The original trilogy of Star Wars films, spearheaded by George Lucas were critical and commercial successes. However, in 1997 Lucas released the “Special Edition” of the films for the trilogy’s 20th anniversary, which featured extensive changes to the original theatrical cuts.
The original cuts have since become scarce. However, a group of Star Wars fans, known as Team Negative One have reportedly almost completely digitally restored the original cuts in 4K using 35-millimeter prints of the original trilogy.
The project is headed by Robert Williams, who along with his team have spent almost a decade restoring the films.
“They’re not really upset that he made the changes, because some of them are pretty cool and actually make the films better. They’re really upset that he didn’t also release the original version alongside it. Just put two discs in the box. We’d have been happy.”
Williams made the above statement to The New York Times, explaining the motivation behind preserving the original cuts of the trilogy. However, the publication also noted that Team Negative One’s activities were not authorized as they worked with film reels meant to be destroyed or returned. Hence, the legality of Team Negative One’s restored versions of the original trilogy is questionable.
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Given Lucas’ strong feelings about the Special Editions, it is evident that the filmmaker would be unhappy with fans trying to preserve the original cuts, which he referred to as “rough drafts” in the past.
According to reports, Lucas allegedly voiced his disappointment with fans demanding a high-resolution release of the original cuts in the following words:
“Grow up. These are my movies, not yours.”
Similarly, when the National Film Registry aimed to preserve 1977’s Star Wars (later retitled Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope), Lucas reportedly refused to provide them with a copy of the original theatrical release.
Lucas stated that he would no longer authorize the original version’s release, reaffirming that he did not intend for the audience to view the theatrical cuts. After Disney acquired the franchise, Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy also stated that Lucas’s changes to the theatrical cuts would remain untouched. Hence, it is safe to say that Lucas would certainly be unhappy with fans still trying to preserve the original cuts.
Grow up, you’re gonna die soon and your legacy will be entirely in our hands and unlike your wuss ass, we’ve got the balls to make Jar Jar a sith and to let Luke keep a pair into his old age. We also have the balls to tear down the bullshit copyright regime that keeps you afloat and a lot else besides, but you’ll be dead so nevermind that.
Stfu
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It’s more that those formats are all very lossy, and all of them even had a few changes, notably the perspective shift that comes from tacking on “Episode IV” to the crawl. The 2004 Box Set, IIRC, was George’s only crack in the armor, and it’s literally nothing more than a “STFU, you spoiled babies” rip of those same laserdiscs to DVD.
The teams in the story are trying to find film prints, which should have enough data to make a good 4K transfer with only “cleanup” instead of the more dramatic efforts needed to upscale SD copies or extract the guts of the originals from SE copies.
George Lucas has the most ridiculous beard. It makes his chin look so weird.
The beard is weird - MGK
You know, I was never a huge fan of Star Wars, but when I heard about George Lucas’s petty efforts to keep modifying the original theatrical version of Star Wars, I downloaded 4K77 and Harmy’s Despecialized Edition out of pure spite.
“Grow up. These are my movies, not yours.”
No George, they’re Disney’s films now. You sold them. Grow up.
I like how south park put it. You made them, gave them to us, released them out. We watched them over and over, they became part of our lives, who we are, core memories. In essence Lucas may own the rights, but in a different way the public owns the movies now, they’ve become a core part of our society.
I forget the original quote from them, but essentially Lucas should be happy we’ve taken public ownership of them, happy something he created has a literal impact on society. Instead we have a petulant child who is upset his fans did something amazing
This sentiment seems invisible to rich people who published creative works. You are free to not publish your work if you want to control every copy of it 100% and have no-one work with it in unexpected ways. Grow up George, these movies all for all of us now.
“Grow up. These are my movies, not yours.”
