Interesting, though, that people seem willing to give J.R.R. a pass on revising The Hobbit to fit with the later-composed The Lord of the Rings .... yet Lucas gets no such pass for sticking Hayden in Return of the Jedi, or deleting Yub Nub.

I don't think it's valid to say the practice is alright if you happen to like the change, but the practice is immoral revisionism if you view the particulary change unfavorably.

I don't like the practice at all, and object to it on principal rather than on individual merit of case-by-caseness. I don't give Tolkien a pass ... and considering his rather clever solution of making the original version a "lie" told by Bilbo, it was completely unnecessary to change The Hobbit at all.

Still, the Tolkien precedent ... (and there are surely others) seems to give George a little bit of artistic cover for his revisionism.

Grrrrr.