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,
You’d have to start with 1981 then. Which wasn’t called a Special Edition either.
I would not call anything a Special Edition that did not change a majority of the original film, so the 81 changes don’t qualify. Obviously we don’t share the same definition, and you are free to call the 81 revision a Special Edition, but I won’t.
To be clear, I’m not sure exactly where the line should be. What if 40% of a film were altered? But I do know that I’m comfortable that changing a majority of the film makes it a different film.
the idea that most of the movie got changed really doesn’t make any sense.
There’s the crux of the problem. Most of the movie simply was changed. Whether it made sense to change most of the movie is beside the point.
Fixing VFX, re-adding deleted scenes, and making VFX content changes on top of the film restoration isn’t the same as writing a comedy script and performing it non-stop over the soundtrack. One is a satirical transformation of the work into a completely different thing. The other is the 1997 release, named as “Special Edition”
I agree it’s not a perfect comparison. There’s a big difference between intentionally telling jokes and unintentional cringe humor. If MST3K: The Movie had been written by Sacha Baron Cohen, it might be a better comparison.
All the other editions of the film are just that - variations. It makes much more sense to simply refer to the year their visual changes were adopted than to call half of the editions by a name they never had.
It’s unhelpful to call all thirteen versions “just variations”, because they are easily and logically grouped into two sets. One group of revisions changed less than 5% of the original film. Another group of revisions changed well over 50% of the original film, but are within 5% of each other. One set of revisions centers on the “original films”, and one centers on the “special editions”. What terms to use two describe these two different groups of revisions is left as an exercise for the reader.
but a blanket condemnation on post-release changes in general, applied to ANY film ,and not just Star Wars. I get it.
Not quite. I’m honestly not sure if any other film has had a majority of it altered and released again, except for a This Island Earth type scenario. Colorized films would qualify, I guess. But not Blu-ray releases with an extra scene. The Special Editions are different from most other films both because of the scale of their changes, and the unavailability of the originals.