I look at it the same way young George Lucas looked at it:
A copyright is held in trust by its owner until it ultimately reverts to public domain. American works of art belong to the American public; they are part of our cultural history.
People who alter or destroy works of art and our cultural heritage for profit or as an exercise of
power are barbarians, and if the laws of the United States continue to condone this behavior, history will surely classify us as a barbaric society.…
It will soon be possible to create a new “original” negative with whatever changes or alterations the copyright holder of the moment desires. The copyright holders, so far, have not been completely diligent in preserving the original negatives of films they control. In order to reconstruct old negatives, many archivists have had to go to Eastern bloc countries where American films have been better preserved.
In the future it will become even easier for old negatives to become lost and be “replaced” by new altered negatives. This would be a great loss to our society. Our cultural history must not be allowed to be rewritten.
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The public’s interest is ultimately dominant over all other interests. And the proof of that is that even a copyright law only permits the creators and their estate a limited amount of time to enjoy the economic fruits of that work.
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Attention should be paid to this question of our soul, and not simply to accounting procedures. Attention should be paid to the interest of those who are yet unborn, who should be able to see this generation as it saw itself, and the past generation as it saw itself.The original Star Wars trilogy is an incredibly important part of cinematic history and it most certainly deserves to be preserved in its original form. To alter the films and then intentionally suppress them in their original form is not only selfish but an insult to the many, many craftsman that all worked hard to create these treasured pieces of history. They’re what won all of those Academy Awards, not the Special Editions. The SEs have their place but even more so do the original theatrical versions.
And yet, the SE will be the only versions the public will be allowed to see for decades to come.
What an unjust and cruel world. No other film is treated like this. Nor is any other film more important to cinema.
Which REALLY confused me! Until I realized that perhaps Disney was never pandering to original OT fanboys(the type that built this site for instance) but rather the general public who did not care for the PT.
After all most people don’t care for the PT and therefor Disney tried to be as retro as possible(with the exception of Kylo Rens crossguard lightsaber and the brief mentions of clones). However while OT fanboys share similar opinions about the PT as the general public, the general public is probably not so concerned with the original version of SW as the hardcore SW fans are.