As any long-suffering Star Wars fan knows, the farce is strong with George Lucas. A man whose obsessive tinkering – among many other things – has been the bane of geekdom since the moment Han didn't shoot first (he totally did). But this time he may have gone too far. With the Blu-ray release of Star Wars today comes more changes to the original trilogy: Ewoks now blink (yeah, cheers for that), Obi-Wan Kenobi's introduction has been tweaked and – most controversial of all – Darth Vader now has an added "no … noooo!" in the final scenes of Return Of The Jedi. The backlash has been biblical.

"This is an abomination!" yells one user on TheForce.net. "I remember when I was proud to be a Star Wars fan …" laments another over on YouTube; all rather standard "screaming into the worldwide abyss" stuff. But there have also been campaigns to boycott the DVDs and, at its most extreme, bombardments of obnoxious outrage via Twitter at George Lucas's daughter, Katie. She eventually ended up taking a break from her account for a few days, lest she receive any more abuse from so-called fans.

However, no matter how much they huff and puff about Lucas's apparent lack of self-awareness, is it really their place to do so? Personally, the changes to Vader's redemption scene appear to have robbed the character of a nuanced, silent sort of dignity – rendering him a petulant shadow of the badass I grew up believing him to be. But then it's not my intellectual property, surely he can do whatever he likes with it – yet does there comes a point where fans become so emotionally invested in your work, that it isn't yours anymore?

Of course, you see this sort of perceived ownership in all forms of art and culture. When it was announced that One Day was being adapted into a film last year, there was an outcry from fans of how they were going to treat "their" book (which got even worse when they got a load of Anne Hathaway's dodgy accent), while you only have to look at Alexandra Burke's X Factor cover of Hallelujah (a song that has achieved "precious" status) a few years ago to see the same thing in music. Speaking earlier this year, author Neil Gaiman even admitted that he had lost a certain sense of control once his book, American Gods, became a success – "it definitely no longer belongs to me", he said. Even so, none of these are on the intergalactic scale of Star Wars.

Perhaps the reason for this is because other fans haven't had their faith tested like Star Wars fans have – who've grown bitter, tired of being taunted by a cruel and malevolent geek God. For just like religion or sport, psychologists say fervent fans bind their identity to a certain cause, sometimes to the point where it comes to define who they are. Therefore, an attack on their cause is an attack on the credibility of their existence and beliefs – not to mention that for most fans, Star Wars represents the embodiment of that most precious thing: their childhood. Which is maybe why science fiction fans (the most fervent of them all) generally abhor change – an irony given the progressive ideals of the genre.

So, should Lucas be more sensitive with what he does with his own work? As another fanboy-baiting hero once said: with great power comes great responsibility. Or should fans just accept it, move on and remember a time when Han shot first? After all, Star Wars is a pop culture machine that stops for no one – constantly moving and picking up new generations on the way. Who's to say that in years to come, geeks won't be taking to internet forums to moan about the good old days when Ewoks just blinked and Vader simply said "no … noooo!"? For Lucas's sake and our own, let's hope that's not the case.