CT Special edition - worst and best changes

Yes.

 

You can obviously choose how to watch the movies (or whether you want to watch them or not), but it's perfectly logical for Lucas (an artist AND an editor) not to release multiple versions of his own work (same as you don't release different cuts of a film), and to present it the way he thinks should be seen.

Classical musicians, for example, often reworked their own compositions after their release AND DESTROYED THE ORIGINAL VERSIONS! And nobody is cursing Beethoven for altering his compositions and not presenting the versions that "the public accepted in the first place and made Beethoven a household name".

(This contemporary notion of "choose your own version", the idea that a piece of art should be presented in a way that each of us can adapt it to our wishes, is something Lucas is totally against of. His passions for filmmaking comes from the idea that he can take raw material and transform it and present it in a way that will generate a reaction from the audience. HE has to be the one who edits the material. He's not interested in gathering material and let others decide how to present it).

 

It's also perfectly logical for people who saw SW in whatever version to want to hold on to that version going forward, and not have it lost forever because 20 years later the director decided "no, that bit was terrible actually, and we can do it much better now." And I don't blame them.

I'm sure there are Beethoven fans then and now who deplored his destruction of his earlier works in favor of the revised versions. Surely the continued existence of both versions would be a boon for listeners and scholars alike, and give us a better understanding of his artistic process.

Likewise for a proper re-release of the theatrical OOT. Fans want it, it'd make lots of money, it'd illuminate the creative process of cinema -- and, if Lucas is truly right about the changes he's made being improvements, the ability to compare various versions in equally high quality ought to bear out the wisdom of his SE alterations.

 

That Lucas considers his changes to be improvements in no way means he should release past versions as proof of anything. He's perfectly well aware that some people will agree while others will disagree. He simply doesn't want his vision to be a version among many. He doesn't want versions that he sees as incomplete and is not happy with being made available when one that he's happy with exists. It's as simple as that. He's comfortable with the latest version, it reflects his vision while the past ones don't, so the latest is the one that's out there. If it were up to the studios, they would put all of them out there for maximum profit. But in this case, it's up to the artist and not everything is about money.

 

But all the various versions were "his vision" at one point or other. When did they stop being "his vision"? Or did the "he" in question change with the passage of time?

 

They stopped being the closest to his vision whenever a revision happened. That seems obvious since it's the whole point of it.

 

Oh, absolutely. It's perfectly logical and understandable. I was just explaining why Lucas' point of view is also logical.

Exactly.

This is a really fascinating topic for discussion about art in general. I don't think there is a clear answer.

In my opinion, is perfectly logical for any artist to consider every piece of work as a "work in progress": they are never 100% satisfied, they always think they could do better, they always want to improve. That's why they're artists.
In the case of cinema, the reality is that there are hundreds of external forces that have an impact on the final result (studio interference, lack of budget, lack of time, an actor refusing to do something...). Therefore, often directors claim that they're unsatisfied with their work when it's released. That's what happened with Lucas in 1977. But also with Spielberg with Close Encounters.
So, the artist goes back and changes his work. His concern is to create a "perfect" version. He doesn't want to have an alternative version, he wants a "final" version of his work.
(Some filmmakers think differently. Peter Jackson, for example, claims that the Extended Editions of TLOTR and The Hobbit are alternative versions of the theatrical releases. And many of the "director's cuts" out there are made just to make more money.)
Now, the question is, can a new version of a film "delete" the existence of a previous version which was seen and liked by many?

But it's more complicated than that. Because the changes never stop. The filmmaker is never satisfied. And in the case of Star Wars, as long as Lucas was adding chapters to his story (which he considers to be "one film in six parts"), it was logical to keep changing stuff to better align all the chapters. After all, he kept changing stuff between cuts. He even kept changing stuff between releases. Sometimes it's just about correcting a mistake (a lightsaber that was white.... hardly anybody complains about that!). Sometimes it's just a line that changes. Sometimes the background is altered. Sometimes a scene is edited. And just once, a scene is added back (note that Lucas has NEVER added deleted scenes to his movies, except for this single occasion).
(And remember, there were changes between the 70mm release and the 35mm release of the films BACK IN 1977 AND 1980!! There was no "single original version" even back then! Because originally... was R2 lucky that he didn't taste very good, or was R2 lucky to get outta there?)
(Same with AOTC for example: what if I want to see the version in which Anakin doesn't hold Padme's hand during the wedding? That's the version I originally saw and liked!! Do I have the right to see that version in High-def?)

