I have the original SW on VHS, DVD and blue-ray, and every added animal, character, ship and sound effect drives me bonkers! The original is a classic. The added elements are just a cheesy distraction. If they had a blue-ray without the extras I would gladly exchange it.
Hollywood has trouble understanding how powerful simple understated scenes can be. I have seen this often in U.S. releases of Japanese anime and movies. Some of the classic Ghibli films are prime examples, Disney being the culprit. Japanese producers are masters at using well placed silence. Disney licensed the Ghibli movies and was convinced that there was too much silence and added music and dialogue, ruining the impact of some scenes. There was also an excellent English dub of My Neighbour Totoro before Disney licensed it. They decided to redub the entire film to give it that Disney spin. The original dub is only on VHS now which is a real shame.
A little off topic, but pretty much all of the Ghibli movies are great family films. Any child would love My Neighbour Totoro or Kiki's Delivery Service. (To their credit, the English voice acting in Kiki is top notch.) Movies like Laputa (Castle in the Sky), Princess Monoke and Howl's Moving Castle will appeal to adults as well. And if you want to watch a truly heart wrenching animated film, watch Grave of the Fireflies about two children trying to survive in WWII Japan (considered by some as one of the best war films made). My personal preference is to listen in the original language with subtitles as Japan has some of the best voice actors around, but all of these are available in English. Grave of the Fireflies is on AppleTV and YouTube and may be on other services as well.
