Theatrical ESB. No shriek as Luke drops down in Cloud City. No wimpy "tell my star destroyer to prepare for my arrival" by someone who's clearly not James Earl Jones. No pacing issues with "new" scenes of Vader flying into his star destroyer. No superfluous robots in the background.
BTW, why is there nobody ever standing up for irvin kershner's director rights with this movie? ESB was just as much his baby, Lucas was almost completely hands off on the directing of this. He came to set maybe 3 times according to Irvin. He was NOT a "proxy" for George the way Marquand apparently was in ROTJ. The script was initially written by Leigh Brackett, and then by Kasdan with Lucas and Irvin in a penthouse where they locked themselves away and wrote it. It wasn't an "all George" movie - George contributed exactly what he's good at, the universe and general story, without having to direct actors or write dialogue. Just monkeying around with this movie endlessly years later, is something people would scream bloody murder if someone else did it to a respected director on a beloved movie. I've never heard Kershner complain so maybe he doesn't mind, but I can't help but wonder what would happen if he said "don't change my movie!".
While I dislike a lot of ANH changes, I can't deny that movie is more or less George's movie, being the writer, director, and a primary producer along with Kurtz (though everybody seems to have whitewashed out the rather prominent role of George's ex-wife).
ESB is just as much, if not more, Irvin Kershner's movie, and I wish that was respected more. One of the reasons George hated the studio system was because of the way they could monkey around with his films, but here he is doing it to someone else's.
