The original trilogy of Star Wars films, spearheaded by George Lucas were critical and commercial successes. However, in 1997 Lucas released the “Special Edition” of the films for the trilogy’s 20th anniversary, which featured extensive changes to the original theatrical cuts.
The original cuts have since become scarce. However, a group of Star Wars fans, known as Team Negative One have reportedly almost completely digitally restored the original cuts in 4K using 35-millimeter prints of the original trilogy.
The project is headed by Robert Williams, who along with his team have spent almost a decade restoring the films.
“They’re not really upset that he made the changes, because some of them are pretty cool and actually make the films better. They’re really upset that he didn’t also release the original version alongside it. Just put two discs in the box. We’d have been happy.”
Williams made the above statement to The New York Times, explaining the motivation behind preserving the original cuts of the trilogy. However, the publication also noted that Team Negative One’s activities were not authorized as they worked with film reels meant to be destroyed or returned. Hence, the legality of Team Negative One’s restored versions of the original trilogy is questionable.
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Given Lucas’ strong feelings about the Special Editions, it is evident that the filmmaker would be unhappy with fans trying to preserve the original cuts, which he referred to as “rough drafts” in the past.
According to reports, Lucas allegedly voiced his disappointment with fans demanding a high-resolution release of the original cuts in the following words:
“Grow up. These are my movies, not yours.”
Similarly, when the National Film Registry aimed to preserve 1977’s Star Wars (later retitled Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope), Lucas reportedly refused to provide them with a copy of the original theatrical release.
Lucas stated that he would no longer authorize the original version’s release, reaffirming that he did not intend for the audience to view the theatrical cuts. After Disney acquired the franchise, Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy also stated that Lucas’s changes to the theatrical cuts would remain untouched. Hence, it is safe to say that Lucas would certainly be unhappy with fans still trying to preserve the original cuts.
“Grow up. These are my movies, not yours.”
No George, they’re Disney’s films now. You sold them. Grow up.
I like how south park put it. You made them, gave them to us, released them out. We watched them over and over, they became part of our lives, who we are, core memories. In essence Lucas may own the rights, but in a different way the public owns the movies now, they’ve become a core part of our society.
I forget the original quote from them, but essentially Lucas should be happy we’ve taken public ownership of them, happy something he created has a literal impact on society. Instead we have a petulant child who is upset his fans did something amazing
This sentiment seems invisible to rich people who published creative works. You are free to not publish your work if you want to control every copy of it 100% and have no-one work with it in unexpected ways. Grow up George, these movies all for all of us now.
Grow up, you’re gonna die soon and your legacy will be entirely in our hands and unlike your wuss ass, we’ve got the balls to make Jar Jar a sith and to let Luke keep a pair into his old age. We also have the balls to tear down the bullshit copyright regime that keeps you afloat and a lot else besides, but you’ll be dead so nevermind that.
“Grow up, this was my vindictive swipe at my ex-wife to stop her royalties.”
Grow up. It’s not been yours since it blew up and became a culturally significant work of art.
I’d make the exact same argument for Harry Potter, tbh. But JK Rowling is still heavily involved in a lot of that process so maybe not an exact comparison.
It hasn’t been his since he shilled it to disney
I have been wanting to see the original versions again ever since he released the special editions. Just like the people at Negative One I don’t hate the special editions, but it would be nice to occasionally see the version I remember from childhood before he slapped all that crappy cartoonish CG garbage on there… Beloved old movies from the 70s and 80s do not need computer generated cartoon characters!!!
Is there a complete list of changes done to the original by reinterpretation?
Here’s a fairly exhaustive list. It’s a pretty long read lol
❤️
🤯didn’t expect so many versions, they would make soooo much money selling a overpriced special super edition with all versions, lol
That’s literally what people have been asking for for nearly 30 years lol when I got the special editions they were still on VHS!
That’s it - I’d not watch the original edition exclusively but I’d like the option of watching the films I saw in the cinema when I was a kid. I won’t be buying the OT on Blu-ray until then.
