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(I thought Does new Star Wars continuity only affect post-Jedi EU? was going to be along these lines on first read of the title, but this question is different.)

Is there any on-record statement about whether the first six Star Wars movies will be affected by the new films? Might there be some retconning, insertions, new effects etc. added to the original six (and especially the original three) films to tie into or make the new films work?

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ThePopMachine
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    J. J. Abrams actually has fairly extensive plans to tweak The Phantom Menace to fit in better with the new trilogy. He ran through them here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgICnbC2-_Y – Paul D. Waite Sep 08 '14 at 14:55
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    You mean, there will be a new, updated version of the movie out on DVD? Ooh. – Mr Lister Sep 08 '14 at 17:14
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    What do you mean, six Star Wars movies??? – bitmask Sep 09 '14 at 12:33
  • @bitmask: ThePopMachine must have seen them at a festival where each of the three movies screened with an intermission or something. – Paul D. Waite Sep 09 '14 at 13:23
  • @PaulD.Waite: Ha ha, the ole scifi.se there-were-only-three-starwars switcheroo – ThePopMachine Sep 09 '14 at 22:32
  • It's worth noting that even the 6 movies don't quite mesh perfectly. In Return of the Jedi, Leia mentions remembering her mother, who died at a young age. But anyone who paid attention to Revenge of the Sith knows she died right after childbirth. Given how serious they seem to be about making sure the canon is maintained with continuity though, I'll be expecting it to be off only by matters of minutia, which naturally should be clung to for the purpose of, erm, showing who has the bigger lightsaber in matters of trivia. – 0xDAFACADE Sep 14 '14 at 22:19

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I don’t know of any direct statements on the issue, but the press release linked from the other question you mentioned does say:

...the six Star Wars episodes, and the many hours of content... produced in Star Wars: The Clone Wars... are the immovable objects of Star Wars history, the characters and events to which all other tales must align.

Of course, that didn’t stop George Lucas from endlessly f—ing around with the original trilogy every time they got re-released. But it does suggest that new Star Wars content is expected to be consistent with the existing movies and Clone Wars.

And it’s worth noting that Fox still owns the distribution rights to the existing films, so Disney at least can’t can’t unilaterally release amended versions of the existing movies (though history suggests that Fox would have no problems with putting out Super Edition Hyper Fighting versions of the existing films with twelve seconds of amended footage that fits in slightly better with the new trilogy).

Paul D. Waite
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