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PLEASE TAKE NOTE: This thread is probably only interesting for German-speaking fans or for those who are familiar with the German dub-versions of the original trilogy.
As we all know, there are so far 2 official versions of the Emperor scene in The Empire Strikes Back.
One is the original version from 1980 in which the Emperor was played by Marjorie Eaton and spoken by Clive Revill (spoken by Edgar Ott in the German version) and the Special DVD Edition from 2004 in which Ian McDiarmid once again took over the role of his life and was once again dubbed by Friedhelm Ptok in the German version. This update is one of those retrospective changes, which certainly has its reason as the Emperor had already been given a completely new look and voice with the release of Return of the Jedi.
I myself grew up with the original VHS versions, so the original Emperor in Empire will always be my secret, nostalgic favorite version. There is just something unique and (positively) haunting and disturbing about his first appearance.
Personally, I never quite warmed up with the 2004 version - even if it was and is well-intentioned.
Firstly: The Emperor bears much more resemblance to his outward appearance from Episode III than with the one from Episode VI (which is of course due to the fact that this reshoot took place during the filming of RotS).
And secondly, since the German voice actor from Return of the Jedi - Helmut Heyne - had already passed away by 2004, so Friedhelm Ptok was once again brought on board to provide the new dub.
And of course I also found it annoying that Reiner Schöne (not personal, he’s a fine speaker otherwise) had to replace the one and only Heinz Petruo at the microphone. The sudden change of the dubbing actors in the 2004 version takes me out of the movie every time I watch the DVD/BluRay version.
So I quickly solved the problem myself by replacing the visual appearance of Palpatine with the version from good old Andywan (keyword Star Wars Revisited - full credit to him, check his stuff out if you haven’t yet because its absolutely stunning) - in which Palpatine much more resembles his appearance from RotJ, I also used AI software to bring back Mr. Heyne for my version and stayed almost 1:1 true to the original dialogue from 1980 - so the legendary synchro of Heinz Petruo as Vader could also be preserved.
It’s not 100% finished yet and still a bit improvised and wonky here and there - but hey, it’s just a small fan project for fun. And especially for Easter, I don’t think it’s wrong to post a little Easter Egg.
The link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4Q2f2wAuFY&ab_channel=TK8252
