CT What if ANH was re-released to theaters in 1990?

That would be the OT equivalent of TPM being re-released to theaters in 2012, so I wonder what would have happened.

 

Somewhere, on the floor of some kid's bedroom, Bebop and Rocksteady would have whupped Han Solo's butt.

 

1990 would have still have been a big deal, but not as big as in 1997. 1997 meant the kids of the OT were now teens and young adults. That put them in a different economic and cultural bracket.

Released in 1990 also means the grass roots revival of Star Wars would not have full developed. Starting in the late 80s Star Wars was slowly becoming popular again with growing demand for new content and merchandise. It wasn't until 1991 that Heir to the Empire was published. Star Wars was nowhere in 1990. By 1997 Star Wars was huge again.

And in 1990 Hasbro hadn't bought Tonka which owned Kenner. So Kenner still had the most favorable and profitable merchandising license for Star Wars. It wasn't until Hasbro let the license laps that Lucasfilm began making new Star Wars toys and under a new more profitable agreement for Lucasfilm.

 

Home Alone would've still crushed it

 

I feel like the Star Wars saga got a second wind in the 90s after the mania surrounding the initial releases quieted down in the 80s. At least how I saw things, there was a more focused effort in media with comics, books, and even video games, ultimately leading up to the trilogy's first real home release. I think 1990 is bit early to be counted amongst this era, though. Would've gotten people excited since it wasn't yet common on home video, but not quite as popular of a resurgence as would come later.

I consider the "Special Edition era" to be a separate era, which saw a return of the classic action figure line, home/theatrical re-releases, and the promise of upcoming films.

 

All three OT films had been released on VHS in the 80's.
What happened in the early 90's was the letterbox format THX VHS releases, that also had better sound and image quality.

I remember those as a pretty big deal. I bought them in 93 I think and SW had never looked that good at home. I was at university at the time and quite a number of people bought and watched those.

I saw the OT when they were released but in the late 80's, the films had faded a bit from general conversation. But after those THX VHS-tapes, interest was back.

The first two Rebel assault games also sparked some interest.

So a 1990 release?
Might not have done that much. RotJ had a re-release in 1985 but that did not make that much money.

Bye for now.
Old Stoneface

 

@Samuel Vimes I just assumed it was only rentals in the 80s. Though early home VHS tapes were not priced for the average consumer. Hence my wording of the first real home video release may not be literal, but the '93 release seemed to represent a time when these films were more accessible to everyone thus having more of an impact in the 90s IMO.

 

Star Wars found a second life and popularity on VHS in the 1990s. It started with the transfers from the 1980s seeing a wider more affordable release in a trilogy box set released in September 1990.

From there Star Wars came back into popularity less by Lucasfilm pushing to sell it and more as a growing fan interest that Lucasfilm was playing catch up to fill.

1990 is when the renaissance gets started. The Special Editions are really the apex of this period of fandom. The Special Editions also work as a leadin to the Prequel Era.

 

The 80's was mostly rental, at least in my country. There was no big market for selling VHS tapes.
Of course people that did want to "own" the film just copied it.

That changed a bit in the 90's, now there was more of a market of selling films. Not just SW but films in general.

In addition to what Jedi_Sith_Smuggler_Droid, said.
I think there might have been a few other things going on in the early, mid 90's.
The concept of Special Editions had gotten established, with Blade Runner SE theatrical release and Aliens SE, that was released on VHS and Laserdisc. And The Abyss also got a SE release on VHS.
All those did fairly well and got a bit of press.

Also, releasing films on widescreen VHS was becoming more common at the time. Die Hard was a title that got a widescreen VHS release back then and there were others.

And to me, SF films had faded away a bit in the late 80's. You still had Star Trek but not that much else.
In the 90's, there were some big SF films, Stargate, Independence Day (I think I saw a trailer for the ANH SE when I saw that film) and others.
This might just be my impression but SF in general got a bit more popular in the 90's and this might have played a part with SW. Yes SW might not be SF but rather space opera, space fantasy but you get what I mean.

