George Lucas altered the scene of the Emperor talking to Darth Vader for the 2004 DVD version and onward, not only with replacing the original visuals and voice work with Ian McDiarmid's for consistency with Return of the Jedi but also replacing lines and slightly extending the scene, which thus leads to alternate interpretations of the character dynamics at work. Hence:
Original 1980 lines: The Emperor: We have a new enemy. Luke Skywalker. Darth Vader: Yes, my Master. The Emperor: He could destroy us.
Revised 2004 lines: The Emperor: We have a new enemy. The young Rebel who destroyed the Death Star. I have no doubt this boy is the offspring of Anakin Skywalker. Darth Vader:How is that possible? The Emperor:Search your feelings, Lord Vader; you will know it to be true. He could destroy us.
In the old dialogue, Vader already knows who Luke is, but in the new dialogue this may be when he learns who Luke is, or he may be feigning ignorance (which appears to be the current assumption lore-wise). Another factor is that Vader and Anakin (who was previously first named only in the next film) are one and the same which may affect the import of either interpretation of the new lines.
A common fan theory is that Admiral Ozzel was a double agent or Rebel sympathizer, and so his seeming incompetence (not wanting to search the Hoth system, alerting the Rebels to the Imperial fleet's presence by coming out of light speed close to the solar system) was actually his attempt at undermining the Empire's efforts to find them. A few POV scenes of Ozzel in Legends render this unlikely in that timeline, as he is portrayed as demonstrably incompetent, disdainful of the Rebels, and primarily concerned with his own advancement. Captain Needa, on the other hand, was posthumously stated to have had Rebel sympathies in Wedge's Gamble but this was almost certainly a false claim, as it was suggested by an Imperial crew member to Needa's cousin as a way of ingratiating himself to their New Republic captors.
Darth Vader:
Did Vader order his fleet to the Hoth System because he sensed Luke's presence? Or was he just desperate enough to find Luke that he jumped to the conclusion that the Rebels were hiding on Hoth the moment he saw the base's shield generator?
Is Vader's reputation for casually murdering his subordinates overblown? Admiral Ozzel acts patronizing to Vader (who has the authority he does because the Emperor says so), disobeys the agreed battle plan, and is generally indicated to be incompetent. Captain Needa, meanwhile, interpreted an instruction to "update Lord Vader on the pursuit" as "personally fly over to Vader's flagship to apologize for a screw-up" instead of "pick up a radio", wasting probably an hour of everybody's time. However, Vader clearly respected Grand Moff Tarkin and a number of rank-and-file Imperial officers who were willing to bluntly-but-respectfully speak their opinions in A New Hope (whereas he Force Choked Admiral Motti for blatantly disrespecting him), and Captain/Admiral Piett is competent and treats Vader with respect, even (when the Rebel strike team tries to penetrate the shield in Return of the Jedi) volunteering relevant information that the Dark Lord didn't ask for which might make himself look bad. Piett survives multiple failures and dies in battle against the Rebels. The Expanded Universe is all over the place on this: in some works Vader has been known to kill people just for inadvertently seeing him without his helmet on, whereas in Thrawn: Alliances Thrawn openly teases him about secretly being Anakin Skywalker (whom he met during the Clone Wars in Disney's canon) and gets little more reaction than an implied eyeroll.
"He's just a boy." Is this Vader expressing doubt over Luke being a threat to the Emperor, trying to keep his plans to convert him a secret, or is this Anakin Skywalker pleading for his son's life? Perhaps more than one?
Prior to the release of Return of the Jedi many people, including James Earl Jones himself, believed Vader was lying about being Luke's father to seduce Luke to the dark side. It got to the point that Lucas had to include the return to Dagobah in ROTJ to dispel any doubts.
Considering the prequels revealed that Yoda and R2-D2 knew each other before their meeting here, is R2 fighting with the old Jedi Master over Luke's lamp him purposely trolling one of the galaxy's most powerful beings for kicks? Is he playing along with Yoda's decision not to reveal himself to Luke by pretending to fight him? Or does he blame Yoda for Anakin's turn to the Dark Side and the whole argument between the two is basically R2 Calling the Old Man Out—or is R2 doing it as a means of snapping Yoda out of his seemingly delusional state?