Look for Harmy’s Despecalized Edition.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UoGdxh7qZcqp8L-aJkFj_rCcjKf-xlCM4Fjvux3w6zg/pub
He actually did the same thing in 2004 to the movie he made before Star Wars which was THX 1138. That one is even worse with sharp cg animations and backgrounds laid on top of grainy film stock from like 1969… I don’t know why he thinks that looks good at all or that no one would notice lol
Makes me glad I haven’t seen that butchery and I should, hopefully, manage to avoid it.
I was really excited for the THX-1138 re-release and was shocked at how poorly it was done. There’s a scene with a CGI car that was so egregiously out of place with the rest of the film that I still remember it all these years later. I think Lucas spent too many years surrounded by sycophants.
The changes were REALLY jarring and honestly kind of ruined what was an amazing film. I think you must be right about the sycophants because I still can’t imagine why anyone would ever approve this or agree to release it lol
“Grow up. These are my movies, not yours.”
It’s an interesting debate - they are his (or Disney’s) films, for now, but like Mikey Mouse, they will eventually be public domain and become ours. However, that’s still a way off and, by then, it will be harder to find the originals in their best condition, so masters have to be made now. I assume Disney have already done this and have it all stashed in a vault but, unless they have a legal loophole after Lucas dies, we may never get them. So Team Negative One are doing important work and, if there is no intention to release them again, it is hardly impacting anyone’s bottom line.
as a writer/artist/performer - I disagree with Lucas. There are many parts at which each artist - whether actor, scene painter, LX, director or producer has to relinquish their control over their work and let it be.
It’s more commonly heard in theatre: the tradition of opening night being the point where the director relinquished control and now it’s the actors show is very passionately held. If things go wrong and need fixing then the Stage Manager steps in, but otherwise it’s no longer the directors purview.
In film the director over sees editing and may even have a hand in distribution- but once an audience sees it - it’s now the directors work (past tense) and - regardless of capitalistic machinations w/r/t copyright, licensing, distribution- the art (present tense) now only exists in the reception of the audience, as you can’t experience a movie without watching it - therefore the act of watching the movie is the experience of the movie - therefore it is the audience’s domain.
They’ll be in the public domain for infinity years, which is more than creator lifetime + xxx years. Works wanting copyright protection must be forced to submit copies to a permanent archive.
Having your head so far up your own ass you can’t understand that people like your movie as it was originally created so much and are willing to buy it over and over again for decades. Hell I’m sure a lot of those people would buy both versions. What a huge slap in the face to Ivrvin Kershner and Richard Marquand who did a fantastic job only to be screwed.
Franklin Veaux (author) said words to this effect on Quora: Your book and your characters may be your baby, but when you release them to the world, they are now no longer under your control. They are subject to whatever interpretation your readers use and assign to them. You may have created them, but now they’ve grown up and moved out. Let it go.
Hell I’m sure a lot of those people would buy both versions.
My wallet is ready!
I’ve never seen any of them. I’m like less then 1% in the world I assume.
you can’t understand that people like your movie as it was originally created
George Lucas has said in the past that he had bigger plans for the original film(s), but the technology to pull it off didn’t exist yet. So he had to make do with what effects he could. He even invented many film effects for the original trilogy, creating his own visual effects studio to pull it off.
In the '90s, he realized CG technology had advanced enough that he could finally fill in the gaps that he couldn’t do back in the '70s, and so he released the Special Edition trilogy, which he considered the final and complete masterpiece.
Of course, a lot of people had experienced 2 decades of the original Star Wars trilogy by that point, so adding changes now seemed like inappropriately extending what was already considered a masterpiece.
George Lucas was never satisfied with his films anyway. He kept changing the story, even as they were filming, and it was purely by accident that they ended up being a massive hit. (Which is probably why his prequel trilogy was so hated by fans) I remember reading once that his original plot starred Luke Starkiller, and Leia was supposed to be General Organa and not related to Luke. Also, Luke was originally supposed to fall to the dark side and become the new villain, replacing Darth Vader. Mark Hamill was excited about that twist, until it was changed for a happier ending. He would later go on to play villains in other films, being famously known as the voice of Joker from Batman The Animated Series.
Also, I watched a documentary on VHS back in the early '90s where George Lucas laid out his plan for a 9-movie series. The first trilogy would be about the crumbling of the Galactic Republic, then the second trilogy would be about rebel forces fighting against the new Empire, then the final trilogy would be about rebuilding the Galactic Republic.
