Star Wars: Spirit of '77

I can’t say that my fan edit will be the best. But I hope that it is unique enough to be interesting to other fans.

Imagine, if you will, an alternate timeline. The year is 1980 and The Empire Strikes Back is released. But there is no “Episode V” in that film’s opening crawl. This is because Lucas decides to hedge his bets and just make one sequel at a time. He hopes that if Empire does well, he will make just one more film to round out a nice trilogy. The film is a smash hit and he retakes the director’s chair to make Return of the Jedi. Again, there is no episode number in the opening crawl. For various reasons, not the least of which is criticism that Jedi is not as good as the first two movies, he decides to abandon the idea of making any more sequels. The creation of prequels does not even enter his mind.

In 1984, his trilogy complete, he decides to go back and re-edit Star Wars. He figures that he owes it to the fans to refine it so that it matches the production quality of the other two movies. He doesn’t add any new special effects shots. He merely cleans it up and refines existing special effects. However, he causes controversey when he decides to add several scenes that were originally cut in the 1977 release. This new edit of Star Wars includes scenes that provide more of Luke’s backstory and his friendship with Biggs Darklighter. This delights many of the die-hard fans who had only heard rumors of these scenes. But it also outrages many other fans. Film critics righteously lambast this “desecration” of a landmark movie and correctly point out that these additional scenes slow down the pace of the film.

Lucas responds to the outrage and criticisms with profuse apologies. He subsequently releases a new version of Star Wars that is the same as the 1977 theatrical version but has the minor cosmetic improvements that only the most dedicated fans notice.

My fan edit, which I call Spirit of '77, is that controvertial 1984 edit from this imaginary alternate timeline. The reason I call it Spirit of '77 is that it keeps as close to that original version with only the addition of existing footage from that original shoot. It is meant to have a nostalgic appeal to life-long fans who have been curious for decades about those deleted scenes.

Here are the major features of my fan edit:

The Treadwell scene featuring Luke observing the space battle from the surface of Tattoine using macrobinoculars.
The Tosche Station scene featuring Luke and some of his friends including Biggs Darklighter.
The scene where Biggs confides in Luke his plan to join the Rebellion.
The Jabba scene where the ganster confronts Solo in docking bay 94. Realistically, it doesn’t make sense to include this based on my stated parameters because that level of CGI technology didn’t exist in 1984. But I’m including it anyway since that scene was originally supposed to be in the movie. Just pretend that they used really good stop-motion animation. I might reconsider including this scene. Then again, this is supposed to be an apocryphal edit from an imaginary timeline.
The scene where Biggs reunites with Luke before the final battle.

I plan to incorperate a few other shots that were cut. And I’ll lift a few bits and pieces from the Special Edition. I’ll make a concise list of those changes as I work on the project. I also need to research what many other fan edits have done. But for now, I just wanted to state my offical intent to create a fan edit.

This project will incorporate the footage from my clean-up and restoration of deleted scenes project.