Empire Strikes Back Is Authentic

Though it usually makes little sense to dispute the judgments made in an arts review, in the case of "The Empire Falls Short" (Feb. 27), Benjamin Cavell's substantive mistakes mar his aesthetic evaluations. I would agree with his assertion that computer-generated scenes seem jarringly incongruous with the charm of the original Star Wars movies. However, Mr. Cavell's main source of disappointment--the new footage of the wampa creature on Hoth--is actually not a computer-generated (CG) creation. Rather, just as in the good old days of film-making, an actor got dressed up in a wampa outfit to shoot the new scenes.

Furthermore, it is not so much the use of CG editing itself which is disturbing, but rather how it is used. In the Star Wars: Special Edition, we "purists" feel more than "slight resentment" at certain CG effects because they change more than cosmetics. The altered Han Solo-Greedo scene, for example, revises Han's behavior; and by implication his character, and some of the new Mos Eisley scenes add humor where none existed before. By contrast, the minor changes made in Empire were minor: the Cloud City additions are merely cosmetic back-ground elaborations, and--contrary to the reviewer's assertion--in no way was the pacing of the wampa scene changed (the musical score and cuing, for example, remain identical). Mr. Cavell did miss the one instance in which the re-release altered the original pacing: Vader's leaving in his shuttle after his duel with Luke, but once again there was little or no CG here; rather, the (offending) scenes included footage removed from Return of the Jedi.

I hope that next time Mr. Cavell will check his sources before touching a subject with such emotional resonance for so many, for he is certainly right that these movies were perhaps the major cultural event of our generation. --Gene Koo '97