This week I found out there is a fan-made "despecialized" edition of the original Star Wars movies. This was a pretty big deal to me, because I remember seeing the special editions when they came out in the late 90s and thinking Lucas had rogered his movies. It even seemed like some of the scenes had an odd blueish tint — strange for a kabillion-dollar rejigger. But at least we still had the originals, right?
As it turns out, the original cuts are quite hard to find, especially if you care about things like the quality of the transfer. Fans hounded Lucas until he finally caved and released the original cuts on DVD in 2006, but in a massive "fuck you" to fans he released them in about the worst quality he could get away with. I bought those up because I figured that was the best I'd ever get.
It was about 3AM when I found out about the "despecialized" editions, so I don't think I knew how to process the information yet. Some obsessive anorak (I salute you, noble anorak) has taken the blu-ray releases, regraded the colors, and spliced in elements from non-special sources. Can you imagine? I haven't watched them yet, but from the clips I've seen the work they've done is tremendous.
I'm not trying to start a "who shot first" debate, but if you're the kind of person who cares about that I figured you might like to investigate the despecialized editions for yourself and report back.
Is this the most recent version of this? I recently saw a video about a lot of the recent work they've put into this.
The original film that the movie was shot on no longer exists. The version that you bought was a rip from the laserdisk release from the early 90s. It's the best they have to work with. It wasn't a "Fuck You" to the fans, it was a "We're sorry, but this is the best we have."As it turns out, the original cuts are quite hard to find, especially if you care about things like the quality of the transfer. Fans hounded Lucas until he finally caved and released the original cuts on DVD in 2006, but in a massive "fuck you" to fans he released them in about the worst quality he could get away with. I bought those up because I figured that was the best I'd ever get.
That's the official story at least, but to be francis I'm not sure I buy it. For a start they can't have transferred the decaying original film elements and magically wound up with the special editions. They must have copied them first so they could perform their edits, which means even if the negatives are gone they'd still have copies. But for the sake of argument let's accept Lucas' story (and I don't know why Lucas would want us to — it suggests some very destructive negligence on his part). That doesn't change the fact that they released DVDs sourced from the laserdiscs you mentioned — a letterboxed copy that was full of 90s compression artifacts. They could have done a much better job than that, even if it was just doing a transfer of a screening print. Don't forget these are some of the most popular movies of all time. There must be a million high-resolution film prints that were distributed to cinemas.