I disagree because describing the less than 5-10 minutes total of changes to all 350+ minutes of the movies as a “remake” doesn’t seem fair or accurate, even accounting for the flexibility of language.
There were 5-10 minutes of changes in the titles, crawl, and credits for each film alone – you’re excluding all of the parts with actors, dialogue, and special effects! If you break it down shot-by-shot or scene-by-scene, I’d say it’s very safe to say a majority for each film were altered (video or audio) for the Special Editions. Some changes were certainly less noticeable than others (Empire had the most changes numerically, but the changes were more subtle than the jarring scene insertions in Jedi).
The fact that some of the original footage remains more-or-less intact doesn’t really mean much to me. IMO This Island Earth and MST3K: The Movie are definitely different films even though they share quite a lot of footage. One is a classic sci-fi film and one is a farce that puts that classic in a ridiculous light. It’s pretty much exactly the same for the originals and the special editions.
The 1997 versions are the only ones to be have the title “Special Edition” applied to it
I believe that was a marketing decision. The term Special Edition was poison by 2004, and the SE’s were considered by Lucas to be the sole version of the films, so they dropped the term, both to boost sales and to prevent brand confusion.
There are so many versions of Star Wars at this point the idea of calling most of them “Special Editions” increasingly doesn’t make any sense.
In my sense of the term (described earlier), it makes sense. Are you talking about the originals or not? “Special Edition” means “not”, so it works for everything from 1997 onward, with the exception of the GOUT release, which was at least for Star Wars a new edit of the originals that nobody had seen before. If you want to distinguish between Special Edition releases, there’s 97SE, 04SE, 11SE, and 19SE. “Special Edition” is also helpful as a dismissive term. It carries the useful connotation of “Don’t bother with it, it’s not the real thing”. “Want to watch Star Wars on Disney+?” “No, it’s just the Special Edition.” It still works no matter how many times they revise it.