It’s an interesting debate - they are his (or Disney’s) films, for now, but like Mikey Mouse, they will eventually be public domain and become ours. However, that’s still a way off and, by then, it will be harder to find the originals in their best condition, so masters have to be made now. I assume Disney have already done this and have it all stashed in a vault but, unless they have a legal loophole after Lucas dies, we may never get them. So Team Negative One are doing important work and, if there is no intention to release them again, it is hardly impacting anyone’s bottom line.
as a writer/artist/performer - I disagree with Lucas. There are many parts at which each artist - whether actor, scene painter, LX, director or producer has to relinquish their control over their work and let it be.
It’s more commonly heard in theatre: the tradition of opening night being the point where the director relinquished control and now it’s the actors show is very passionately held. If things go wrong and need fixing then the Stage Manager steps in, but otherwise it’s no longer the directors purview.
In film the director over sees editing and may even have a hand in distribution- but once an audience sees it - it’s now the directors work (past tense) and - regardless of capitalistic machinations w/r/t copyright, licensing, distribution- the art (present tense) now only exists in the reception of the audience, as you can’t experience a movie without watching it - therefore the act of watching the movie is the experience of the movie - therefore it is the audience’s domain.
They’ll be in the public domain for infinity years, which is more than creator lifetime + xxx years. Works wanting copyright protection must be forced to submit copies to a permanent archive.
Are they even his movies anymore? Doesn’t Disney own all things star wars? Including the original cut?
I have been wanting to see the original versions again ever since he released the special editions. Just like the people at Negative One I don’t hate the special editions, but it would be nice to occasionally see the version I remember from childhood before he slapped all that crappy cartoonish CG garbage on there… Beloved old movies from the 70s and 80s do not need computer generated cartoon characters!!!
Is there a complete list of changes done to the original by reinterpretation?
Here’s a fairly exhaustive list. It’s a pretty long read lol
❤️
🤯didn’t expect so many versions, they would make soooo much money selling a overpriced special super edition with all versions, lol
That’s literally what people have been asking for for nearly 30 years lol when I got the special editions they were still on VHS!
That’s it - I’d not watch the original edition exclusively but I’d like the option of watching the films I saw in the cinema when I was a kid. I won’t be buying the OT on Blu-ray until then.
Look for Harmy’s Despecalized Edition.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UoGdxh7qZcqp8L-aJkFj_rCcjKf-xlCM4Fjvux3w6zg/pub
He actually did the same thing in 2004 to the movie he made before Star Wars which was THX 1138. That one is even worse with sharp cg animations and backgrounds laid on top of grainy film stock from like 1969… I don’t know why he thinks that looks good at all or that no one would notice lol
Makes me glad I haven’t seen that butchery and I should, hopefully, manage to avoid it.
I was really excited for the THX-1138 re-release and was shocked at how poorly it was done. There’s a scene with a CGI car that was so egregiously out of place with the rest of the film that I still remember it all these years later. I think Lucas spent too many years surrounded by sycophants.
The changes were REALLY jarring and honestly kind of ruined what was an amazing film. I think you must be right about the sycophants because I still can’t imagine why anyone would ever approve this or agree to release it lol
How do you think 1976 you would respond to that? Or 1979 you? Or 1982 you?
Take the “Han shot first” scene. If you had REALLY wanted a reactive Han instead of an active Han, you didn’t need computer tech to do that in 1976.
You made a creative choice, based on who you were at the time. Reversing that, poorly, decades later, is invalidating your own artistic vision as it stood originally.
So no, it’s not "your"movie they’re preserving. They’re preserving the original artistic vision which you have now lost.
I don’t think Lucas cares much what 1976 Lucas thought either. Nothing matters to him except what he thinks is cool right now
Nothing matters to him except what he thinks is cool right now
Are we still talking about Lucas, or have we slipped over to Musk?
Having your head so far up your own ass you can’t understand that people like your movie as it was originally created so much and are willing to buy it over and over again for decades. Hell I’m sure a lot of those people would buy both versions. What a huge slap in the face to Ivrvin Kershner and Richard Marquand who did a fantastic job only to be screwed.
Hell I’m sure a lot of those people would buy both versions.
My wallet is ready!
