Keeping up to date with star wars is an existential nightmare

"People who alter or destroy works of art and our cultural heritage for profit or as an exercise of power are barbarians,"

"Today, engineers with their computers can add color to black-and-white movies, change the soundtrack, speed up the pace, and add or subtract material to the philosophical tastes of the copyright holder. Tomorrow, more advanced technology will be able to replace actors with "fresher faces," or alter dialogue and change the movement of the actor's lips to match."

Fighting to keep Hollywood from remaking classic black and white movies in colour or lazy CGI remastering - Cor, who was this visionary, this protector of all original media?

Yep, George Lucas. Yep, THAT George Lucas, most known for changing 3 films over and over again, seeking the perfect version from his minds eye.

Why did I start with a wanky quote against commitee interference in film from the 80's? dunno really, but it does teniously tie-in to when I went to the cinema last year, and the existential crisis that occured.

Being a hyper nerd born in the 80's, I have at some point seen the majority of star wars films at the cinema. I saw phantom menace when it came out, revenge of the sith on midnight opening, the force awakens and the last jedi at the cinema too. I travelled up to London to watch an orchestra play along to empire strikes back , and i inflicted return of the jedi on the family when it came out for my birthday on the 40th aniversary. Although I say inflicted, i mean its the best and peak star wars, therefore they were blessed, and thats the end of the debate.

So last year, all of the star wars films came back to the cinema. Well, apart from the clone wars film, but everyone has scrubbed that from their memory, so no-one cared.

I was intending to see a new hope, as out of the ones i hadn't seen on the big screen. However life got in the way, but next week was empire, and i took the eldest along to inflict on her a 40 year old film about a skiing holiday gone wrong, family bust-ups, incest and amputations.

So what caused an existential crisis? When it got to the bit where Luke is about to be dinner for the snow monster and must use the power of nepo-baby. Seeing the Wampa (see, i knew what it was called, i was just pretending i was that clueless) on screen made me realise, of yeah, that's an added scene.

But then I had to think 'oh yeah, extras- wonder which version is this.' which led to the equivalent of a star wars themed k-hole. There are hours of youtube videos disecting the changes made between versions - as well as the theatrical release in 1980, the special editons came out in 1997, changing loads, most was thought to be awful amendments. amended again in 2004 for DVD, amended yet again in 2011 for Blu-ray, and amended for the last time (at the moment) in 2019 when added to Disney+ - Spreadsheets keeping track of all the changes span into the void of madness.

I was able to switch off my brain and enjoy the film - eventually. Out of the three, empire gets off the easiest, new hope has the terrible Han shot first and Mcclunky, horrendous cgi jabba, and jedi get the song added in the palace section, the ewoks now blink, Darth Vader gets his NOOOOOOOO! added from revenge of the sith, Luke sees a force ghost of anakin as hyden Christiansen (for the viewers benefit - luke will have no idea who the hell he is) and most agregiously, the end song gets swapped out and we get more gungans, whoever thought that was a good idea.

It is however, completely by design. these are the versions that George Lucas wants the world to see, and attempts are made to limit you from seeing the original versions you remember from your childhood. Because its not your memories, its the films he wanted to make, in the way he wanted them to be seen. so watching the not horrendous versions come with different challenges

The Limited edition special edition DVD's have the original theatrical versions as added extras, but at a 4:3 viewing resolution, giving the impression of watching through a postage stamp. plus you loose all of the good improvements, the colour balancing, the sound cleanup, all the thankless stuff done in the background to enhance the image subtly rather than 90's CGI which dates it horribly.

Alternatively, you can seek out a fan project, where some utter heroes have spent actual YEARS stitching together the best images from the blu-ray, the laser disk, even taking high res photos of each frame from the original cinema reels. Not all heroes wear capes.

The versions to choose from are numerous - Harmys Despecialised versions, Project 4k77, Team Negative 1. But all involve extra nerd legwork, often need to jump through hoops to download, burn/stream and fall into the 'not really legal' category.

So what is the best choice? Not too long ago, when DVD and blu-rays came with extra scenes for the mega fans to get extra kicks to scratch their itch. Best possibly scenario - you get to configure the film the way you want, add in the scenes you want, choose the audio and visual cleanup, give the viewer the choice. But its not happened until now, due to licences issues on the original releases and George Lucas obsession with everyone watching the films the way he wanted. Which Disney have carried on for some reason. But with the way that they have handled Star wars, its more likely they just hate money.

More will be said on Star Wars in the upcoming weeks (sure you can't wait!) but I felt this was a nice ease into the chaos of trying to watch a 40 year old trilogy and piece together which decade each scene is from. I will attempt to break up the Star Wars rants with lukewarm takes in other directions.

So if you have made it this far, Welcome, thank you, and will catch you on the next one!

Comments coming soon, once i figure out how to code properly and can be arsed to add it in!