https://www.forbes.com/sites/bennyharev ... ilm-print/

Doesn't Disney realize they would regain a HUGE amount of goodwill from burned Gen-X Star Wars fans by giving us the totally unaltered, meticulously restored OT with none of Lucas' tinkering?

When Lucas is the ONLY filmmaker who adopts this middle finger approach to film preservation, it reveals again there's a petty reason for his behavior having nothing to do with his conception of "art". I've put forth the theory before advanced by others that he doesn't want Marcia to get another penny if he can prevent it and while I've seen others debunk that theory, I've yet to be convinced otherwise.

Who would have thought we'd have both audio tracks for "Thunderball" made available in a top quality release before we'd ever see the original cuts of the trilogy made available??

Probably isn't up to Disney. Lucas cared so passionately about the Special Editions replacing the original cut there may be contractual language from his sale of the company that they can't release it on video again.

AndyDursin wrote: ↑Fri Jun 13, 2025 6:20 pm Probably isn't up to Disney. Lucas cared so passionately about the Special Editions replacing the original cut there may be contractual language from his sale of the company that they can't release it on video again.

That contractual point about burying the originals is the major reason, I believe. But I also believe the Marcia Lucas angle on the residual profits being the motivator for the special editions. His "fixing" things that bothered him included things that bothered the AUDIENCE, not to say the fans as well. If you "fix" the Jabba sequence, then why didn't fix visual issues like the falcon radar dish, gun top gun turret, and the rest of the background of the falcon? It's those details that bothered ME over the years. It makes me suspicious about his true motivation over that period of time. Adding in unnecessary insertions in EMPIRE bothered me, as well as the re-score of the finale of JEDI that added a pretty lame and "sterile" music change.

I'd guess some accountant in 1995 probably told George that residual income on the IP wasn't as strong as it once was, due to waning current interest in the IP, cost-of-living increases, adjustments for inflation, and other financial considerations such as his eventual retirement. He made just enough changes in each movie to rebrand these as "special editions" so that whatever original residuals that might be owed, conditionally and contractually, to Marcia would be null and void. Of course it's all supposition and we'll never know the fully story, because of the legalities of the divorce or privileged information between associated parties. But one should look to "human nature" and the "state of being" during that mid 1990's time period. There was no direction for INDIANA JONES IP to go after the conclusion of the films and the somewhat tepid YOUNG INDIANA JONES CHRONICLES. He tanked with HOWARD THE DUCK, WILLOW. Where do you go from there, creatively?

I imagine you'd have to ask George's friend Francis if the changes that he made to his movies after the fact were born out of "passion" or "future financial" stability. Tp digress, Coppola had a good product with his wine label. I understand that it did very well. So one could say that he could have lived off of that for the rest of his life. But, these also get the film bug. They think that there's one more project out there for them. For George it was the pedestrian directing of the prequel trilogy where some of his actors needed better guidance or the scripts needed several re-writes (REVENGE OF THE SITH notwithstanding had the benefit of Tom Stoppard's involvement, but even then the story and pacing needed more work in the earlier acts). In Lucas' case, the missing elements were the dynamics of the team that worked on the original films. That was the key element that made the prequels a "visually polished but dramatically pedestrian" end result. You would have thought that all this time the dramatics would have taken the priority over the technology in the successful execution of these films. I have no problems with the overall story that he wanted to tell, it's just that he needed better "sounding boards" around him to provide the sanity check that should have been there. Rick McCallum failed at that and I don't know if Ben Burtt provided much counterpoint.

In any event, I am convinced that we will see some iteration of the originals at some point - at least as a theatrical exhibition if theaters will exist anymore. That technicolor print, although not the original negative, still looked vibrant in the scenes shown in the documentary. Who's to say a digital transfer of it exists in the U.K. - that we aren't aware of.

I just find it bitterly ironic that a trilogy of movies specifically about "striking back" against a totalitarian regime suppressing a beleaguered underclass can only be viewed in their original formats via piracy. And those "flawed" original versions were the ones that made Lucas an extremely wealthy man.

Monterey Jack wrote: ↑Sun Jun 15, 2025 12:27 pm I just find it bitterly ironic that a trilogy of movies specifically about "striking back" against a totalitarian regime suppressing a beleaguered underclass can only be viewed in their original formats via piracy. And those "flawed" original versions were the ones that made Lucas an extremely wealthy man.

There are those who advocate the running theme of "hypocrisy" and "sell-out" in those who stoked the virtues and spirit of independent filmmaking, when the reality seems to be that maybe they started out with good intentions and a purist virtue. But once major financial success is achieved then the reality changes. It is very rare that filmmakers can remain purists once they get a taste of the apple in the Garden of Eden.

This insane Hollywood Reporter article posits that the original version of Star Wars "looks terrible" and the that special editions were actually an improvement.


https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movie ... 236291808/

‘Star Wars’ “Looks Terrible” in Screening of Long Lost Original 1977 Version

The years have not been kind to the oft-romanticized original print of the sci-fi classic, which lacks all of George Lucas' post-release tweaks and polishes and looks "like a completely different film."

A long-lost original print of 1977’s Star Wars was recovered from an archive and screened for a group of cinema aficionados and die-hard fans.

