Oh sure, here at Fanboy Rampage, we’re all about the funny, but there are times when I feel compelled to occasionally remove the mask of humorist and address some of the more poignant issues we face. The other week, looking at some of the photos taken of mighty Ben Hibbs standing over the comic book bins, I started wondering about growing up. When do we finally say that we’ve grown up? Voting age? Drinking age? The age we lose our virginity? The day we get married? The day we have children? (In the white trash burg where I spent my childhood, by the way, the order of those six rhetorical questions would more properly read: one, four, six, five, two, three.) I think these are pertinent questions since I turn 38 next month and I’m still reading comic books, playing video games, and wondering whether the letters in Penthouse Forum are real or made up. (Last time I looked, they were so dull I was sure they were real. But then, half the people I know lead sex lives that make Forum at its wildest sound like butter-churning night at the Amish Old Folk Home. I think it’s a side-effect of living in San Francisco.) How is it possible in a country where twelve year olds have kids and forty year olds collect action figures to know when we should be grown up? Articles I’ve read recently have, depending on their slant, insisted that twenty-seven is the new nineteen, nineteen is the new fifteen, fifteen (thanks to Internet porn) is the newly jaded thirty-four, sixty (thanks to viagra) is the new thirteen, and twenty-nine is still just twenty-nine, although there’s apparently a low-carb twenty-nine option that the Atkins people say allows you be as slim as the new twenty-four but as gluttonous as the old forty-six. Confused by the slipperiness of all these newly-greased numbers, I turned to our modern beacon of wisdom and reason: the first episode of season two of The Apprentice. Then I went to the Internet, and found the exact answer to my question, at least for myself and others like me: September 21, 2004 is the absolute cut-off date for my childhood, the day after which I absolutely have to consider myself an adult, because that’s the day George Lucas’ Star Wars Trilogy ships on DVD.

As you probably know, Lucas made a number of revisions to his original trilogy of films for the Special Edition of his films released a few years back. It is those films, not the original three films, that are finally being released on DVD. In addition, Lucas had made additional changes in the act of digitally transferring the films to allow for more seamlessness between the first trilogy (A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi) and the second prequel trilogy (The Phantom Menace, The Attack of the Clones, and Revenge of the Sith), adding bits of dialogue, insert shots of characters, and landscapes from the latter films. Although some may argue it might have been easier to have made the prequel films to fit the earlier trilogy rather than digitally alter classic films to accommodate second-rate hastily made (albeit procrastinatively scheduled) knock-offs, one has to admire Lucas’s thorough zeal for revisionism. Indeed, look at the brief list of changes I’ve included below and see if it doesn’t feel like a certain aspect of your childhood has now passed away so totally, it’s as if it never existed:

Hayden Christensen appears at the end of Return of the Jedi: Originally, after redeeming himself by saving Luke, we see Darth Vader without his helmet (actor Sebastian Shaw) and later, after his funeral pyre, we see Shaw appear in the twinkly blue Force effect with Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda. In the revised version on DVD, Shaw is still the helmetless Vader but, after he dies, it is Hayden Christensen, playing the younger Anakin, that appears with Yoda and Kenobi. This serves the dual purpose of tying in to the prequel trilogy and blowing bantha-sized holes in the idea that Vader redeemed himself by saving Luke. Why, after all, would he appear after his death as his younger self when both Kenobi and Yoda are the aged versions of themselves, unless he perhaps achieved some level of purity with the Force before he became Vader, thus rendering Vader’s redemption meaningless? (By the way, if anyone reading this knows George Lucas, please do not point this out to him, as he may well go on to revise it yet again, replacing the twinkly blue old Yoda puppet with the young CGI Yoda, and twinkly blue Alec Guinness with Ewan McGregor.)

Extended scenes of Luke Skywalker on Tattooine. Many people have mocked what appears to be initial romantic attraction between Luke and Leia, saying it casts into doubt Lucas’s claim he had planned for them to be siblings all along. To rectify this, Lucas has altered the scenes in the revised edition of A New Hope so that although Luke and Leia still kiss, Luke is also shown making out with Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru. “Luke is needy,” Lucas has been quoted as saying. “Very, very needy.”

Temeura Morrison’s voice dubbed in for Bobba Fett in Empire Strikes Back: Because Lucas establishes in Attack of the Clones that Bobba Fett is a clone of Jango Fett, played by Temeura Morrison, Lucas has gone back and had Morrison redub Bobba Fett’s lines in the revised ESB. This isn’t the only change that Lucas has made regarding fan favorite Bobba Fett; apparently taking to heart complaints that Han Solo’s slapstick dispatch of Fett in Return of the Jedi wasn’t worthy of the mysterious bounty hunter, Lucas has added an entirely new scene. Now, Bobba Fett is no longer on the deck of the sail barge at all, but is shown running late. Consequently, Fett slips in the shower of his cabin and dies from the resulting head trauma (which I guess conveniently puts to rest those pesky theories that Fett may have survived the fall into the Surlaac).