But George Lucas thought it would be boring watching 3 whole films about a government slowly collapsing, so he decided to jump into the meat of the conflict and start with the middle trilogy. It was a wild success, even if the plot kept changing as he was filming, and so when he got to the prequel trilogy, he decided to make it about one of the biggest characters from his original trilogy - Vader. Which changed the focus of the prequel films and made them less boring than just a series about space politics, but not nearly as interesting as his original trilogy.
Star Wars fans are a pretty contentious bunch, and the hate for the prequel series caused George Lucas to give up his dream of making 9 films. He eventually sold the franchise to Disney, who immediately started up their own sequel trilogy, plus a ton of spinoff TV series. And it’s been pretty strange since then. Episode 7 was basically a modern remake of episode 4, to draw back the fans of the original trilogy. Then Rian Johnson was given the reins for Episode 8, and he hated seeing the same cast of characters in every Star Wars film, so he tried to branch out away from familiar faces. It didn’t go well, so Episode 9 shoe-horned in as many familiar characters and stories as it could, to win back fans. The whiplash between films made for a pretty awful and disjointed series.
Personally, I’m on board with the idea that the original trilogy (in it’s unedited state) is the ONLY Star Wars series. The rest, I just consider to be non-canon fan films. There’s so much that could’ve been done to add onto the original series. And even the official book series (before Disney marked them as non-canon) had great additions to the plot. But then we got a prequel series about the biggest badass in the galaxy… and it turns out he’s just a whiny brat who’s manipulated into being a bad guy. Then the sequel series was all over the place. And the spinoff TV shows have been hit-or-miss. So yeah, I consider them all non-canon, including George’s Special Edition. And I look forward to seeing the original unedited trilogy in 4K one day.
Really well said and I feel much the same. I honestly like to subscribe to Darth Jar Jar and ignore the sequel trilogies after VII.
There’s a couple other really good pieces of Star Wars media - stuff that has little to do with Disney or Lucas. The first and second KOTOR games are extremely well written stories (BioWare even snuck in the first canon queer character - there’s a lesbian romance option!)
The Thrawn trilogy is also decent.
The idea that Disney gets to mandate what’s “canon” about an entirely imaginary universe is laughable to me. Corporations don’t own our imagination.
Personally, I think it’s because he wants to erase the contribution of his ex-wife Marcia Lucas. He’s just that petty.
By all accounts she saved the original trilogy from George’s input.
And she got an Oscar for it while he did not.
that boomer’s masculinity must be in shambles.
Independent of who wants to see the original, who owns the rights, and who were part of the crew… the originals have historical significance. Those were the movies people saw, those were the movies that created the craze. In a 100 years from now, we can still buy a revised director’s grandson upscale glitter edition in 65537k, and we’ll love it - but history should never be changed.
Stfu
Dude fundamentally doesn’t understand art.
Artist makes art.
Artist puts it out into the world.
Consumer consumes art.
Consumer interprets art.
The art is then an amalgamation of the artist, the art, and the consumer.
The art is meaningless without the consumer.
Grow up George. We don’t want your newly interpreted versions of a thing that you get credited for creating. Han shot first and your ex wife saved the original trilogy from your input.Imagine Jackson Pollock making his art unavailable and replacing it with polka dots and pinstripes and expecting the same respect. Or Picasso embarrassed of his cubism phase and making his art unavailable and replacing it with realism and saying “these are my paintings, get over it”.
Good analogy
You know George, they really aren’t very good films. I don’t want the originals because they were good, I want the originals because those afternoons spent sitting in the theater in 1977 (and 1980, and 1983) were memorable experiences for me, and the original cuts evoke those times in a visceral way.
It’s not about seeing “your” movies, it’s about reliving parts of my youth the way I remember them. These are my memories, not yours. Grow up.
It’s less about him growing up, per se, and completely about his tiny little chub never being as enormous as he wishes it were.
They were never “his” films, to be fair. As soon as he got a team started on it, his “ownership” of the outcome of all that creative collaboration rapidly diminished to being little more than his name in the credits and copyrights — thank fucking god. The meatsac is a shit director, and even shittier writer, and apparently a complete waste of time. IMHO, the films “belong” to those that actually made them what they are to millions upon millions of fans: the actual artists involved and the fans. Full stop.
