This one was at least apparently in the original concept art. Don’t get me wrong, it’s an awful change and it looks like a circa 1997 video game graphics. The original was one of those cases where technical limitations led to a ‘less is more’ effect, as with Jaws. But, the change does seem to be something originally intended, as opposed to the cases where Lucas is more likely lying.
Well changes get made between concept art and the final thing all the time don’t they? The concept art is often how it would look if it was a comic-book instead of a live-action-movie. I’m not saying Lucas is lying, but what he originally intended and what the director of the film originally intended might have been two different things.
Lucas has always claimed he “originally intended” to insert a stop-motion puppet as Jabba in SW. But everything about that scene tells us he didn’t - even without the lighting issues, there’s no way to insert a puppet into that scene using compositing. He has Jabba and Han walking together and closely interacting, and where he claims that the ILM effect was abandoned due to budget and time constraints, there was no way to ever put a special effect in that shot until the Special Edition. This points to the decision to abandoning the shot being made before they finished shooting it - otherwise the completed sequence would contain shots where Han and Jaba are far enough apart to make super-imposing a puppet-creature feasible, and probably close-up shots where you don’t need to see them both all the time to make it easier. This is more consistent with Gary Kurtz’s account who seemed to have no idea that a special-effect creature would be coming for that shot. He says the scene was abandoned for technical reasons (camera and lighting) and that the decision was made at the time of shooting, so they just added some dialogue to the Greedo scene to cover it:
Yes, because of the focus problems, and it was slightly redundant anyway because some of the information was already in the Greedo scene, so why not make all the information in the Greedo scene and eliminate the Jabba scene altogether? That’s what happened.
In all accounts though, the slug-concept for Jabba is not made until Jedi.
But if we consider Kershner’s interview - that appears to be from 2004 (or possibly 2003) - he is not anticipating any further changes to be made for DVD. And he was consulted for the 1997 version. He also referred to Empire as “his” movie, and said that he didn’t want to direct Jedi because he didn’t like the plot of the film. He was very candid in that interview, he was very respectful to GL and co, but was firm and clear about the issues he commented on.
What we have from the 1997 Lucas interview is a different justification for the changes than he could have made in 2004. If pressed on the question about “well why are you making changes to Jedi when involvement from the director is impossible?” Lucas could have answered “well there is Kershner and I and that’s a two-thirds majority for the decision to make a few improvements to the trilogy”. The issue is over what GL and Kershner wanted in terms of “improvements”. Kershner was happy to see technical improvements, but didn’t particularly want the content changed. And as for what Marquand would have wanted is anyone’s guess.
If Lucas had directed the movie instead it would have come out considerably different to how Kershner made it in the first place. How each of the three directors apply concept art as a director is going to be different. I don’t think Lucas will be allowed in the future to make systemic, permanent, changes to TFA or the other new SW films. But I suppose only time will tell.