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Why Disney Can't Give Us High-Def Star Wars Where Han Shoots First
An anonymous reader writes "Lost amid the disappointment of the Star Wars prequels were the unfortunate edits George Lucas has made to the original trilogy when he re-released them. Lee Hutchinson points out a few of the worst: 'In Return of the Jedi, Jabba's palace gains an asinine CGI-filled song-and-dance interlude. Dialogue is butchered in Empire Strikes Back. And in the first movie, perhaps most famously, Han no longer shoots first.' Lucas flat-out refused to spend time and money remastering the original versions of the movies. But now Disney is in control of the franchise (and the business case for releasing different versions of the same films has been proven). So there's hope, right? According to Hutchinson: maybe, but not for a while. While technological advances have reduced the price tag for such an endeavour, lawyers will keep it expensive. It turns out 20th Century Fox still owns distribution rights to the Star Wars films. Because of complex and irritating legal reasons, Disney was not able to acquire those as well. Thus, Disney will have to get Fox's approval and probably cut Fox in for some of the profits, if they were to re-release the series."
. . . because there was no reasonable chance of this happening with Lucas. Man, how do you mess up Star Wars?!
If you look around, there has been a fantastic fan effort to create the Despecialized Editions that are as close to the original theatrical runs as possible for the original trilogy. They've mixed in the HD sources for the current releases with older footage to undo all the changes. It's pretty amazing.
If that's what happens when a studio buys something, I don't want to see the mess involved for Netflix to acquire streaming rights for different countries.
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There are some very well done Fan Edits which take footage from various versions of the film and create a fan-friendly version. Han shoots first, no CGI Jabba the Hutt, etc.
You can often spot the differences when they went from HD to a DVD or Laserdisc source to keep the story true to the original, but that's part of the fun.
Trolling is a art,
Who cares if Fox has to be cut in, does Disney not really care about the results $3B in profit that would result from a HD recoversions of the untouched original?
I think it's great there's any hope at all, from the headline I thought Lucas burned the originals.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
How many bloody versions of the movie do there need to be?
There only needs to be one. It's just that no-one has yet made it fully in HD yet.
We buy some of the others to get a close approximation.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Do you have any idea how much money people are willing to pay for a faithfully restored version of the original trilogy??? Do you???
I along with plenty of other people would gladly pay an obscene price for a blu-ray copy of the original, untainted trilogy. Star Wars fandom aside, this is really something that needs to be done for the sake of preserving history. Few films if any have had the kind of cultural impact that these movies did. George Lucas has astounded me with his level of selfishness and lack of empathy when it comes to this. Plenty of other films have created director's cuts and whatnot, some of which needed it because they were originally ruined by last-minute editing, but they also preserved the theatrical release along with them. I have no doubt that there are plenty of movies that Lucas loves and would be furious if their creators came along and started making ridiculous changes because they didn't turn out how they wanted. Everyone knows he protested against colorizing black and white films in the 80s. What a hypocrite. Nothing turns out just the way you originally plan. That is often how good things come about in the first place; by accident. The only thing he has proven is that if the original movies had turned out the way he wanted, they would have been awful.
Especially after their actions in the Firefly debacle.
I'm contractually obliged to mention this in every Star Wars thread on the Internet.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
First implies an order.
An order implies there is more than one.
Han doesn't shoot *FIRST*, Han shoots.
There is no "first," because there is no "second."
There is no "second" because Greedo doesn't shoot at all.
Stop with "Han shoots first" - start with "Greedo never shoots".
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
I don't think you're troll, but I also think it's OK to get worked up about unimportant stuff some of the time. We can't always be serious and entertainment is an important outlet for people. You can get worked up about trivial stuff one day and important stuff another: it's just part of being well rounded, I think. What bugs me, however, is why all this fuss about Star Wars. The movies were good when I was a 10 year old. Now they are unwatchable and boring to me. When I see them now, I think "mediocre children's movie" and I can't understand the fuss they generate. It's not like I find kid's/family movies beneath me, either: I loved How To Train Your Dragon, Up, Wall-E, The Princess Bride, Stardust, Coraline, and The Corpse Bride. Those are just off the top of my head.
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OMG, like no other scifi movies have been released during this whole time
1977 Lucas did, and wrote the script and made the film that way. The guy who changed the film, 1997 Lucas, had the edge and artistic integrity that 1977 Lucas had.
It's unfortunate that 1997 Lucas can screw with the work of 1977 Lucas.
Or maybe we should try to preserve a work of art against the deprivations of corporate scum, and of screenwriters and directors who lose their talent.
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I've been annoyed that I haven't been able to see the original movie since it was first in theaters back in the 70s; SW4:ANH just isn't the same thing.
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Evidence suggests he did, he just tried to retcon the real world with that claim.
Besides, it no longer matters what he wants, the story is now part of culture.
Let me explain. There were five Star Wars films. Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi were made first. Years later, Lucasfilm made Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, which should be watched as a flashback between Empire and Jedi . After Darth Vader's identity is exposed at the end of Empire (it's not a spoiler if you speak Dutch), we see how the situation was set up, and then we see how it ends. Just skip the cash-in that was The Phantom Menace.
"while technological advances have reduced the price tag for such an endeavour, lawyers will keep it expensive"
This is true of far too many things, beyond just the movie industry.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Who cares if Fox has to be cut in, does Disney not really care about the results $3B in profit that would result from a HD recoversions of the untouched original?
3.2 million copies of "Frozen" were sold on its first day of DVD and Blu-Ray release --- returning about $65 million gross.
"Frozen" as a global cultural phenomenon is damned impressive even by geek fan-boy standards. I would expect an HD restoration of the 37 year old Star Wars to be financially viable ---- but, as these numbers suggest, not the pot of gold at rainbow's end.
Tron what? You must have been reading some crappy fan fiction or something. There was only one Tron. It was about a human entering an 80's computer network and battling the artificial intellegence for the freedom of humanity. Then there was the sequel, The Matrix. It told the story after the artifical intellegence wins and enslaves all of humity, and the few humans who had escaped it's grasp and were trying to free the rest of the humans from a near future from the late 90's computer network.
Adywan's Star Wars Revisited isn't better, it's got completely different goals. Harmy's goal was to rebuild the theatrical cut, Adywan's goal was to make a better special edition. Neither one is "better" than the other because they're completely opposite directions.