Fuck off, Mucas.
they really aren’t very good films
Depends on the measuring stick, I’d say.
On some, sure, might fall short. On others, it blows most other movies out of the water.
I agree with the sentiment of your last sentence.
As far as cinematic technical works go, they’re pretty good
As far as a serious story/plot go, they’re terrible
As far as schlocky Sci-Fi go, nothing beats the original trilogy, but the second trilogy is just as schlocky but with a higher budget
in celebration of May the 4th I’ve been rewatching the originals and the prequels - and the writing in both is uh, surprisingly bad. Set designs, costumes, world building, and the overall presentation are amazing! but the dialogue and motivations are sometimes downright laughable. It feels like George had a great idea of the key plot points but then instead of writing a story to fill in the gaps he opted to put in 3-4 action sequences where the plot should’ve been, so now the story goes from “hmm the jedi council are acting odd towards me, i’m starting to question their motives” to “i need to kill children to defeat death because this clearly evil guy told me so” within a single scene. I know prequels are a cheap shot but this extreme example highlights the issue rather well
don’t get me wrong, i still like star wars! but i don’t watch those movies for the writing lmao
“hmm the jedi council are acting odd towards me, i’m starting to question their motives” to “i need to kill children to defeat death because this clearly evil guy told me so” within a single scene.
Probably someone reminded him of lengths and whatnot and that Vader is evil and whatnot and instead of doing a bit of rewriting for the earlier parts, George pivoted hard, haha. Or cut out a third of the movie.
I think my second favorite thing about Star Wars is the moment in Luke’s hero’s journey when he goes from knight on an adventure to learning to forgive the most hated man in the galaxy when he’s standing on the walkway with Vader after he surrenders in rotj. I’m not saying he’s Shakespeare but he has some good ideas.
It feels like George had a great idea of the key plot points but then
Lucas’s talent is in big ideas, great concepts, how a story might fit together, not in silly details!
He should be like, a director or something…
(It is funny though that his actual profession so clearly impacts his writing)
this is exactly why it’s rare for directors to also have written the script for the movies they direct in the filmmaking world - it’s easy to get married to your idea and fall flat on the execution, because who is going to tell you to stop? The only people that could are producers - but they don’t really care about the writing either, just the money to be made, and if “ehh” writing got George that far then the second Star Wars became a thing he got full immunity from criticism
“Grow up. These are my movies, not yours.”
So, George Lucas is a car guy. American Graffiti is the closest thing to an autobiography he ever made (though it’s not that close), and Tatooine Luke before the sizzle-sizzle smoky barbecue scene is probably a close second. To that end, I’ve always thought that a car-guy metaphor is probably the best way to understand this disconnect George Lucas has with the fans.
Star Wars is his hot rod. It’s the fast little thing he cobbled together in his garage from spare parts and his own sweat. Yes, the guts came off a factory line somewhere. Yes, he may have bought some parts at the store. Yes, he commissioned some bespoke upholstery. In the end, though, it’s his vision, his baby. He merely rolls it out every once in a while for everyone else to see.
Then, he takes it back to the garage. You know, that paintjob wasn’t so great after all. Maybe we could add a removable hardtop instead of it being an open roadster. A new crate engine would make it so much faster and cooler! Then, when it’s ready, he rolls it back out…
…and he’s completely befuddled when people get pissed off. He cannot understand for a single second why the version from the last autoshow, the one with the pinstripes with the wrong shade of red that he let somebody else apply because he was busy, meant something to these people. It’s just his project to tinker with it, and now he has the money and time to do it right, but “right” will change when he feels like he’s come up with something better. Isn’t it cool that he took off those generic tires and added some sweet whitewhalls? And if it isn’t, what does it matter? Go get your own car or ogle somebody else’s. What right do people have to be upset that he made changes, and it’s rude to tell him that they want him the old one back.
Eventually, there are so many people complaining about the new parts and the changes to old parts that he just can’t enjoy taking it out for a spin anymore, so he sells it to the local car museum. It’s sad in its way, but it ignores that fundamental disconnect:
Stories are not fuckin’ cars.
