This could raise interesting questions for the time-evolution of myths/stories/cultural commonalities. Usually a movie like Star Wars would have a limited lifetime until people got bored of it, and succeeding generations either would or would not pick it up again as being applicable to their life and time (see the Spiderman vs. Star Wars post from a few days ago). But if movies are altered not just to spice up the special effects but to actually alter the plot, there's potential for significant change in plot or even theme. Then "Star Wars" is no longer one movie, or three movies, or six movies plus digital enhancements of the first three. Suddenly it becomes a whole spectrum of stories, with the state of the Star Wars saga in, say, 2006 being potentially totally different from the state of the Star Wars saga in 1995 or even 2002. Comparison of the individual movies with their potentially-to-be-released enhancements could be interesting from the standpoint of what this says about our culture's evolution.
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This could raise interesting questions for the time-evolution of myths/stories/cultural commonalities. Usually a movie like Star Wars would have a limited lifetime until people got bored of it, and succeeding generations either would or would not pick it up again as being applicable to their life and time (see the Spiderman vs. Star Wars post from a few days ago). But if movies are altered not just to spice up the special effects but to actually alter the plot, there's potential for significant change in plot or even theme. Then "Star Wars" is no longer one movie, or three movies, or six movies plus digital enhancements of the first three. Suddenly it becomes a whole spectrum of stories, with the state of the Star Wars saga in, say, 2006 being potentially totally different from the state of the Star Wars saga in 1995 or even 2002. Comparison of the individual movies with their potentially-to-be-released enhancements could be interesting from the standpoint of what this says about our culture's evolution.