So I guess the real question is, is it possible to consider any version "final"? And, is it possible to consider any version "the original version"? Or, in some cases, the constant creativity of an artist and the will to improve his work means that there can never be a "definitive version"?

It's really a fascinating subjet (if we go beyond the usual "Lucas should/shouldn't release the OOT" debate), and I doubt there is a definitive answer.

 

It's also important to remember that Lucas' revisions are a consequence of opportunity.

The Special Editions happened because Fox wanted a re-release for the 20th anniversary of ANH, and the need of extensive restoration opened a door for Lucas to make the movies closer to his vision (while testing effects for the coming PT).

The Phantom Menace was revised for the DVD release, the first SW movie on the format.

The 2004 versions were another restoration attempt, this time completely supervised by Lucas. After his positive reception to the restorations of Young Indiana Jones, the Indiana Jones trilogy and THX-1138 by Lowry Digital.

The Phantom Menace got a full restoration in preparation for both the Blu-ray and the 3D release.

The 2011 versions were a small improvement of the 2004 versions for a Blu-ray release, with changes made over the years up to that point (for all six movies).

This new version is a consequence of the need of a new scan and restoration for the 3D release.

 

The final version is simply going to be the last version that GL works on, and given (as noted above) it seems he only works on them when there is opportunity for a new release, I can't see any more updates coming (besides the fact GL may not want to continue working on them). AOTC and ROTS will already have been upscaled for 4K so they are definitely beyond the upper limit of their picture quality. As for the other films shot in 35mm - for many 35mm films 4K is the upper limit of the image quality that can be extracted, and when you account for the fact that the CGI textures are already at the upper limit of their detail (were the TPM and SE CGI effects rendered at 2K?), I can't see the need for any further updates beyond these 4K remasters.

 

I don't think any of the versions were "his final vision". George Lucas had a vision for what he wanted the movies to be and with each new version the films got closer to that vision. The orignal film was released as the best it could be with the budget, time, and technology available but George Lucas always saw it as falling short of his vision.

No doubt the vision for the films changed a bit over time. But largely the films aren't that different when it comes to overall story, editing, music, and dialogue. The 97 versions added the most new content. The changes since 1997 are more about refining earlier effects and adding direct links to the Prequel trilogy.

These 4K versions are the closest we've seen to final. Maybe they are.

 

Yeah, that's what I said.

Okay, man. You do you. I just don't think it'll to any good at this point, because George clearly isn't changing his mind any time soon no matter what the fans say. Maybe things will change after he dies or something. But getting all worked up over this thing you have no control over just can't be good for your peace of mind. That's all I was saying.

What people might not understand is that Lucas really does see the original versions as a rough cut. Would any other filmmaker want a rough cut of their film to be put in circulation in such a way that it would be confused for and directly compete with the actual film itself? Of course not! (I'm sure that, if he could, Ridley Scott would make sure that the Final Cut of Blade Runner was the only one people could watch.)

So I think everyone, if they really tried, could at least see where Lucas is coming from, in concept if not in practice. What it really comes down to is people disagreeing with Lucas over the idea that the original versions are rough cuts. But Lucas is the only one who can decide that. Just because the movie was released to theaters doesn't mean it was finished, unless you want to get into a tautological argument. All it means is that he ran up against the contractually mandated release date and had to ship it out regardless of how he felt about the film in its current state. He would have preferred more time and money but couldn't have those things, due to constraints that were purely commercial in nature, not artistic. Similarly, he would have preferred more freedom to depict certain things the way he imagined them in his head, but he again couldn't have that freedom, due to constraints that were purely technological in nature, not artistic.

Lucas's argument is that he shouldn't be expected to permanently compromise his artistic vision due to practical constraints that had nothing whatsoever to do with art. He wanted to put something out into the world that would still be around after he was gone, and he wanted it to be a certain way. He couldn't make it that way back then, but later on he could. So why on earth wouldn't he? He wasn't dead.

Star Wars was an evolving, decades-long work in progress which was shown at various stages of completion in public exhibitions over the years. Now, seemingly, it is finally finished for good. For the most part, it is fundamentally unchanged from what it was.

Yeah I really don't understand these strange attempts to catch Lucas in a "gotcha!", as if proving that Lucas was never 100% satisfied with any of the revised versions means they'll magically disappear in a puff of smoke and instantly be replaced by the original versions (that is, whatever you consider the "original versions" to even be). The goal was never for him to be 100% satisfied. It was to be more satisfied than he was before. And by all indications, given the progressively fewer number of changes made to each successive version, he met that goal each time.