An audience was finally permitted to watch the first released version of the film — nearly perfectly preserved and unfaded — that creator George Lucas famously suppressed from being publicly shown on a big screen for 47 years. The British Film Institute event was introduced by Lucasfilm boss Kathleen Kennedy, who joked that the screening was “not illegal.”

“What you’re going to see is in fact the first print, and I’m not even sure there’s another one quite like it,” Kennedy said. “It’s that rare.”

And the result?

An attending film critic from The Telegraph who attended the screening last week admitted the unaltered original “looks terrible” by modern standards.

While fans understandably tend to focus on Lucas’ most intrusive creative moves (adding the jarring CG version of Jabba the Hutt, having Greedo shoot first, stuffing distracting CG creatures and droids into Mos Eisley), the amount of subsequent polish and tweaks over the years is so extensive that many aspects of the original look just as noticeably fake as the egregious CG.

“I felt like I was watching a completely different film,” wrote Robbie Collin, who called the print a “joyously craggy, grubby, stolidly carpentered spectacle” that “looks more like fancy dress than grand sci-fi epic.” “Every scene had the visceral sense of watching actual people photographed doing actual things with sets and props that had been physically sawn and glued into place. The slapstick between C-3PO and R2-D2 looked clunkier, and therefore funnier; the Death Star panels were less like supercomputers than wooden boards with lights stuck on, and so better attuned to the frequency of make-believe. It felt less like watching a blockbuster in the modern sense than the greatest game of dressing up in the desert anyone ever played.”

A vlogger for Cinema Savvy, George Aldridge, who says he’s seen A New Hope at least 100 times said the screening was “incredibly special,” but likewise made him realize “there are so many great changes to the Star Wars films; it’s the ones we dislike that have always overshadowed them.” He, too, noted the print was so radically different that “it felt like watching the film for the first time.”

“From day one, George Lucas has been making changes to these films,” he said. “It hasn’t just been here’s one big scene change there. It’s been the little nuance. It’s been the sound effects, it’s been the smallest details — which you do not notice until now you don’t see it.”

Aldridge noted differences “like R2-D2 isn’t hiding behind rocks when the Tusken Raiders come for them … there are so many little things that I noticed the cantina … there’s been cleaning up of James Earl Jones’ voice [as Darth Vader]…”

So, ironically, a version of Star Wars that Lucas for so long didn’t want to shown seems to give viewers more respect for Lucas — due to gaining some appreciation for his extensive and controversial tinkering.

Both reviewers noted, however, that the theater burst into applause when Han Solo (Harrison Ford) shot first during the Greedo confrontation. Enthused Aldridge: “Han Solo was so much cooler.”

Lucas’ tweaks to the print began with the very first theatrical rerelease of Star Wars in 1981. Until now, the studio has only permitted the screening of various Special Editions. BFI negotiated with Disney and Lucasfilm for the rights for a back-to-back screening on the festival’s opening night. This particular BFI print was stored for four decades at a temperature of 23 degrees Fahrenheit to preserve its quality.

Lucas, over the years, has been rather firm about not screening the original and, when asked in 2004 by the Associated Press why he doesn’t simply release the original version along with the Special Editions, rather grumpily shot back, “The Special Edition, that’s the one I wanted out there. The other movie, it’s on VHS, if anybody wants it. I’m not going to spend the — we’re talking millions of dollars here — the money and the time to refurbish that, because to me, it doesn’t really exist anymore. It’s like this is the movie I wanted it to be, and I’m sorry you saw a half-completed film and fell in love with it. But I want it to be the way I want it to be. I’m the one who has to take responsibility for it. I’m the one who has to have everybody throw rocks at me all the time, so at least if they’re going to throw rocks at me, they’re going to throw rocks at me for something I love rather than something I think is not very good, or at least something I think is not finished.”

The thing about "This is the version I want to be out there" is kind of moot if your audience rejects it and wants the original. At that point, George should ask himself to who he made these films for - an audience or HIMSELF?

His changes at times are more flawed than the flaws in the originals.

Paul MacLean wrote: ↑Sat Jun 21, 2025 2:01 pm Lucas, over the years, has been rather firm about not screening the original and, when asked in 2004 by the Associated Press why he doesn’t simply release the original version along with the Special Editions, rather grumpily shot back, “The Special Edition, that’s the one I wanted out there. The other movie, it’s on VHS, if anybody wants it. I’m not going to spend the — we’re talking millions of dollars here — ........[/b]

"........to my ex-wife Marcia for additional royalties she'd be entitled to which is why I made the special editions in the first place!"

This is literally the ONLY thing that explains why Lucas has taken an approach at total variance with what any person with so much as a smidgen of respect for archival film preservation would understand in a nanosecond.

Just like "Deckard is a replicant".

Who's taking bets on how long after Lucas' passing that we get the OT in pristine 4K disc transfers?

Doubtful bc it sure looks like a condition of the sale at this point. And we know how much Disney cares about catalog titles and preservation in general!

Disney doesn't even care about preserving its own past. And they've invested so much in pushing the woke agendas of the franchise's recent history that calling attention to the innocent era before all that existed wouldn't be in their self interest!