Rebel 'Star Wars' fans saved the original movies | Hacker News Reader

Rebel 'Star Wars' fans saved the original movies

nytimes.com

38 pointsalex_young28 comments

I am not a Star Wars superfan, but have enjoyed some of the films, particularly the original Star Wars, Empire Strikes Back, and Rogue One.

When I first saw Lucas' revisionist scenes in Mos Eisley back in the 90s or early 2000s, such as the CGI creatures outside the cantina and the Greedo/Han Solo incident inside, it was disillusioning.

Lucas didn't fix flaws in the original film. He jazzed up some scenes that didn't need it. He neutered one of the great flawed heroes of science fiction film. It would be akin to Francis Ford Coppola remaking the scene in The Godfather where Michael Corleone coldly shuts the door on his wife by adding an audio or video edit in which the wife spits on Michael, thereby "justifying" the cold treatment.

Kudos to the teams restoring the original 35mm films, although I fear this article may trigger a heavy-handed response from Disney's legal thugs.

> although I fear this article may trigger a heavy-handed response from Disney's legal thugs.

Project 4K77 and other restoration projects have been well known for quite some time. This is hardly going to be the first Disney has heard of them.

I was wondering about that. Maybe they're taking an approach of "any publicity is good publicity"?

But once it's in the NYT, Bob Iger will surely read it. It may force the suits to release the hounds if just to make an example for anyone else considering similar restorations of Disney originals.

Everyone get to Mirroring them now then.

It's all objective. I enjoyed all the changes except the laser 'projectiles'. Though I agree it's nice to see fans preserve the OG edition.

I think you mean subjective. But I agree: the Star Wars special editions are the superior versions. I have never understood, nor will ever, why people get so worked up about the Han Solo scene. It's simply not an important part of the story or the character.

I think the loss of a major character beat is exactly what bothers people—it’s the whole point of the original scene. Aside from the modified action just looking really goofy.

I bothers me on two levels:

(1) it’s a cooler scene when he shoots first. It’s raw and uncompromising and represents what the first two films were before the later films went in a different direction.

(2) The idea that the bounty hunter could miss by that much at that distance is just ridiculous. It’s immersion breaking.

It’s just one scene but it stands out. If it were food, you could say “it’s just one hair in your yogurt.” It still kinda impacts the rest of it.

What an insanely wrong take.

It literally establishes that he will shoot first and ask questions later. It casts Solo in a completely different light than as simply a guy who is trying to survive and willing to skirt the law.

The original Solo is dangerous and reckless. The neutered one isn’t.

Yes subjective. Sorry.

Tell me you don’t understand Han without telling me you don’t understand Han.

I think they're also showing they don't understand storytelling, character development, or the medium of film.

And that's the important part of their comment

Did you enjoy the crappy 90s CGI Jabba the Hutt composited in a shot with Han Solo? They look like overlapping sprites due to bad collision detection. Pathetic.

If you watch The Making Of (or some other documentary) you can see that there was a different actor for Jabba (a big guy) when they filmed that originally, then subbed in the crappy Jabba. To me the "tail stepping" part is what truly ruins it (beyond being entirely unnecessary; Jabba's not the kind of Hutt to go talk to Han Solo and let his tail be walked on).

Since Lucas added back the Jabba scene that they couldn't complete for the original release, he should have deleted the Greedo scene entirely, since it was only filmed as a replacement. There doesn't need to be two scenes that explains that Han needs lots of money fast.

Yes, I enjoyed that too. I was pretty into Star Wars and CGI at the time. (Did some models and animation for "Star Wars Quake" mod.) While it may seem pathetic today, back then it impressed me.

Release the hounds to what avail? I can't read the paywalled article, but if all they are doing is restoring a physical copy, what can Disney do? I realize there are things they can try, but what law is being broken? I wouldn't think they are infringing on copyright.

  > “It’s like this is the movie I wanted it to be, and I’m sorry you saw half a completed film and fell in love with it,” Lucas said at the time. “But I want it to be the way I want it to be.”

its interesting... out of many projects i've worked on, i've had to cut-down from what originally i wanted to make, and looking back at them, i think some of them were better for it... perhaps my original ideas were too much and some things not being attainable at the time accidentally made it better?

i wonder if its like that for the original trilogy?

Your restrictions determine your style.

https://web.archive.org/web/20240504212831/https://www.nytim...

For some reason that is missing everything below the paywall for me. This one however works:

https://archive.is/H9jFd#selection-1969.0-1984.0

There was a release on DVD a few years back of the original 1977 version which I bought.

I was there in 77 and remember queues to get in to the movie snaked all the way down the city block and around the corner.

I sincerely hope one day disney will officially release the original versions of the star wars trilogy with the original sound mixes in them.

The ones with 77 80 83 sound mixes

> preserving the movies as they were shown in theaters

Well, sort of. Some people are definitely doing exactly that.

But the edit everyone has recommended for many years, the Despecialized Edition, largely embraces the parts of the remasters which cleaned up effects, etc. It's not quite the same thing you would have seen in the theater.

The article is largely about the 4k77/4k80/4k83 editions - which are indeed the original theatrical editions.

Since they’re scanned from original, early prints, and then have any remaining damage hand-repaired and color correction applied based on non-faded contemporary sources, they’re probably the closest a person can get to seeing the originals as-projected today. Just projecting an original print wouldn’t get you nearly as close, since they’re all damaged and badly faded. Later official releases usually have both material alterations and weird color choices applied (often they’re just really dark).

The 4Ks also include tons of audio mixes, including early shown-in-some-theaters ones like the mono mix, which sometimes differ substantially from one another (like using different takes from ADR)

this is false - despecialized intentionally puts back original artifacts that were "cleaned up" by later editions (including garbage mattes, VFX errors etc).

you can see it aplenty on Harmy's youtube https://www.youtube.com/@HarmyDespecialized/videos

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