In the scene where Luke silently jumps from the platform on Bespin after his confrontation with Vader, did he actually know that he'd be pulled into an air vent before the fall killed him? Did he intentionally save himself by using the Force to control his fall, or was he trying to kill himself before he succumbed to the temptation to accept Vader's offer, or out of despair over Vader's revelation? The 1997 Special Edition seems to lean toward the last bit, as it had Luke scream while falling via added audio of the Emperor screaming in Return of the Jedi, though later releases reverted to his silent fall because even Lucas realized it was a stupid addition.
Luke and Leia's relationship. Notwithstanding The Reveal in the next film that Luke and Leia are siblings (which, like Vader being Luke's father, was a retcon that came about while the Return of the Jedi script was being polished and not planned in the previous film), how much of Leia snogging Luke in the infirmary was her actually being attracted to him, and how much was her just wanting to piss Han off?
The Mandalorian has shown repeatedly that Yoda's race are voracious carnivores that even at a stage of development equivalent to a human infant can and will catch prey as big as their head and consume it alive. While Star Wars: The Clone Wars had him note the planet was teeming with the Living Force, maybe exiling himself to a swamp teeming with various critters may have been motivated by the plentiful food available as well?
Lando has to turn over Han, Leia, and Chewbacca over to Vader to save his people, and he does. They're also armed, meet Vader in a room with no guards, and Han actually gets several shots off. Is Lando making a plausibly deniable assassination attempt? Following this, is Vader famously altering the deal just to yank Lando around or is he annoyed that Lando tried to have him killed and he can't prove it?
When Lando frees the Falcon's crew from the Imperials and uncuffs Chewbacca, Chewie could easily have broken Lando's neck or pulled his arms off instead of throttling him. Was he just intending to kill Lando more slowly, or did Chewie realize that Lando had switched sides and just wanted to make him squirm painfully before accepting his help?
Ass Pull: At the time, Darth Vader telling Luke that he was his father, a Retcon made during script rewrites (in an early draft, Luke's father - who was not named Anakin until Return of the Jedi - appears as a Force Ghost to him before he goes off to Bespin). It came right out of nowhere, since in the previous movie Obi-Wan clearly said Luke's father was a hero whom a young Jedi named Darth Vader betrayed and murdered, and Obi-Wan even called Vader by his first name Darth, and up till then his words were taken at face value. A very early Expanded Universe story had already mentioned Obi-Wan, Vader and Luke's father together on a mission during the Clone Wars.
Award Snub: Many feel that Frank Oz's portrayal of Yoda was very underlooked, between his voice acting and puppeteering work. George Lucas attempted to campaign for him to get a Best Supporting Actor nomination at the Academy Awards, but the voters ultimately felt that it didn't qualify as a "real" performance.
During the Battle of Hoth, there is a Blink And You'll Miss It shot of what looks like a little two-legged baby Imperial Walker. It does not appear in any of the wide shots of the AT-ATs advancing or at any other point in the battle. Though multiple AT-STs have a much more prominent role in Return of the Jedi and they are well known through Pop-Cultural Osmosis, its presence in this film is an example of this trope: it's since been revealed one of the effects crew threw it in as a joke, only for Lucas to take quite a liking to the idea and give the Chicken Walkers a bigger role in the next film.
When the door shuts on C-3PO at one point, he briefly turns toward the camera and says “How typical.” It’s the only moment in any Star Wars movie to break the fourth wall and blatantly acknowledge the audience—a cinematic technique extremely uncommon outside of whimsical comedies.
Base-Breaking Character: C-3PO reached this level in this movie due to him gaining characterization by being a shrill worrywart that never shuts up and constantly rattles off unfavorable statistics about their current situation. He also can't keep himself from complaining to Chewbacca and R2-D2 when they repair his dismantled body. However, he is remembered much more fondly ever since the prequels introduced a certain Gungan.
Any of the You Have Failed Me moments in this film qualify as this. On one hand, you'll feel disgusted or horrified with the executions. On another hand, you can't help but chuckle while thinking "Oh shit, I saw that coming." Admiral Ozzel's Force Choke execution is notable in that he gets to hear the news of someone else (Piett) getting promoted to his rank just as he's about to perish.
"Apology accepted, Captain Needa." Spoken by Vader after executing the poor sap.
Director Displacement: George Lucas was the executive producer, and neither directed nor wrote the final script for the film. He was however heavily involved in the conceptual stage, writing the original story with its central twist, the Han/Leia romance, Yoda, and the general overall tone of the film, which was intended to be a Genre Shift into horror.