 

Is another familiar with the 97 restoration process? If I remember correctly the original negatives were severely damaged because of how many other reels had to be struck from them. I assume that the O-negs were as the basis for the 97 restoration. If that's the case at what resolution were they scanned? I assume they then created new negatives once they had made the 97 changes and that these were the new conformed negatives of the films (whose maximum resolution would be whatever the eotinal negative was scanned at)? What happened to he original negatives?

 

That's not really how the orignal negatives work. Those would almost never be touched. Basically a work print is created from all the film shot. That work print is then edited until it is the completed movie. The film shot in the camera, which is the negative, came with edge numbers on it from the manufacturer that allow each frame to be identified. Those edge numbers are reprinted on the work print.

A list of all the edge numbers to ID each bit of film used in the final cut is put together and sent to a conforming editor with the negative. A conforming editor's job is to cut the negative to match the work print. There is zero room for error on this. Conformists are perfect at their job.

From this conformed negative a duplicate is then created. After that the orignal negative shouldn't be touched again. All future copies come from that original high quality copy, which itself is not used much but instead a few high quality copies of it are used to make the theatrical prints.

Now the orignal negative film stock can deteriorate with time or distort. But it shouldn't be used in anyway at all, let alone wear out from making copies.

A studio film from the 70s should have all the negative shot for the movie stored somewhere. All of the elements should still exist. For the 1997 special edition the negative may have been reconfirmed. But again if parts of the orignal cut were removed from the negative, those elements would still be kept. Most likley reinserted on their orignal camera reels.

While a new copy of the negative as originally conformed could no long be made, those cut elements could still be scanned to digitally recreate the orignal.


It's also possible the orignal negative was scanned digitally for '97 and a new negative was printed to film from the computer files, leaving the originally conformed negative intact.

Where Star Wars gets a bit more complicated is all the different elements used for the special effects. Not just different elements but different gauges of film. I believe those were all rescanned and digital composited.

 

These new 4K remasters were done from the 97 conformed ONs right (or a duplicate)?

 

Great question! I don't know the answer.

What is the '97 negative? Was the original conformed negative reconfirmed in '97 to reflect the new changes? (In other words was the orignal negative reedited?) Is there a new separate '97 negative made from an early generation duplicate camera negative? Is the '97 negative a digital version of the movie printed to film? (not sure technology was to that point yet in '97)

Did specific scenes get digitally printed to film which were then inserted into the original camera negative?

Looking at the gorgeous transfers on Disney+, my guess is all new scans were made of the negative or early generation duplicate. Is that the '97 negative? Is camera negative? Is it individual elements rescanned an composited again?

 

I'm fairly sure that the original negative was indeed conformed to the 97 changes, however the removed elements were indeed kept. I also heard that all the elements in the archives have been scanned for preservation purposes. Apparently (reading up on it now) because there wasn't the technology at the time to scan the film at a high enough resolution, restore the film and then reprint it to a new negative, the 97 restorations were done physically to the film. The only exception was to include new digital elements (not sure if this means there are elements of the 97 negative that are at low image quality than the rest of the ON).

 

I don't think that earlier versions in circulation would compromise anything. I know that you have scoffed at this before, but I think that it is worth repeating. Star Wars was not some private art project for Lucas, he put it out as a commercial commodity, one which he hoped that people would pay to see. They did, and by doing so made him a very wealthy man. That wealth has given him the freedom then to go back and make revisions to the movies, but at the same time, it is just a shame that he doesn't acknowledge how much fondness and affection some people have for the versions they paid to go and see all those years ago.

I think that you mentioned that you were in your late twenties, but I am old enough to just vaguely remember seeing Star Wars in the cinema. For many fans, those older than me especially, the movie is a kind of nostalgic marker for them, a time stamp of a specific period in their lives. The original movies help preserve that. Had I been Lucas, I would have retained that "rough cut" if I was aware just how much it meant to people, but at the same time released a director's cut version for myself.

 

That's the big difference with how Lucas sees this. He does not have nostalgic feelings for the earlier cuts. They were incomplete for him. And the last thing he wanted was for those movie to be time stamped to the later 70s. He wanted Star Wars to be timeless or outside of time - like The Wizard of Oz.

It's frustrating but I don't think we'll ever see earlier versions released.

They are his movies, we got to see them. We paid for a ticket to see them in theaters. That's the extent of the interaction and how much ownership we have over the films.

 

There's no turning back.

