. Here’s the dialog sequence that really bothers me:

“EMPEROR PALPATINE: We have a new enemy, the young rebel who destroyed the death star. I have no doubt this boy is the offspring of Anakin Skywalker.

DARTH VADER: How is that possible?”

So is the opening crawl bull shit? You know the crawl where it says, “The evil lord Darth Vader, obsessed with finding young Skywalker, has dispatched thousands of remote probes into the far reaches of space...”

Is Vader full of shit when he says “That is the system. And I'm sure Skywalker is with them."

Vader knows all about Luke. In fact the entire premise of ESB rides on Vader’s pursuit of Luke. Many fan-boys try to justify the change by saying that Vader was misleading Palpatine and that may be true, but in the end it just raises a question where no question existed. It’s like almost every other SE or DVD change in that respect. Some of the changes are small and some are large, but as a general rule they make viewers ask questions instead of letting them just enjoy the fucking film.