I’ve never seen any of them. I’m like less then 1% in the world I assume.
you can’t understand that people like your movie as it was originally created
George Lucas has said in the past that he had bigger plans for the original film(s), but the technology to pull it off didn’t exist yet. So he had to make do with what effects he could. He even invented many film effects for the original trilogy, creating his own visual effects studio to pull it off.
In the '90s, he realized CG technology had advanced enough that he could finally fill in the gaps that he couldn’t do back in the '70s, and so he released the Special Edition trilogy, which he considered the final and complete masterpiece.
Of course, a lot of people had experienced 2 decades of the original Star Wars trilogy by that point, so adding changes now seemed like inappropriately extending what was already considered a masterpiece.
George Lucas was never satisfied with his films anyway. He kept changing the story, even as they were filming, and it was purely by accident that they ended up being a massive hit. (Which is probably why his prequel trilogy was so hated by fans) I remember reading once that his original plot starred Luke Starkiller, and Leia was supposed to be General Organa and not related to Luke. Also, Luke was originally supposed to fall to the dark side and become the new villain, replacing Darth Vader. Mark Hamill was excited about that twist, until it was changed for a happier ending. He would later go on to play villains in other films, being famously known as the voice of Joker from Batman The Animated Series.
Also, I watched a documentary on VHS back in the early '90s where George Lucas laid out his plan for a 9-movie series. The first trilogy would be about the crumbling of the Galactic Republic, then the second trilogy would be about rebel forces fighting against the new Empire, then the final trilogy would be about rebuilding the Galactic Republic.
But George Lucas thought it would be boring watching 3 whole films about a government slowly collapsing, so he decided to jump into the meat of the conflict and start with the middle trilogy. It was a wild success, even if the plot kept changing as he was filming, and so when he got to the prequel trilogy, he decided to make it about one of the biggest characters from his original trilogy - Vader. Which changed the focus of the prequel films and made them less boring than just a series about space politics, but not nearly as interesting as his original trilogy.
Star Wars fans are a pretty contentious bunch, and the hate for the prequel series caused George Lucas to give up his dream of making 9 films. He eventually sold the franchise to Disney, who immediately started up their own sequel trilogy, plus a ton of spinoff TV series. And it’s been pretty strange since then. Episode 7 was basically a modern remake of episode 4, to draw back the fans of the original trilogy. Then Rian Johnson was given the reins for Episode 8, and he hated seeing the same cast of characters in every Star Wars film, so he tried to branch out away from familiar faces. It didn’t go well, so Episode 9 shoe-horned in as many familiar characters and stories as it could, to win back fans. The whiplash between films made for a pretty awful and disjointed series.
Personally, I’m on board with the idea that the original trilogy (in it’s unedited state) is the ONLY Star Wars series. The rest, I just consider to be non-canon fan films. There’s so much that could’ve been done to add onto the original series. And even the official book series (before Disney marked them as non-canon) had great additions to the plot. But then we got a prequel series about the biggest badass in the galaxy… and it turns out he’s just a whiny brat who’s manipulated into being a bad guy. Then the sequel series was all over the place. And the spinoff TV shows have been hit-or-miss. So yeah, I consider them all non-canon, including George’s Special Edition. And I look forward to seeing the original unedited trilogy in 4K one day.
Really well said and I feel much the same. I honestly like to subscribe to Darth Jar Jar and ignore the sequel trilogies after VII.
There’s a couple other really good pieces of Star Wars media - stuff that has little to do with Disney or Lucas. The first and second KOTOR games are extremely well written stories (BioWare even snuck in the first canon queer character - there’s a lesbian romance option!)
The Thrawn trilogy is also decent.
The idea that Disney gets to mandate what’s “canon” about an entirely imaginary universe is laughable to me. Corporations don’t own our imagination.
Franklin Veaux (author) said words to this effect on Quora: Your book and your characters may be your baby, but when you release them to the world, they are now no longer under your control. They are subject to whatever interpretation your readers use and assign to them. You may have created them, but now they’ve grown up and moved out. Let it go.
