25 Years of the Special Edition

I remember…

In 1994 there was a magazine called Science Fiction Universe and the first issue had a cover story stating that the next Star Wars trilogy was only three years away.

Someone please correct me if I’m wrong, but the 1995 Faces/THX vhs of the OT was literally advertised as “The Original Version, One Last Time.” For whatever reason, I don’t think I’d put it together that it meant George would be making changes to the films.

In November of 1996 I saw Star Trek: First Contact on opening night (with vfx by John Knoll!) while my mom took my sister to see Jingle All The Way, which of course co-starred Jake Lloyd not long before he would be cast as a young Anakin.

When we met up in the parking lot afterwards, they mentioned that they saw a preview in front of Jingle All The Way announcing that the Star Wars movies were going to be released in theaters again starting in January.

This was news to me.

I also vaguely remember them saying something about there being new special effects, and at some point in January I very clearly remember seeing an ad on tv with the “praxis shockwave” added to the Death Star explosion.

Anyway, I remember my mom taking me to see ANH on opening weekend. Maybe one or two of my friends was with me. I somehow didn’t notice the change to the Han/Greedo scene until almost a year later watching it on letterboxed vhs. The newly added Jabba scene kinda overshadowed it anyway. I always loved how funny and goofy and cartoony this cg Jabba looked and kinda missed it when the model was redone for the dvd in 2004.

My mom took me to see Empire a week or so after it opened in late February. It was during the week, so it was a much different experience than the huge crowd for ANH.

The thing that still sticks out in my memory about RotJ, which I saw with some friends on opening weekend in mid March, was how LOUD Luke’s lightsaber was. I was eleven (closer to twelve) and had seen the movies multiple times either on USA Network or on vhs, so pretty much all of the changes were noticeable to me. The new piece of music John Williams wrote for the ending felt much more epic and went along well with the sweeping new Galactic Celebration montage.

Of course, in the years since I’ve come to appreciate and mainly prefer the original versions that much more, maybe because they’ve been suppressed by the very man who created them.

As cool as it was for me as a kid growing up in the 90’s to see these three films I’d known as classics for the very first time on the big screen with updated technology, I think George would’ve done better to leave well enough alone and not change a thing.

But in November of ‘98, as I watched that first teaser for TPM and saw the newer Lucasfilm logo and cg dewbacks and rontos, I got the feeling deep down that the Special Edition was going to be considered the “official” version of the OT going forward.

Still, I never would’ve imagined that George would not only make further revisions (if only logical to make the OT of a piece with the prequels) but also take such a disdainful view of the unaltered versions. The enthusiasm and ingenuity demonstrated by the community on these forums is what brought me here in the first place and I am grateful to have found fellow fans who care about preserving the legacy of this franchise.

We only have HD versions of the 97 Star Wars and Empire due to fan preservations. Not just the original but the 1997 cuts only exist on laserdisc.

Lucasfilm is only interested in the current version that would be the 2020 4K cut. Its funny how the 20th anniversary Special Edition is also not available on blu-ray.

Its ditto on theatrical Phantom Menace without cgi Yoda, it exists on laserdisc and fans did a 35mm preservation because Lucasfilm can’t be bothered to release the theatrical.

THX 1138 and American Graffiti are also probably a lost cause until some fan restores them. I’ve written Lucasfilm off, They are only interested in Disney Star Wars not in catalog releases of Lucas movies.

25 years of this limbo, oh well.

I had some serious deja vu feels reading this, and I thought I’d already posted in here recently, but couldn’t find the post, or I was going a little crazy! I’d posted it in here instead, which says much of what of you guys did.

But I’ll say this part in here too: I do find it ironic that many 1997 Special Edition fans having to come here and look around for those preservation projects, especially given attitudes, insults, and actions of many of those early SE fans back in the day to fans of the theatrical cuts.

All a long time now ago now, yet still feels fresh in the memory.

That said, it would be great to see all the differing cuts of all the Star Wars films put up in HD quality on Disney+ in that “Vintage Star Wars” section, if nothing else.

Emre1601 said:

😄, Juno.

We must all be a little crazy! I forgot to include this in my earlier post:

WookieeWarrior77 said:

Also of note, in this NY Times article from 25 years ago today, it reads,
“But the temptation will be to use effects because they can be used, to revel in technique rather than story. Mr. Lucas’s films have mostly avoided that temptation, but is it possible that with the tinkering in this ‘‘Special Edition,’’ he may have been slightly lured by the dark side of the Force (and its marketing potential)?”

Hmmm…

That is an impressive prophecy about that particular temptation. I found and read the full article:

https://www.nytimes.com/1997/01/31/movies/star-wars-salutes-a-brave-old-world.html

The author is strong with the Force. Lured by the dark side of the Force, Lucas was. “Let go”, he could not.

That was a pleasant flashback read, and obviously an insightful article. I did re-read your author line post in the voice of Yoda! I am surprised you didn’t include “Begun the unending Special Edition alterations, had”, or a similar line. 😃

The Special Editions were the first Star Wars movies I saw in the theater, so it was very exciting at the time. The new scenes and special effects initially seemed awesome. I didn’t even notice Han not shooting first when I saw it either. I bought the soundtrack to the ROTJ special edition release, which included Jedi Rocks.