Boba Fett. He had no more than four lines in the entire series and to this day is highly regarded as one of the most popular characters in the entire series, due to his mysterious nature, and his fearlessness even in the face of Vader (and, of course, his awesome armor).
A non-character example: the All-Terrain Armored Transport walker. Next to the Death Star, TIE Fighter and Star Destroyer, the AT-AT is the "face" of the Empire in popular media.
Admiral Piett. Originally a one-off character, he was brought back for Jedi thanks to fan requests.
Kenneth Colley: "My character was not originally in Jedi. But George Lucas said, 'Ken, I've got a whole bunch of letters from people wanting to know more about Admiral Piett, and I want to put him in the movie. I have no idea what you're going to do but will you do it?"
The pilots of Echo Squadron have become quite popular in the EU, especially Wes Jansen and Derek 'Hobbie' Klivian. And Wedge Antilles was already an Ensemble Dark Horse from the first film.
The other bounty hunters qualify, too. At least Fett was in more than one scene; Dengar, Bossk, IG-88, 4-LOM, and Zuckuss just stand around looking cool on the bridge of the Executor and nothing else. This was all it took to get them all extensive backstories in the Expanded Universe.
Captain Needa, appearing in all of two scenes (and alive only in the first), won a lot of admiration for going to Vader in-person and taking full blame for losing the Falcon. It was clear that he knew he was going to his death, but he went anyway to protect his crew.
Between the release of this film and Jedi, there was a lot of arguing from fans over whether Vader had lied about being Luke's father (one of the proponents of this was none other than James Earl Jones). Lucas included the scene of Yoda confirming it in the next film specifically to kill any doubt.
On a similar note, Yoda's cryptic "there is another" comment ignited a firestorm of speculation.
Even Better Sequel: Critical and fan reception was overwhelmingly positive with many critics (at least those who liked the first film instead of dismissing the series as junk) calling it just as good as the first film, if not an improvement, due to factors like the character development of the leads, the new characters such as Yoda and Lando Calrissian and the new locations such as Hoth, Dagobah, and Cloud City.
Genius Bonus: While looking for Yoda on Dagobah (not realizing that he's already found him), Luke describes Yoda as a "great warrior". Yoda's name is derived from a Sanskrit word (योध) that literally means "warrior".
Harsher in Hindsight: Before the asteroid chase, Han is trying to repair the Millennium Falcon when his toolbox falls on top of him, hurting him in the process. In June 2014, Harrison Ford got injured during filming for The Force Awakens when a hydraulic door from the Falcon set fell on top of him.
Good luck finding someone who knows anything about Star Wars, and also does not know that Vader is Luke's father. The twist is arguably even more famous than the one for which this trope is namednote Which is pretty funny if you know that Orson Welles was George Lucas' first choice for the voice of Vader., and that's somewhat due to the spoiler suffering a lot from Memetic Mutation.
When he arrives on Dagobah in search of the wise Jedi master Yoda, Luke encounters a small green muppet who speaks in a funny manner. The film is clearly written with the intention of this muppet's identity reveal being a big surprise to first-time viewers (there wasn't a single shot of Yoda in the original trailer)... except that, since the film's release, everybody knows who Yoda is, including any new viewers who watch the films in numerical order, rather than release date order.
Exclusive to the 1997 Special Edition, Luke’s scream while falling down the shaft falls into this hard. Not only is the scream itself incredibly goofy-sounding due to it being Palpatine’s death scream set to a lower pitch, which isn’t even remotely close to what Luke’s voice actually sounds like, but it was also edited in right after the iconic and incredibly dramatic Luke, I Am Your Father reveal, which means that its comical nature completely ruins the mood and makes Luke’s Driven to Suicide moment hilarious. To his credit, George Lucas seemed to realize how Narmy this was and removed it from the DVD release a few years later despite keeping the other Special Edition changes.
During the Battle of Hoth, it's supposed to be a chaotic and hectic nightmare of a losing battle. Special Effects Failure kicks in for early parts of the battle, however, when the camera cuts down to the rebel forces on the ground warfare casually walking about in the trenches like blaster bolts aren't flying right by their heads. It's only after the first AT-AT Walker gets taken down and everyone realizes it's time to retreat that the actors react properly to the battlefield.
Nausea Fuel: When Han cuts open his dead tauntaun and all of its rubbery white guts spill out of it, then puts Luke in it to keep him warm. Granted, that's still far preferable to death by hypothermia.
