No need to even go to censorship, you have people like George Lucas who go out of their way to destroy their previous productions.
Agh, I know the series is still raking in millions. But I can't enjoy the edits because my brain cries 'blasphmeny!'
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/c206f2/do_laser...
The best you are likely to find is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmy%27s_Despecialized_Editio... – I don't think the unaltered editions were ever released on DVD or BluRay at all, just VHS and LaserDisc.
No they were released in the 2006 DVD set, quality is very poor though.
Digitally remastered but otherwise the cinema release
At the time the excuse was that there were no longer any masters for the original trilogy to rescan for rerelease, so the LaserDisc version was the best that could be done.
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_changes_in_Star_War...
Their video quality is also terrible, even for DVD, being derived from a scan made for a Laserdisc release.
Edit: With the exception of getting LaserDisc releases of various vintages, the DVD release is the best, most accessible (excluding rarity) home video release of the original, unedited trilogy. They are not the highest quality, no doubt, but they are the best that was released. It could be argued that the despecialized editions are better for this reason or that, I personally consider them an incredible novelty, rather than a reference release.
It spoils the twist, but:
> And everybody knows that Greedo never even fired
> when Han shoots first it sets up his entire moral journey
> Plus it's cool
Also don't start me on that 'thing' they have singing in Jabba's palace.
0 - https://www.amazon.com/Tales-Eisley-Cantina-Star-Wars/dp/055...
The Greedo scene has been tweaked multiple times. In the most recent version available on Disney+ (confirmed to be Lucas’ work), Greedo exclaims “macklunkey!” just before the shooting starts, which I find hilariously absurd.
I have no problem with people making new versions of existing works; the problem I have is destroying the originals; even if destroyed by the author. The existence of copyright itself is a "deal" between society and an individual, we give the individual certain rights and privileges in exchange for certain benefits to society.
Only now has the ability to go back and change things resulted in large-scale destruction of personal copies of that original thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Changes_in_Star_Wars_re-releas...
Count me among the purists who think he ruined his good work ;-)
You can tell all the inserted scenes because the colors are off, the animations are not blended well, and it feels off uncanny valley style.
Sometimes directors have to give into the limitations of their medium -- time, money, meddling producers, etc. If they want to revise it later to meet their original vision, more power to them.
Also entirely possible it was a cash grab; Skywalker Ranch needed a new wing or something.
I'm really doubtful that it's as simple as Lucas one day having a left-wing/progressivism epiphany or some other grand artistic change, sell Lucasfilm to Disney, then participate in the destruction of their IP.
Wasn't he promised "treatments" and general involvement in the latest trilogy, then Disney back-stabbed him last-minute? I vaguely remember some drama about that.
Anyway, long story short, I think that there is more to the story, such as him being promised one thing and another thing happening, etc.
It's difficult to see this as a political event, where he was outplayed.
He's worked with and against the big cats in Hollywood his whole career, he specifically made career decisions to 'get away' from Hollywood meddling in his work.
He knew what he was doing and this mythical George Lucas character, who is victim and hero in one man, is getting a bit long in the tooth.
But like many story-spinners, he needs an equally phenomenal editor to sit on him. And it happens time and time again that a story-spinner gets so famous/rich/whatever that they can sit on the editor instead, and then the quality drops.
It's a very rare breed of story-spinner who can sit on themselves, offhand I can think of Tolkien perhaps.
George Lucas just saw making sci-fi movies as an effort to get reality as close as possible as the images he had in his mind. That meant seeing FX as an approximation, a constant compromise to reach the limits of what is possible to film. Lucasfilm were pioneers in digital FX and 3D for that very reason.
However, that also meant that each new work looked different from the previous, as real and digital FX diverged more and more with each passing year. He tried to rectify this by updating old works with new scenes and new effects. Had he stopped there, I reckon most people would have just plauded the novelty and moved on.
Unfortunately, while doing that, he also took the chance to modify what he saw as plot problems in the original movies - particularly the first, which was shot in isolation as a one-off, since there was no indication it would be as successful as it did (most actors thought it would be a one-and-done piece of trash, just to make a quick buck, particularly Sir Alex McGuinness). He made some dubious choices and the fandom never forgave him for that.
s/McGuinness/Guinness/
var objRef=document.querySelector("#\\33 5725793 > td > table > tbody > tr > td.default > div.comment > span > p:nth-child(3)");
objRef.textContent=objRef.textContent.replace('Alex','Alec').replace('McGuinn','Guinn');My take is that he became complacent with the big money rolling in after the first Star Wars, and never had much to show for afterwards or subsequently cared for movies that much. Contrast this with his pal Spielberg who churned out great film after great film, and continued mastering his craft. Lucas is a "director" who made four movies and stooped for two decades when he made it big. That says it all about his "passion" or lack thereof.
Ah, wait. He did found a great passion in the early 80s: merchandise.
I think what comes across in the prequels as this sort of ‘first take’ feel to the performances is a manifestation of his impatience - he wants to get the footage, edit it, get the effects, and see the thing in his head. And the ‘remastering’ he has done is similarly a bit of psychological desire to always feel like he can fix it later.
Waiting five days for Phil Tippett to stop motion ten seconds of tauntaun walking must have driven him crazy.
Underneath, it’s an engineer’s kind of laziness - the sort that drives innovation. I honestly felt after watching that documentary that I am slightly less annoyed by the clunkiness of Attack of the Clones because I actually now can see underneath it the excitement of Lucas to use all the toys he has spent a fortune investing in ILM to build and just make the damn movie.
Yes, but he overemphasized those technical aspects (where his care went) over the movie aspects.
It's like the guy who builds an expensive studio, with a huge mixer console, high end microphones, state of the art Pro Tools rig, and then proceeds to record his farts.
And we all get to benefit from the innovation he drove.
As much as you and I might knock Star Wars, it's wildly successful and is still seeing plenty of success in other mediums, so obviously it appeals to someone.
If the best you can say about a director is that "without him we wouldn't have as many franchize videogames" then I can rest my case :)
"I'll defend Lucas til I die. His expanded universe is why I read so many books as a kid, and the huge number of star wars videogames in the 90s/2000s allowed game designers to tinker with different gameplay ideas with the star wars fans as a safety net. The phantom menace movie had a lot of flaws, yes, but without it we wouldnt have the podracing videogames. disney, comparitively, has released... what, two star wars videogames in 7 years?"
Want me to highlight your argument? Here it is...
"The phantom menace movie had a lot of flaws, yes, but without it we wouldnt have the podracing videogames. disney, comparitively, has released... what, two star wars videogames in 7 years?"
That's the neat thing about art, I can choose not to think the post-Disney acquisition cash-cow milking is canon, especially when none of the original storytellers are involved, and it is thus not their vision.
Call it what it is: they retconned to milk the cash cow they bought dry.
Lucas contributions were iconic, but not enough to get the movie to the level it is. From some dialogues I've seen between the whole team about the films [1], Lucas was more into throwing high level ideas, not about any core script work. So, the main concept, parts of the character design, and a high level plot summary. The rest had to make a full story, screenplay, and movie out of it.
[1] http://maddogmovies.com/almost/scripts/raidersstoryconferenc...