Jimmy Smits inserted into A New Hope. Smits, playing the Senator in the upcoming Revenge of the Sith who adopts Leia Organa as his own, is in new footage in A New Hope showing the destruction of Alderaan. In the new footage, Smits, on Alderaan just before it is destroyed, is seen buying “DVD copies of my favorite movie trilogy burned from laserdiscs” off of “EGalBay” just before the planet’s destruction. A following comment from Vader—“It is the way of The Force”—follows, bringing more of the prequel trilogy’s “complex” morality into the original trilogy.

Additional dialogue changes to Return of the Jedi. A classic fan favorite blooper finally gets addressed in the revised Return Of The Jedi. In the original ROTJ, Lando’s alien co-pilot Nien Nunb speaks a line of an alien dialect that was actually the African tribal language Kikuyo. In the original, he says, "You guys over there, come over here." Lucas has corrected this gaffe, so Nien Nunb now says, in Kikuyo, “We must work hard, Lando, if we are to be successful,” before adding, “Linda Ronstadt, why did you give me herpes?”

The awards ceremony in A New Hope. As a bonus to old school fans, Lucas has also added the footage of Princess Leia singing from the Star Wars Christmas Special to A New Hope’s award ceremony. Due to budget limitations, many of the spectators in the ceremony were originally cardboard cut-outs but now, thanks to the wonder of CGI, Lucas has replaced the cut-outs with a wildly cheering crowd featuring cameos from many of our favorite characters from throughout the Star Wars trilogy, including the loveable alien slave-owner from The Phantom Menace, the loveable diner owner from Attack of the Clones, the loveable alien cabbie from The Phantom Menace Pepsi commercials, the loveable lightsaber wielding usher from the Special Edition Pepsi commercials, and the loveable alien concentration camp commander from the upcoming Revenge of the Sith Pepsi commercials.

The Han Solo/Greedo Shoot-Out. But nowhere in the trilogy does Lucas’s revisionist eye seem as keenly focused as on that of Han Solo. As you probably remember, Lucas changed a portion of the cantina scene in A New Hope so that Greedo fired first, but missed: it was rumored at the time that Lucas wanted to show that Han Solo was a hero, not a cold blooded killer. In apparent response to negative fan reaction, Lucas has now changed the scene again for the revised DVD edition: now Greedo and Han fire simultaneously. It is rumored that Lucas may involve a branching scene option on the DVD so that the viewer can choose between a variety of options, including Greedo shooting first, Han and Greedo firing simultaneously, Greedo drawing first but shooting last, Greedo being shot by the bartender, Greedo accidentally shooting himself, and an option where neither Han nor Greedo fire and Greedo dies from natural causes.

But Lucas’s changes involving Solo don’t end there: on a similar note, Han now only shoots the communication panel in A New Hope after the conversation goes wrong and the panel fires a shot at Han; Han cuts open the Tauntaun in Empire Strikes Back after the Tauntaun (formerly dead) tries to stab him with a pen-knife; and Han and Chewbacca only fire at the parasite gripped to the outside of their ship after it insults their mother, pushes Leia down the landing ramp, swindles money from C-3PO in a complex real estate scam, and fires on the duo.

Additionally, in the revised version of A New Hope, we now see Han Solo mailing a check to Jabba the Hutt before leaving Tattooine, and he goes on to worry about whether he put proper postage in it throughout the rest of the new film. (In a new CGI scene, we see the check get eaten by loveable postmaster Jar-Jar.) In Empire Strikes Back, when Princess Leia says she loves him, Han no longer says, “I know.” He now says, “I can bake.” According to representatives at Lucasfilm, this change retains Han’s wacky humor but also better sets up the new celebration at the end of Return of the Jedi where Han pulls a pan of hot cookies from an oven and serves them with a huge grin to dancing Ewok children. Also in the revised trilogy, the Millennium Falcon is now called “The Bi-Annual Happy Sparrow,” apparently with the idea that the falcon is. according to Lucasfilm, “not a proper avian role model,” and “bi-annual” being easier to spell and more likely for floats of the famed craft to be used in holiday parades and the department store sales promotions.

Of all the changes, I think those with Han Solo are sure to be the most controversial. Why George Lucas feels compelled to rewrite history so that a charming money-obsessed smuggler is transformed into a responsible independent merchant who loves to bake for children is a bit of a mystery, and one can only wonder why Lucas, who made over a billion dollars in product deals for The Phantom Menace alone, seems so committed to it. It may be a mystery that, like our childhoods and to what extent they can remain inviolate, even a Jedi Knight would be unable to solve.