Its Atari 2600 game, which was not only pretty complex for a 2600 game, but also is considered one of the best licensed games on the system. Then fast forward to the mid-1990s and the Super Star Wars trilogy games.
The arcade game, made using the same graphics and the same engine as the previous Star Wars game.
The famous scene really doesn't have the same level of suspense on later generations as it did at the time of its release, largely due to Memetic Mutation. Not having to wait three years to find out if it's true also helps. More than that, very few among the audience had reason to expect a plot twist of this nature to begin with. A New Hope was a Genre Throwback to B serials which largely didn't have such twists played for dramatic tragic effect, and while there was hype for The Empire Strikes Back it didn't lead to the great speculation audiences now have about any large blockbuster project. Audiences went in expecting more of the same old-fashioned B-Movie fun, and this kind of twist, which was not teased, nor promised, nor speculated upon, more or less made every other big-franchise twist either guessed at, speculated at, or obvious in its build-up and Foreshadowing.
Darth Vader in the first movie and for most of The Empire Strikes Back was established as a consistent heel, torturing Leia, killing Obi-Wan, and in this film, putting Han Solo in carbonite, without any hint that there was more to him. For the film to pull off the twist so deftly that he goes from pure evil to ambiguous and empathetic in the final moments (such as when he stares sadly when Luke jumps into the vacuum on the bridge) kept people intrigued and eager to find out the truth and how it all ends until the third film finally came out. Nowadays it's no great surprise for series to drop huge twists and developments regarding characters for the sake of added complexity.
The cliffhanger ending was shocking at the time since this sort of thing simply wasn't done, though audiences were generally hyped up for the resolution even if they had to wait years. If you're binge-watching the films, it doesn't have quite the same impact, and it's not uncommon for middle parts of trilogies to have cliffhangers because of this film's influence.
The fact that this was a middle part of the story in the first place instead of a self-contained sequel was a major surprise back then. In comparison, the first film was self-contained with the promise of more adventures to come but not with dangling plot lines. And with the opening crawl first proclaiming this was "Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back" in the Star Wars series (the first film, then simply "Star Wars", got "Episode IV: A New Hope" in its crawl after this was released), fans first realized the possibility of Episodes I-III at some point. This all seems a bit quaint compared to today where studios make their franchise intentions clear with new movies.
Also, a few aspects of Lando Calrissian and how he related to the real world can easily pass by many viewers born after the movie came out, or especially ones born in the 21st Century:
Firstly, his flirting with Leia. Today it comes across as just a bit sleazy, cements Lando as a would-be charmer but perhaps not as good a "scoundrel" as Han, and might even provoke a few accusations of the person of color being made to seem "aggressive", but when the movie was released, miscegenation laws were a mere thirteen years dead nationwide. The mere fact that Billy Dee Williams got to do this with Carrie Fisher, and that in-universe nothing was weird about it aside from making Han a bit annoyed for reasons that have nothing to do with race, was for many a sign of greatly changing times and still a big deal.
On that tack, the mere fact that Lando was played by Williams, a black man, and was in a position of authority over a city and that nothing was weird or out of place about this in a major mainstream film was a very big deal (and many folks of color of a certain age would cite it as an inspiration as late as thirty-five-plus years later). He does lose his authority, but this has more to do with sheer force and the overall tyranny of the Empire than it does any kind of racial reading.
The status of this film as the "darkest Star Wars film" or even a dark film in general is harder to appreciate for modern audiences. The Empire Strikes Back doesn't actually have any major Character Deaths and the only intense violence is Luke getting crippled at the end, the impact of which is immediately undone with a bionic hand that works far better than any real-world prosthetic, which fans of newer fantasy works like Game of Thrones, which treats a similar crippling incident as a traumatic Career-Ending Injury with actual story consequences, find unimpressive. Those who have seen the prequels first note that Revenge of the Sith with Order 66 and Anakin's massacre of the younglings was a much more violent and darker moment than anything in Empire, while fans of the Disney era point out the more visceral violence and action in both the sequels and Rogue One's hallway massacre scene is considered Vader's most horrifying scene in any Star Wars film.
One-Scene Wonder: Prints from the 2004 DVD onwards digitally add Ian McDiarmid in for The Emperor's cameo. This is the only Special Edition change most everyone agrees is an improvement over the original, at least in terms of visuals and audio, as not only does it maintain tighter continuity, but McDiarmid simply is Emperor Palpatine to fans, and his performance is seen as much better than the rather monotone voice-over Clive Revill provided in the original version. His and Vader's revised dialogue is more divisive, though.