He put art out into the world, art that connected with people at crucial moments in their lives, some of them in very specific and detailed ways. He never viewed himself as a custodian and a guiding hand for the benefit of the audience, but rather as its owner, the one person who had a right to make legitimate changes to the story, even if it already existed and had made a mark on the world. Gene Roddenberry would be an interesting comparison, because while he certainly had some rigid ideas too, they were higher level and not quite so deeply personal.
“I’m putting my vision out for the audience to accept or not,” will result in more personal art, often therefore more interesting, and indeed I don’t think anyone begrudges George the right to make his changes. You give life to something beyond your original intent when you release a work publicly. It’s just the mental disconnect that other people’s experiences don’t matter at all, that rankles. This is especially true when he could indulge those people’s nostalgia passively, because it’s not like the original versions affect the existence of the special editions. That might hurt his feelings though, because if you like the original version better, then you’re implicitly criticizing his more “authentic” vision. It comes off as petty and out of touch.
I was initially unsure of your analogy, ready to disagree. But continued reading to see where you were going.
As a car buff, yea, it’s a great comparison. I really do prefer the original modified version of a car… Sometimes the re-do of a mod is too perfect, lacks something, part of it’s character is gone.
There’s something about the older, imperfect version. Where the shifter didn’t work perfectly, so grabbing third had to be done “just so”.
It leaves room for me, the human element - just like “imperfect” special effects leaves room for human imagination to fill the gaps.
The biggest thing to me is that he just doesn’t realize, or maybe doesn’t accept, that those same little kids who strolled by his car in 1977 formed core memories that are meaningful to them, just as his build process was to him. I would be much more sympathetic to Lucas if it were a car, because it would be the only one.
Even now, Disney would fall all over themselves to find a way to make more money off Star Wars without having to go to the expense of actually making more Star Wars. The only two options here are that holding it back was part of the contract, or it’s part of the soft understanding to maintain goodwill with him. If George Lucas would give his blessing to a restoration project, I have no doubt an official one would proceed. All he has to do is acknowledge that the fans who want the “bad version” love it for their own valid reasons, and it can openly exist alongside his preferred vision.
This is perhaps the best analogy for what he’s doing that I’ve seen. The only thing I could add is that for creative projects like movies (or books, paintings, sculptures, etc.), especially ones you are trying to release and get paid for, at some point you have to stop yourself from making tweaks or adjustments to the product and decide it’s good enough to release, because there will probably always be something you think can be better or you just aren’t sure you’ve chosen the best option. In fact, the longer you look at it, the more likely you are to second guess even correct choices you’ve made because you’ve stared at it for so long.
The other thing a creative person needs to do once it’s released is to let it go. You can’t go back and keep second-guessing yourself. You also can’t look back 20 or 30 years later and think with all the experience you’ve gained in the intervening years or the new tools that are now available you could do it so much better. Accept it for what it is, a product of that era and that stage of your career. And there’s no guarantee that the new tools or experience will actually yield a better product. Sometimes the limitations force us to be more creative and the solutions end up being better than if we had no challenges.
I agree. Whatever analogy works or doesn’t, there is a pretty significant disconnect, and he falls on the worse side of it.
It goes from quirky tinkering that maybe deprives the world of new and good projects (but probably doesn’t, if his heart wouldn’t have been in them), to a weird, anxiety-fueled ego trip lording the power that copyright laws give him over the audience that his (very collaborative, I might add) works found for themselves after he and his colleagues sent them out into the world.
How do you think 1976 you would respond to that? Or 1979 you? Or 1982 you?
Take the “Han shot first” scene. If you had REALLY wanted a reactive Han instead of an active Han, you didn’t need computer tech to do that in 1976.
You made a creative choice, based on who you were at the time. Reversing that, poorly, decades later, is invalidating your own artistic vision as it stood originally.
So no, it’s not "your"movie they’re preserving. They’re preserving the original artistic vision which you have now lost.
I don’t think Lucas cares much what 1976 Lucas thought either. Nothing matters to him except what he thinks is cool right now
You know, I was never a huge fan of Star Wars, but when I heard about George Lucas’s petty efforts to keep modifying the original theatrical version of Star Wars, I downloaded 4K77 and Harmy’s Despecialized Edition out of pure spite.
It’s been my experience that most people’s patience for george lucas decreases dramatically the more they love star wars.