Personally, I think it’s because he wants to erase the contribution of his ex-wife Marcia Lucas. He’s just that petty.
By all accounts she saved the original trilogy from George’s input.
And she got an Oscar for it while he did not.
that boomer’s masculinity must be in shambles.
If your work of media gets so huge it changes global society, your work of media is now the property of everyone.
How did SW change the global society?
Thanks.
I’ve said it for 30 years, Marcia Lucas made Star Wars great. George Lucas has too many bad ideas to be allowed free reign. It’s why the prequels sucked (shut up the prequels suck, they have 10 years of supplementary story telling to flesh out the one-dimensional characters and terrible dialogue).
“Grow up, this was my vindictive swipe at my ex-wife to stop her royalties.”
You know George, they really aren’t very good films. I don’t want the originals because they were good, I want the originals because those afternoons spent sitting in the theater in 1977 (and 1980, and 1983) were memorable experiences for me, and the original cuts evoke those times in a visceral way.
It’s not about seeing “your” movies, it’s about reliving parts of my youth the way I remember them. These are my memories, not yours. Grow up.
It’s less about him growing up, per se, and completely about his tiny little chub never being as enormous as he wishes it were.
They were never “his” films, to be fair. As soon as he got a team started on it, his “ownership” of the outcome of all that creative collaboration rapidly diminished to being little more than his name in the credits and copyrights — thank fucking god. The meatsac is a shit director, and even shittier writer, and apparently a complete waste of time. IMHO, the films “belong” to those that actually made them what they are to millions upon millions of fans: the actual artists involved and the fans. Full stop.
Fuck off, Mucas.
they really aren’t very good films
Depends on the measuring stick, I’d say.
On some, sure, might fall short. On others, it blows most other movies out of the water.
I agree with the sentiment of your last sentence.
As far as cinematic technical works go, they’re pretty good
As far as a serious story/plot go, they’re terrible
As far as schlocky Sci-Fi go, nothing beats the original trilogy, but the second trilogy is just as schlocky but with a higher budget
in celebration of May the 4th I’ve been rewatching the originals and the prequels - and the writing in both is uh, surprisingly bad. Set designs, costumes, world building, and the overall presentation are amazing! but the dialogue and motivations are sometimes downright laughable. It feels like George had a great idea of the key plot points but then instead of writing a story to fill in the gaps he opted to put in 3-4 action sequences where the plot should’ve been, so now the story goes from “hmm the jedi council are acting odd towards me, i’m starting to question their motives” to “i need to kill children to defeat death because this clearly evil guy told me so” within a single scene. I know prequels are a cheap shot but this extreme example highlights the issue rather well
don’t get me wrong, i still like star wars! but i don’t watch those movies for the writing lmao
It feels like George had a great idea of the key plot points but then
Lucas’s talent is in big ideas, great concepts, how a story might fit together, not in silly details!
He should be like, a director or something…
(It is funny though that his actual profession so clearly impacts his writing)
this is exactly why it’s rare for directors to also have written the script for the movies they direct in the filmmaking world - it’s easy to get married to your idea and fall flat on the execution, because who is going to tell you to stop? The only people that could are producers - but they don’t really care about the writing either, just the money to be made, and if “ehh” writing got George that far then the second Star Wars became a thing he got full immunity from criticism
I think my second favorite thing about Star Wars is the moment in Luke’s hero’s journey when he goes from knight on an adventure to learning to forgive the most hated man in the galaxy when he’s standing on the walkway with Vader after he surrenders in rotj. I’m not saying he’s Shakespeare but he has some good ideas.
“hmm the jedi council are acting odd towards me, i’m starting to question their motives” to “i need to kill children to defeat death because this clearly evil guy told me so” within a single scene.
Probably someone reminded him of lengths and whatnot and that Vader is evil and whatnot and instead of doing a bit of rewriting for the earlier parts, George pivoted hard, haha. Or cut out a third of the movie.