A Rebel pilot is played by Mac McDonald, who would later be best known for playing Captain Hollister in Red Dwarf.
Sacred Cow: This film ties with A New Hope for the Star Wars film with the highest following. Even people who don't like the Original Trilogy will not pick on this film or at the very least show it a modicum of respect. Also, do not criticize the famous It Was His Sled scene if you know what's good for you.
The Scrappy: Admiral Ozzel is an In-Universe example of this, with the novelizations establishing that the man was notorious for being shortsighted and not thinking through his strategies like his fatal maneuver at Hoth.
Signature Scene: The scene where Darth Vader tells Luke that he's his father became the most famous moment from the film (if not the franchise as a whole) thanks to it being a shocking retcon which ended the movie on a cliffhanger that wouldn't be resolved for three years, which was a rarity in cinema at the time. The scene consequently became a widespread subject for parody in popular media over the decades, named a trope on this very wiki, and is so well-known among the general public that it regularly shows up on analysts' lists of the most iconic plot twists.
Largely on the planet Hoth due to technical limitations:
The Tauntaun shots have not aged well. The life-size puppets are fairly convincing, but the shots of them running are recognizably stop-motion.
The Wampa was mostly removed because of it in the original version. The Special Edition inserts newly filmed scenes of it. (The new footage can be seen as a Special Effects Failure in its own right, since the Wampa's reaction to losing a limb is rather hokey. This may be a case where only getting brief glimpses of the creature was more effective. Nothing Is Scarier, after all...)
During the AT-AT battle, the Snowspeeders (and related shots, as per Word of God which is explained in the Special Edition VHS release) were not printed at their full opacity in an attempt to minimize the black border from matte-merging in post. This is evident in a view from the cockpit. Like the Wampa example, this was eventually fixed.
While it's easy to miss at first due to how fast it goes by, close examination of the part where Vader cuts off Luke's hand reveals that the blade completely misses his arm! Perspective effects notwithstanding, it also looks like Vader sliced Luke's hand off without cutting through the sleeve around it, since the source of the pyrotechnic sparks are inside the cuff. This may also have been a self-censorship choice—photos of the prop arm used in this shot show burn marks at the cut, so it's possible that it was decided to hide Luke's blackened stump to not further traumatize younger viewers.
Luke goes a bit transparent when he falls down the Cloud City shaft.
As with A New Hope and Return of the Jedi; in the unedited theatrical cut a number of shots featuring TIE Fighters have a faint silhouette of each model's garbage matte.
When the Mynocks start swarming after Leia and Han, you can clearly see they're large sheets of plastic tied around poles because the head is completely absent from them, unlike the previous shots of them. Even Irvin Kirshner admitted that the reason they cut away from the Mynocks so quickly was because of how awful the props looked.
During the scene where Lando argues with Vader while Han is being tortured nearby, when Vader steps into the elevator and it closes, it doesn't properly shut and between the slightly open slits you can clearly see Vader's actor standing idly behind the doors while waiting for the take to end.
While making his We Can Rule Together offer to Luke, Vader's cloak is billowing dramatically in the wind and looks awesome. Unfortunately, his headpiece is also slightly bobbing up and down in the wind, and looks like a piece of light plastic or cardboard, rather than the heavy metal it's meant to be.
Han cutting open the Tauntaun so that he and Luke can stay warm in it. Only absolutely freezing coldness could drive anyone to willingly keep themselves insulated with the insides of a living creature.
After Return of the Jedi, Leia kissing Luke on the mouth became this. Even though she states in Jedi that "somehow" she had "always known" that she was Luke's sister, she may or may not have done it to make Han jealous (in which case, that may or may not be an implied Retcon).
Suspiciously Similar Song: The Imperial March sounds a great deal like Prokofiev's "Montagues and Capulets". Not coincidentally, the two songs are juxtaposed on Epica's album The Classical Conspiracy.
In the George Lucas Altered Version, Boba Fett's voice is probably the biggest point of contention; while Temuera Morrison gives a decent performance, many people grew attached to Jason Wingreen's original voice acting as the character. As Morrison more fully took over the role of Fett with his appearances in The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett, later years saw fans lament that an apparent time crunch and half-hearted direction prevented him from delivering his best performance in Empire.
