Back in the 1990s, well before The Phantom Menace hit theaters, I got the idea that the prequel trilogy would be a love triangle. The thing that drove Anakin to the Dark Side was that his best friend, Obi-Wan Kenobi, was having a fling with his wife.

Then the prequels came out and that... wasn't what we got... though it can be read into the story if you watch the second and third movies carefully.

I wish Lucasfilm would move these Anniversary releases to earlier in the year and secure a week or two of premium screens, I'd be far more likely to see them. Decided to pass on ROTS, I have good memories of seeing it several times with friends and I don't feel compelled to see it by myself on a regular screen.

But yeah, the prequels haven't budged an inch in my estimation of them. As sloppy and incoherent as the storyline for the sequel trilogy was, they're still an enjoyable watch. (and I'm glad they made them)

I got an idea - Rogue One: Special Edition next year for it's 10yr anniversary. Put 10-15m into it, have Gilroy edit this version, add an opening crawl, update the Tarkin scenes - boom! Late August/early Sept to secure a few weeks of premium screens. I'd be in for that!

I'm perfectly happy with Star Wars beginning and ending with the Original Trilogy.

Return of the Jedi was no great movie but fine, it ended the trilogy in a satisfactory manner.

For me, everything afterward was pretty much shit. The EU, the prequels, the sequels, etc. In my opinion, Star Wars are these fun movies from the late 70s/early 80s that was just never meant to be this expansive universe.

Except for the MMO and Knights of the Old Republic games. Those were masterful. Leagues beyond what Lucasfilm dipshits were capable of.

This current generation and future generations deserve something better than panicked aging executives trying to reverse engineer beloved Genx/Millennial properties, and then having the temerity to act surprised when they don't land.

This was screened, and Kathleen Kennedy introduced it, confirming it was an authorized screening
https://www.the-independent.com/arts...-b2769363.html

BFI released a video on YouTube discussing the print, and why it's special.

But how can this be? Lucas himself assured us that no version of the original movie exists anymore!

To be fair, he said the original negative no longer exists, which is technically true, since it was recut to make the 1997 SEs, and you typically want to use the negative as the source, but it doesn't matter anymore, since the cut stems undoubtedly still exist, and so could be separately scanned and reassembled.

So it was a sort of claim that was technically true, and sounded technical enough to be a valid excuse if you didn't know anything about digital film restoration/remastering. But Lucas did try to repress all prints and other releases of the original editions while he owned Lucasfilm, and up to now Disney's Lucasfilm hasn't indicated they'd act any differently. This could be a testing of the waters, so to speak, on how fans react, and how Lucas himself reacts.

Fixed.

Here's the Kathleen Kennedy intro/interview:

If I had been at that screening I would have ruined the movie for everyone there by standing up and yelling "Maclukney" right before Han shoots Greedo.

As was always Lucas’s original vision. The technology just didn’t exist in 1977 to have Greedo say “Maclunkey!”

I’m going to get a little woo here and say that we’re trying to manifest a Blu-ray release of the unaltered OT for the 50th.

Now is the time to do it, before us GenX'ers start to die off.

Would be nice and I could finally retire my laserdisc rips.

I'm only 51!!

But, yeah, I would like to enjoy the original versions while my vision and hearing are still passable (I have bifocals and hearing aids now).

Save it for the "make you feel OLD" thread, PAL!

It used to drive me nuts that I couldn't get the original versions of the OT in decent quality on disc, but I now have the Harmy Despecialized Editions and am happy with those.

There was a write up by The Hollywood Reporter who reported a writer from the Telegraph that saw that screening. And that writer wasn't a fan of it. He said it looks "Terrible" He's probably getting shit on by Star Wars purists.

Feel free to look up his exact words here. The original Telegraph source is pay walled.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/mo...ew-1236291808/

It sounds like people have just gotten so used to all the modern tweaks Lucas has made over the years that they were surprised by how plain the original looks and sounds.

Bill Hunt of The Digital Bits is actually offended that they published that aggregated story.

X - Formerly Twitter

That's why the Despecialized and fan edits generate so much buzz. Tweaking things like matte lines, SFX, weird shots or audio works but altering them (Greedo shooting first, Jabba showing up, dance number in ROTJ) are two very different discussions, IMO. A case can be made for the first, but the second (ooh rocks in front of R2, wow!) is just silly.

That's actually an excellent point. We're going to reach a point where no one cares anymore because the younger generations grew up with the Special Editions and don't have the same attachment to the unaltered trilogy.

No. It's just people don't know the difference between a vintage theatrical print and a restored transfer from the original negative. The article is bad faith click bait that pretends that the print in question is what the original cuts would look like if they were actually released on home video. Instead, as everyone with half a brain knows, they would look exactly like like current 4k transfers, with all the cleanup and stabilization, etc. that one expects, but with a handful of older effects shots.

It's always interesting where the line is between a "remaster' and a "tweak" or "alteration" is.

For the most part, people don't seem to mind fixing effects. I'm thinking of examples like Blade Runner: The Final Cut, where the scan was so clean that the wires on the flying cars were visible, so they digitally erased them, or putting Joanna Cassidy's face over the stunt double when Zhora is crashing through glass. Or when Star Trek: The Next Generation was remastered in HD, and they re-did effects in HD, some looking significantly different.

Up until the Special Editions, most people didn't mind, if they even noticed, the small number of tweaks Lucas did to Star Wars, with the most noticeable being the "Episode IV: A New Hope" addition to the crawl. Maybe some purists chafed at that, but for most fans, the reaction was "yeah, that makes sense, what with the new numbering in the newer films." It wasn't until he made a massive amount of changes all at once, and buried all previous cuts, that fans got upset.

Personally, I wouldn't mind a cut that was just cleaned-up effects, but like with how Blade Runner had 5 separate cuts on one release, there's value in releasing the original cut as-is for historical value, and if the only choices are to view the 1977 cut or 2019 Final SE, then I'll

https://www.movie-censorship.com/report.php?ID=4589
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Change...rs_re-releases

The difference is that when Lucas reworks a Star Wars movie, he memory holes the older versions.

Paramount re-did the effects of Star Trek TOS, but the original versions are still on the blu-rays and it was also released on DVD twice in good quality, albeit 480p. And other films like CE3K, Blade Runner, and Apocalypse Now are likewise readily available in their original versions, so if you want to see the original cuts, they're still available.

And on top of everything else, Lucas also tends to make some really baffling changes to the films like adding screams when none existed before, Greedo shooting first, the unnecessary Jabba scene, etc. etc.

I also think that, from a historical standpoint, it's a crime to redo the special effects in the OT and make the originals unavailable because, even though they may rough in some spaces, they were groundbreaking at the time and an important part of cinema history.