Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (1980) Effects Comparison

When the original Star Wars Trilogy was being redone in 1997, George Lucas added a major change that is considered by fans to be the one good change made by the team. What do you think?

All credit goes to 20th Century Fox, Lucasfilm Ltd., and Disney.

[TheDeathmail]

The biggest controversy for the Special Editions weren't the changes... it was the lack of access to all the previous versions... like.. I heard many Star Wars fans actually liked collecting all of them...

[mrweatherby]

That last shot is especially funny to me, because the clearer image and brighter lighting makes the compositing stand out harshly.

[cyanimation]

I grew up on the OG cuts but have literally never seen the shot of the cloud car flying toward the camera.

The original copy we had was recorded from TV but each time it came back from a commercial there were a few seconds missing where my dad hit record.

[Shark_King]

I understand some complaints about the special edition but this scene is one of many examples that the special edition brought about many great visual enhancements to scenes that made it come alive more

[ryukit]

One of only 3 changes I liked in the special editions. This one and how they changed emperor palpatine when we first see him and the added rings after a planet or Death Star explodes

[shhtha]

There's something more charming to the original. I prefer it's varm colors BUT I do love the upgraded effects and added scenes

[theshakter]

I still remember when they released the special editions on vhs. I was so interested how the new effects looked. let's just say I was hooked.

[DecAllTimeAlways]

The Empire Strikes Back had the least amount of touch ups with the biggest being changing Palpatine's actor to Ian McDiarmid. It's really the closest to being the most flawless SW entry. None of the touch ups were controversial.

[willhickman]

I wish you could just buy the movie and have the option to pick which version you want, like when they did this for Halo lol. I like the new stuff a lot, but I was born in 96 and kinda wish I could watch the originals the way they would’ve been back then, just to experience it that way too:/

[Geforce]

The small floating platform they added at 0:04 is in Star Wars Rogue Squadron

[CBDBnoho]

The biggest sin to the changes made to the original trilogy was adding Vader screaming when he kills sidious and saves luke. I could not fuckin believe it when I first heard it. It was literally a perfect scene. No words, just action.

[lowgunfire]

Now this is a Special Edition change that is an improvement!

[Oatsyx]

Honestly the OG version has a sort of magic to it

One of the reasons why I don't like the special editions is that what I enjoy the most with old sci-fi movies are the old special effects.
Imagine if someone replace the city models in Blade Runner for CGI shots. It would be outrageous.

[ezekieltheappeal]

I loved that the special editions added those more scenes of Cloud City.

[theendisnear]

Ideally they would release a "Special Edition 2.0".
While a lot of the changes to Cloud City are great, they are pretty dated and contrast a lot with the originals. Technology is at a state where we could get the best of both worlds, adding CGI made to mimick practical sets.

Such an edition would also contain 4K scans of the original, unaltered film, of course 😉

[mikoswhackgameandstuffvids]

And that's why I love the Special Edition films. Yeah some changes are weird but it's changes like these that make the worlds more alive. Because of this is why Cloud city became my favorite

[DannsProductions]

I grew up with the special editions so I don’t know how it looked before and I got to say it’s pretty neat. But I see why George Lucas went back and improved the CGI.

[LCTesla]

the perpetual dusky ambience of the old version is interesting to me. makes it look like a genuinely alien world.
Bespin is an orange planet so it seems hard to explain to me why so much blue is being reflected into the atmosphere in the new version.
the dusk also foreshadows that Cloud City is far from a perfect place; perhaps controlled by a friend of Han's but not out of the reach of the Empire.

[audreychambers]

Cloud city was the best part of the special edition. All the windows, instead of blank hallway walls, really sells cloud city as a real place outside of establishing shots.