Bye for now.
Blackboard Monitor

 

And let's not forget the LaserDisc releases in the late 80s to mid-90s. Not only did LDs have much higher resolution than VHS and some of them THX quality but also digital sound, some of the later releases (mid-90s) even uncompressed 5.1 channel AC3/Dolby Digital sound. When I watched those I really noticed a huge difference from VHS. Not only the original versions of SW but also the 1997 special editions were released on LD. Actually the first OT DVDs I got in 2001 were LaserDisc copies, of course way below DVD quality but far better than VHS.

 

I think that those special edition re-releases came at the right time. They whetted the appetite for Star Wars again, and the technology was good enough for Lucas to head from those straight into delivering his prequels. I remember it being an exciting time, as if there really had been an awakening.

 

For that to happen (in the 90s), wouldn't A New Hope need the kind of significance Alien was recognized with in 2002 and was seemingly cemented with in 2003 with a theatrical re-release? LucasFilm seemed to value the reception Star Wars was getting on home video over another theatrical release.

 

A lot of this is quite hard to quantify I spose given the lack of box office figures to go from but at the time I actually felt that the 97 SE's were a few years late to really pickup on the peak of the OT's popularity. There seemed to be a widow in the late 80's and early 90's were Starwars really picked up interest from the tweenage demographic, perhaps because a lot of the more acclaimed action blockbusters of that era were aimed at the adult market?

The shift to me seemed to be with the rise of CGI, Jurassic Park most obviously I think captured the interest if people around that age moreso than anything since the early 80's and cut into that previously growing interest around Starwars.

The question of how you grow that market is a good one I spose and you could argue that by staying out of cinemas Starwars had more of a cultish image akin to say Trek in the 70's which increased its appeal.

 

George Lucas deliberately withdrew the OT from theatrical release at the end of the 80's.

The student cinema I volunteered at wanted to show the complete trilogy as a celebration of Film Unit's 40th anniversary in 1989. We could get Star Wars and Return Of The Jedi without at problem, but Empire was no available. The rights for theatrical showings in the UK had lapsed and weren't on offer to distributors. I can't remember all the details of how we worked it, but we pleaded with Lucasfilm. Someone from Film Unit actually spoke to George Lucas's own secretary on the telephone from Sheffield Uni's student union (as close to Hollywood as Film Unit was going to get !) We were told that we could show Empire (for free, I think), if we could find a print and then shipped it back to Lucasfilm afterwards. The ITV network had 2 prints and let us have one. We showed it two nights running as part of the triple bill, then the precious print got sent to the National Film and Television Musuem in Bradford, which also showed it. Then Film Unit and Bradford shared the costs of shipping the reels back to Lucasfilm.
So one of the last ever theatrical showings of the original version of The Empire Strikes Back in the UK was in a 220-seat, student run cinema, on the 17th and 18th February 1989.
The other two films were withdrawn from theatres in due course, when the rights lapsed for them. This was in the UK: it's likely he was doing the same in the USA and the rest of the world. We were pretty certain that making them unavailable in the cinema was done to drive up demand for a video release, probably the letterbox editions, though I don't know the dates of those.

 

Although there was less new 'mainstream' Star Wars material in the late 80's, The Star Wars roleplaying game was introduced in about 1987, and was very popular with gamers.The worldbuilding for the game was detailed and became an important source for writers when the Bantam novels were first published. It wasn't just the technical stuff the authors used, they drew on some of the scenarios too as colour for the novels. For example, in 'The Bacta War', mention is made of a long-lost Alderaanian ship, the 'Another Chance'. It is said to have been located by a group of "Rebel sympathisers". I'm pretty sure our characters were fully fledged members of the Rebellion when we played that scenario, a few years before 'Bacta War' was published. But then, Mike Stackpole started out in RPG's before novels, as did Aaron Allston. Wraith Squadron was so plainly a roleplaying party...(our party stole bigger stuff than even the Wraiths managed).