The 1997 Special Edition has Luke scream (for some bizarre reason dubbed in with a clip of Palpatine screaming from the following film) as he falls through the central shaft of Cloud City, which made it seem less like he was nobly choosing possible death over joining Vader, and more like he'd suddenly realized he'd have been better off joining Vader after all. Lucas himself evidently came to regret this choice, as the 2004 DVD release onwards has Luke falling silently again.
Some added dialogue for Palpatine and Vader's scene did add a new meaning to the scene, which threatens to lessen the dramatic impact of Vader revealing himself as Luke's father, though it's generally seen as subtle enough that plenty of viewers see the added dialogue as effective foreshadowing for the big reveal.
Another minor gripe but in the Special Edition and 2004 DVD release, the ad-libbed line "You're lucky you don't taste very good" which Luke says to R2 on Dagobah was changed to the original line "You're lucky to get out of there." Not a big issue but the former line just sounds wittier.
The special edition also sees fit to insert several new shots of Vader returning to the Executor during the climax, as well as changing his "Bring my shuttle" line to "Alert my Star Destroyer to prepare for my arrival". While there are those who appreciate the movie showing this since he originally seemed to get back to his ship unreasonably quickly, others think it breaks up the flow of the Cloud City escape, over-explains a plot-point that was fairly self-explanatory, and think the old line and and its much angrier-sounding delivery is more appropriate considering that he had just come so close to capturing Luke. The fact that the shots of Vader's landing are very obviously repurposed footage from the opening of Return of the Jedi doesn't help.
Oh, so very much. Over forty years after its release, and with nine films added to the theatrical franchise in the interim, it is still widely considered the best Star Wars film, with every subsequent film being varying degrees of Contested Sequel.
For director Irvin Kershner, this film effectively marked the peak of his cult directing career. He only directed two films after this: Never Say Never Again and RoboCop 2.
Values Dissonance: Han and Leia's romance hasn't aged very well. Han repeatedly ignores Leia's boundaries and makes forceful advances on her despite her showing clear disinterest until near the end of the movie. While at the time it was seen as charming due to Han being a lovable scoundrel played by Harrison Ford, modern viewers are becoming increasingly likely to see uncomfortable "Me Too" undertones to Han's pushiness and him ignoring Leia's vocal disinterest in him.
The stop motion AT-AT walkers? The entire Asteroid field chase? The amazing matte and compositing work of Cloud City? This film fired on all cylinders for the special effects!
Also worthy of mention is Frank Oz's amazing puppetry of Yoda. Despite being a tiny foam latex hand puppet, at no point do you not think that he's a living, breathing character that is acting right alongside Mark Hamill on the set. In fact it was so good, that when he reappeared as a Force Ghost in The Last Jedi, he was again done as a puppet, instead of the CGI that had been used ever since Attack of the Clones. And the fans loved it.
The film, while commercially successful, was still relegated to the Sci Fi Ghetto by those critics who dismissed it as mere kiddie or adolescent fluff like the first film. Fans and other critics were decidedly not on their side, and now it's considered not only the best film not only in the original trilogy, but out of all the Star Wars films, and one of the best Speculative Fiction works in general even as it and the franchise has influenced tons of other works.
Temuera Morrison's voice as Boba Fett in the DVD version onwards. On its own, his performance (of only a few lines) is considered decent and was praised by some fans for its Canon Welding with Attack of the Clones due to Morrison playing Jango Fett, but was decried by fans who found Jason Wingreen's original voice for Fett to be superior. After over a decade, however, Daniel Logan (as young Fett) and Morrison (as the older Fett) have basically become the definitive actors for the character, appearing in numerous TV series and video games and with Morrison returning as Boba in live-action in The Mandalorian, providing a much-praised grand return for the character in the Disney canon. As such (and as the audience that grew up with the prequels and Special Editions has grown up), it's far harder to find fans hung up on that particular change as of the 2020s.
The Woobie: Han Solo, being subject to Cold-Blooded Torture at the hands of Darth Vader and then being frozen in carbonite while Leia is Forced to Watch. Becomes even worse when you learn that it took the rebels a year to find out where he was sent to and that he was conscious the whole time.
: "My character was not originally in Jedi. But George Lucas said, 'Ken, I've got a whole bunch of letters from people wanting to know more about Admiral Piett, and I want to put him in the movie. I have no idea what you're going to do but will you do it?"