 

Right. Lucas was changing the films constantly since their first release. Some of the changes were due to the limitations of the day, such as the number of theaters that had stereo sound versus monaural sound, which required a remix of the audio tracks in 77 and then again in the 80's. Adding "Episode IV: A New Hope" in 79-80. And so on. As noted, the overall story is his vision. The finer details like Anakin's ghost, Jabba, Greedo, Lightsaber effects, model effects, etc are all expansions upon which he sees the flaws and tries to fix them.

As to which versions Lucas wanted fans to see...

"It'll be a very different experience, because when Darth Vader walks into that spaceship with the princess, they're going to think, 'Oh my God, that's Anakin!' and they're gonna see Luke and think, 'Oh my God, that's his son!' And rather than a surprise when he says, 'I am your father,' it'll be like, 'Oh my God, finally he's told him!'"

--George Lucas, Guardian Unlimited.

"If you see them in order it completely twists things about. A lot of the tricks of IV, V and VI no longer exist. The real struggle of the twins to save their father becomes apparent, whereas it didn't exist at all the first time [audiences saw Episodes IV, V and VI]. Now Darth Vader is a tragic character who's lost everything. He's basically a bitter old man in a suit.

"I am your father" was a real shock. Now it's a real reward. Finally, the son knows what we already know.

It's a really different suspense structure. Part of the fun for me was completely flipping upside down the dramatic track of the original movies. If you watch them the way it was released, IV, V, VI, I, II, III - you get one kind of movie. If you watch I through VI you get a completely different movie. One or two generations have seen it one way, and the next generations will see it in a completely different way.

It's an extremely modern, almost interactive movie making. You take blocks and move them around, and you come out with different emotional states."

--George Lucas, The Making Of Revenge Of The Sith.

He didn't forcibly say that you have to watch it I-IX, but at the same time, he designed the films to be viewed that way. That's why he added episode numbers once he settled on a title for TESB other than "Star Wars II". Once he committed to adding the episode numbers in 1979, he was saying this is how they're meant to be seen.

"The Star Wars saga is like a symphony, which has recurring themes," he adds, "You have one theme orchestrated in a particular way and place, which then comes back orchestrated as a minor theme somewhere else. There are these little threads running through things that are constantly turning events on their head. You see two people confronting the same things, with different ends. It's a rhythm. I like the idea of seeing something from a different perspective. An advantage I have in this particular situation is that I have literally twelve hours to tell a story. It has the epic quality of following one person from the time he's nine years old to the time he dies. It's Anakin's story, but obviously there are many other characters in that story- his children, his best friend- and their stories carry through. So this isn't just a tune- it's a symphony. When you do it as a symphony, I think it actually becomes beautiful."

--George Lucas, The Making Of Revenge Of The Sith; page 221.

"It's a downer, the saving grace is that if you watch the other three movies, then you know everything ends happily ever after. Nevertheless, I now have to make a movie that works by itself but which also works with this six-hour movie and this overall twelve-hour movie. I'll have two six-hour trilogies, and the two will beat against each other: One's the fall, one's the redemption. They have different tonalities but it's meant to be one experience of twelve hours."

--George Lucas, The Making Of Revenge Of The Sith, page 62.

 

George Lucas doesn't owe you anything. This remains true regardless of how old I am. I'm old enough that my first memories of Star Wars involved watching the OOT over and over again on a VHS player hooked up to a CRT television. For that reason I was dead against the Special Editions until I was well into my teens, at which point I realized my own bias was preventing me from evaluating their existence fairly.

My experiences are no less valid than yours, but no matter what they are, they do not invalidate Lucas's own rights as an artist to have control over his own work and artistic legacy.

 

Calm down, I’m not trying to invalidate your experiences, merely illustrate the idea that the original 1977 movie in particular was probably something of a moment for many cinema-goers who would perhaps like to preserve that by having those theatrical releases to watch.

And, I have never claimed that Lucas owes anybody, including me, anything. I just said that it is a shame that he fails to acknowledge the above, especially as it wouldn’t compromise anything.

 

It's sort of mind blowing that the Special Editions have been available longer and sold more copies at this point than all the pre-'97 versions.

 

Well, actually, he has explicitly acknowledged the above, said he's sorry he can't give people what they want, and explained why having the old versions available would compromise the primacy of his vision:

"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 half a 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."

But other than all those things you got completely wrong, you make a reasonable point. It's not enough to just say it. The only possible valid way for Lucas to acknowledge your feelings is to give you exactly what you're demanding of him. But you don't think he owes you anything.

 

One approach that is really nice is to release all the versions in a blu ray boxset like Steven Speilberg did with the 30th Anniversary Ultimate Edition of Close Encounters Of The Third Kind.

I own that set and it's both fun and edifying to watch the three different versions and compare.