In retrospect, the only special edition changes I actually like are the new establishing shots that flesh out Cloud City. I also think the new Wampa footage is okay, but unnecessary. Everything else either completely sucks (Han shooting first, Jabba in Episode IV, Jedi Rocks, etc.) or is just way too over-indulgent (new Mos Eisley footage).

What’s really ironic is how the 90s CGI has ended up aging even worse than much of the original practical effects from the 70s/80s. The Jabba scene in Episode IV is particularly bad, and the 2004(?) redo isn’t much better.

Also, the Special Editions presented a great opportunity to fix a lot of VFX issues with the original release. They did this to some extent, but inexplicably ignored some particularly bad green-screen shots, like in the rancor fight. Shots like those were ideal candidates for touching up in a later re-release, but instead they decided to edit Han’s character arc.

Looking back, it feels like George Lucas (and many other directors) just went wild after they saw Jurassic Park. They were like “Holy shit! We can just do anything now!!”. Except they seemed to have overlooked the fact that Jurassic Park used a careful combination of practical effects and CGI. In particular, many of the memorable close-up shots of the dinosaurs were practical effects. CGI was often used for shots where the dinosaurs were far away or moving fast. And very often, the CGI shots were used in dark or dimly lit environments (T-Rex at night, raptors in dimly lit kitchen). But Lucas thought he could just throw in close-ups of a giant, slow-moving CGI slug in a brightly lit Mos Eisley space port in broad daylight, and it would just all come out fine.

I think it goes back to the real problem that the 90s CGI effects weren’t there to improve things. Old elements that could have been improved or cleaned up were left because they didn’t intend to. It was just a way to do some proof of concept ideas (and money raising) for The Phantom Menace. Plus the marketing angle of course after the brand had become more associated with games and novels. 25 years of this crap just for a better box office in 1999.

Something that amazes me with all the tweaks to the OT is the scene in ANH where Vader is talking with Tarkin and he stops talking and then a few seconds later he is shaking his hand to accentuate what he is saying (but he is no longer talking).
The first time I saw Adywan’s Revisited I jumped to that scene to see if it was fixed.

https://youtu.be/IhrTfi_XziA

“Star Wars Special Edition” for me will always be an event first and foremost. They’ve long since stopped calling it that so for me the ongoing alterations are almost a separate matter that just happened to start here. It wasn’t until a few years later when a box set with all the alterations simply going by “Star Wars” did I realize they were trying to make this a permanent thing.

But when I hear “Star Wars Special Edition” I remember not only finally being to see the movies on the big screen, it brought the entire magic of big enthusiastic crowds and pop culture saturation along with it.

Okay so speaking of the event itself… from what I can remember I only saw ‘ANH’ at the time and it was cool. There was so much merch but the Dorito’s Tazo collection and all the Galoob stuff is what I remember the most. But back then I had the 1995 videos and so did others (cropped), or the 1992 ‘Fox Videos’ version with white borders (widescreen). That was still Star Wars for a while. Nobody could have suspected that LFL was slowly and surely drawing its plans against us…

I also remember wondering if the special edition would be considered the official version going forward but seeing that first TPM teaser on Entertainment Tonight in November of ‘98 pretty definitively answered that question for me.

Do you think LFL/Disney would ever commission ILM to do a complete re-do of the SE? Re-rendering the ‘97 cg shots at late 2000’s / early 2010’s quality would not only be cost-effective but also wouldn’t exceed the resolution of the ST and the cg wouldn’t go from ‘99 to ‘05 quality only to revert to ‘97 quality for modern viewers watching the saga in official order for the first time.

Before you say “but what about ‘04 Jabba?”, well, I still think the ‘97 version looked better.

Even though I prefer the original versions, the SE era was special to me since that was more or less the time of my Star Wars upbringing (I wasn’t around during the original run). I saw the SE of ANH in theaters (still have the ticket somewhere actually) but I was still pretty young so I can’t remember much of it but the POTF 2 figures, Micro Machine sets, and all sorts of late 90s Star Wars paraphernalia has definitely stayed with me. The ‘95 set was the first time I owned them on video and naturally didn’t really know especially at that age the true meaning and impact the words “One Last Time” actually had. It was an exciting time but bittersweet too in retrospect.

WookieeWarrior77 said:

Fang Zei said:

I also remember wondering if the special edition would be considered the official version going forward but seeing that first TPM teaser on Entertainment Tonight in November of ‘98 pretty definitively answered that question for me.

Do you think LFL/Disney would ever commission ILM to do a complete re-do of the SE? Re-rendering the ‘97 cg shots at late 2000’s / early 2010’s quality would not only be cost-effective but also wouldn’t exceed the resolution of the ST and the cg wouldn’t go from ‘99 to ‘05 quality only to revert to ‘97 quality for modern viewers watching the saga in official order for the first time.

Before you say “but what about ‘04 Jabba?”, well, I still think the ‘97 version looked better.

I highly doubt that would ever happen. Kathleen Kennedy’s often misunderstood quote of, “I wouldn’t touch those, they´re his” (or something to that effect) means LFL under Disney wouldn’t make any new changes to the movies. It does NOT mean they would never release the originals. That isn’t changing the movies, that’s giving another cut which has existed for over 40 years.

I forgot to add “with George’s blessing.”

If he’s still okay with how everything looks 26 years later then that’s probably how the cgi shots will look forever. I doubt he wants to bother with it anymore.