The exploitation of our nostalgia to sell the new movies and shows is a valid criticism. Touché, SilverWook.
But for me it goes even deeper. The Exorcist and Apocalypse Now were both revised and yet we can still view all versions in modern quality. Neither “Episode IV: A New Hope” nor its 1997 special edition won six academy awards in 1978, Star Wars did.
All versions of Close encounters of the third kind, all versions of Blade Runner… (and what about THX1138? I know it’s not Lucasfilm, but still…)
I’ve brought up CE3K/BR ad nauseum and those other examples just popped into my head.
I’d love it if Warner restored the '71 and '77 versions of THX-1138. Back when the dvd came out in 2004 my roommate picked up the single-disc sku out of curiosity (y’know, the one that had much crazier cover art for some reason?) and was watching it on his computer with headphones. I remember him saying that the cgi wasn’t nearly as jarring in this as it was in Star Wars. So yeah, anecdotal evidence and all, but the cgi being “not as jarring” kinda hurts the chances that anyone would care to see the original version. Not being nearly as well known a movie as American Graffiti is another thing going against it. Graffiti, meanwhile, hasn’t been extensively altered with cgi, so most people probably don’t know it’s not the same version that came out in '73.
Star Wars fulfills both criteria. It’s insanely well known and has been extensively/obviously altered.
Has your friend ever seen the original version of THX? The CGI is jarring as hell to me. 😉
I don’t think he had ever actually seen it before, no. To be fair though, neither had I. Not really, anyway. I think the most I’d seen of THX was one scene late at night on cable back in the 90’s, panned and scanned. For that matter I never even really heard it referenced outside of the connection to George’s company. My uncle randomly asked me back in the mid 90’s if I’d ever seen it (he just called it “THX” of course)* and I also remember seeing a vhs of it on the shelf at an fye or similar type of store around that same time.
Actually, now that I think about it, I did see that Star Wars fan film thing Kevin Smith hosted on Sci-Fi circa 99/2000 where they played the original short film Electronic Labyrinth and talked about how Coppola decided to produce it as a feature.
But this story with my roommate is an interesting example of how, even if you know a film has been altered, not having seen the original version beforehand can provide a totally different experience. How many people now look at the post-97 versions of Star Wars that way?
*Which makes me wonder, was it a more well-known movie than I’m thinking it was? Hearing Billy Dee Williams talk at Celebration Orlando about how he’d known who George was ever since seeing THX-1138 genuinely surprised me.