Star Wars fans baffled by recast of major character: 'I prefer the OG'

Star Wars fans are baffled by a major character recast from the original trilogy.

Years after their original release, George Lucas famously began making small tweaks and alterations to his original Star Wars trilogy.

These small changes became larger ones, to the point where fans consider the more recent releases of the films to be much different from the originals.

Some of them were also made to add some consistency with the prequel films, such as adding Hayden Christensen as a Force ghost at the end of Return of the Jedi, or adding Ian McDiarmid to The Empire Strikes Back.

Another change that seems a little baffling is replacing Jason Wingreen’s Boba Fett voice with Temuera Morrison.

Wingreen voiced four lines for Boba Fett in the theatrical release of The Empire Strikes Back, but his lines were replaced by Temuera Morrison for the 2004 DVD release of the original trilogy.

Here’s a video to compare the two versions:

The change was made because the prequel trilogy establishes Boba as a clone of his father, Jango, who Morrison played in Attack of the Clones.

So it just adds a bit more consistency between both trilogies.

“Morrison does the job, but I think Wingreen goes a bit further and has more nuance,” wrote one comment on Reddit reacting to the change.

“The ‘as you wish,’ sounds like he's disappointed about having to follow the no disintegration rule. The ‘what if he doesn't survive,’ has some more attitude and shows a lot that he's not afraid to mouth off to Vader like that.”

“The original is better in my opinion,” another comment wrote. “As much as I like Morrison, he ends up sounding generic and tacked on here oddly enough.”

“I honestly don't even care who is better, you shouldn't alter classic films like this, cause most people won't even know they're watching the modified version,” wrote a third comment.

I’m with the crowd on this one that Wingreen’s version is better. I grew up with the 1997 VHS Star Wars releases, so while there are a few alterations I am already used to, Temuera Morrison’s Boba Fett will never sound right to me.

The worst thing about this is that unaltered theatrical releases are hard to watch nowadays. They haven’t been officially released since a limited 2004 DVD release, and Disney seems reluctant to put them out on Blu Ray or on its streaming service.

There are fan efforts to make them available, but these are unofficial and hard to find. Hopefully one day Disney will release them to the public.