Yesterday we watched The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Like Star Wars I hadn’t watched the movies in years. Now to be honest, when I first watched The Empire Strikes Back I hated it. I was 11 when The Empire Strikes Back came out, and knowing that I had to wait three more years before I found out what happened was awful. At that age three years was an eternity; I was miserable. So by the time Return of the Jedi came out I was glad to know what happened, but the magic was gone.

But coming back to these movies, I really liked them. Being able to put in the next DVD made the ending of The Empire Strikes Back perfectly fine (although I still hate cliff hangers). The Ewoks were still cute, but they weren’t as cutsey as I remembered, so I was quite pleased.

Until I got to the end of Return of the Jedi. At which point I began to scream and curse in absolute RAGE. Why the hell did George Lucas have to completely screw up the ending and stick Hayden Christensen into the last scene? It was like a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, reminding me that no matter how much I loved these movies, George Lucas had to mess everything up with the vile Phantom Menace. I couldn’t just happily pretend that the prequel hadn’t happened, but he has to stick in that reminder.

Couldn’t he just has let us think that that was how Anakin *would* have looked had he not been turned into Darth Vader?

Grrr….

If anyone comes out with a DVD copy of the Return of the Jedi that has the correct, original ending–I want it, and I’ll pay good money for it. Actually, I want a copy of all three movies without the edits–no screwed up Jaba scene in the Mos Eisley space port, no extended scene in Jaba’s palace, although I’ll take the extra Cantina scenes. Those were lovely.