One random thing I noticed for the first time on my most recent rewatch is the way the Mos Eisley commoners back away in fear as the stormtroopers head toward Docking Bay 94
My all-time least favorite change is Vader’s shuttle arriving on the “Star Destroyer”. I can take or leave the “Bring my shuttle” line being changed (I prefer the old line but it’s not a huge deal to me) and don’t think the other new shots hurt the pacing that much, but I HATE that they used recycled Return of the Jedi footage. Even when I was a kid I hated how obvious it was. If George absolutely needed to show Vader returning to his Star Destroyer, the shot of the shuttle flying towards it could’ve been the final added shot without any distracting footage from the wrong movie necessary.
The sides of 1995 VHS packaging for the movie we now know as ANH has a logo that says “Star Wars” and says “A New Hope” in small letters while ESB and ROTJ say “Star Wars” in small letters and have logos that say “The Empire Strikes Back” and “Return of the Jedi”. Otherwise, ANH was marketed as just “Star Wars” until the 2000 VHS release.
Yes, I know, I’ve got those tapes actually. What I meant about the 2000 tapes was it was the first release to present “A New Hope” as being just as much the title of that movie as “The Empire Strikes Back” or “Return of the Jedi” on the case.
Interestingly enough, even though the logos all look the same, even in the 2004 DVD commercial, the announcer names the movies as “Star Wars: A New Hope”, “The Empire Strikes Back” and “Return of the Jedi”
Definitely agree it was the 2000 VHS that solidified “A New Hope” as its common name. Those tapes were all about rebranding the OT in the same style as The Phantom Menace’s VHS, so we saw three significant changes to the branding:
“A New Hope” as you said became just as much the title of the movie as “The Empire Strikes Back” and “Return of the Jedi”
The episode titles were emphasized on the box for the first time
Empire and Jedi ceased having their own unique logos (something even the Special Edition kept in 1997)