the george lucas video doesn't want you to...
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In 1978, Star Wars won seven Academy Awards. But if you want to watch thatoriginal version, the first of George Lucas’s soon to be seven-part saga, you’llfind it difficult. In fact, it’s actually impossible to buy an official copy of StarWars as it was first released. Lucas doesn’t want you to see that version. Instead,he wants you to watch the continuously updated special editions—movies withadded CGI, changed sound effects, and whole new scenes.
According to some fans, every element that prompted the Academy to recognizethe original Star Wars has been changed in these new versions. And some ofthose fans are now taking it upon themselves to recreate the original Star Wars
The Star Wars George LucasDoesn't Want You To SeeThe original 1977 version of the saga is nearly impossible to find, so these fans made theirown.
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in a process they call “despecializing.” They gather in online forums and sharetheir work—painstakingly reassembling the movie from a handful of differentversions of the film, from VHS to DVD to 35mm print scans using photographyand animation software.
One of the most well known despecializers goes by the name “Harmy,” andhe recently released a little behind-the-scenes look at the various sources heused for his despecialized edition.
People like Harmy who create despecialized versions of Star Wars go throughand correct all kinds of additions and changes that the later special editionsadded. In the original versions of the films, for example, it’s clear that Han Solopulled out his gun and shot the bounty hunter Greedo. In the 1997 version,Greedo shoots first. In the 2004 version, they shoot at the same time. With therelease of the later films, later versions of the original trilogy were edited to addin appearances from Jar Jar Binks and Hayden Christensen. Lucas evenreplaced the voice of Jason Wingreen*—the original Boba Fett—with the voice ofTemuera Morrison who played Jango Fett in Episode II: Attack of the Clones.
There are huge lists of these inconsistencies online at places likeSaveStarWars.com and OriginalTrilogy.com, where fans dissect the films andpoint out discrepancies. And on these message boards, Harmy is a bit of asuperhero—although in many ways an unlikely one.
Harmy—a 25-year-old from the Czech Republic—never saw the original StarWars in theaters. Instead, he had a VHS tape that he watched as a kid. Andwhen he first saw the special editions, he actually liked them. But as his StarWars fandom grew—he did his undergraduate thesis on the cultural impact ofthe original movies—so did his desire to see the film in its earliest state. Usingskills he picked up in college, he created his first despecialized version four years
Harmy
ago. Now, he’s on version 2.5, and between new copies of the movie being madeavailable, and the techniques he’s learned along the way, he’s confident thisversion is the best one yet. “I’m pretty proud of these latest ones,” he told me.
For Harmy, the project is all about being able to show people who haven’t seenthe original Star Wars what the film was like when it first became aphenomenon. “Look at this awesome film that was made in the '70s,” he says, “Iwant to show that to people. I wanted to show my brother. He was three when Istarted working and I showed it to him when he was five and he loved it.”
It’s not that fans want to ban the new versions of Star Wars—no matter howmuch they may dislike them. They simply want to have a choice. Harmy evenadmits that he might watch the special edition every now and then. “If bothversions were available in the same quality I would probably enjoy watching thespecial edition once in a while. It’s not about George Lucas not being able to dothese special editions. If people like the special editing, they can continuewatching those. As long as both versions are available.”
For his part, George Lucas doesn’t really care what Harmy and his cohort want.In 2004, when a new DVD special edition came out, Lucas told the AssociatedPress he had little sympathy for fans who yearn for the 1977 original. “It’s likethis is the movie I wanted it to be, and I’m sorry if you saw half a completed filmand fell in love with it,” he said. “But I want it to be the way I want it to be.”
But fans aren’t the only ones who want Lucas to release the original. Curators atthe National Film Registry picked the 1977 version of Star Wars to preserve forhistory’s sake, but they still don’t have a copy in the registry. When they askedfor a copy, Lucas refused, saying that he would no longer authorize the release ofthe original version. The Library of Congress does have a 35mm print of StarWars, one that was filed in 1978 as part of the movie’s copyright deposit, but theregistry, where films are meant to be preserved for history, is still without one.
And here’s the real plot twist. In 1988 George Lucas actually gave a speech
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Harmy
Harmy
before Congress about the importance of cinematic preservation. In the late1980s, Ted Turner bought studios like MGM and began releasing colorizedversions of classic movies. The directors of those movies weren’t happy, and agroup of movie makers came together and argued before Congress that peoplehad the right to their cultural heritage, in the form of original versions of classicfilms.
“People who alter or destroy works of art and our cultural heritage for profit oras an exercise of power are barbarians, and if the laws of the United Statescontinue to condone this behavior, history will surely classify us as a barbaricsociety,” Lucas said in his speech. He went on:
Today, engineers with their computers can add color to black-and-whitemovies, change the soundtrack, speed up the pace, and add or subtractmaterial 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. Itwill soon be possible to create a new "original" negative with whateverchanges or alterations the copyright holder of the moment desires. Thecopyright holders, so far, have not been completely diligent in preserving theoriginal negatives of films they control. In order to reconstruct oldnegatives, many archivists have had to go to Eastern bloc countries whereAmerican films have been better preserved.
There’s some irony when you compare that quote with the work of Harmy, thefan from the Czech Republic spending hundreds of hours slaving away atrestoring Lucas’s original vision.
Some argue that here Lucas was railing against outsiders being able to alter adirectors work, not against directors being able to update their own pieces.Which raises the question of who truly owns something like Star Wars—a hugecultural phenomenon—once it is unleashed. Lucas addresses that in his speechtoo. "American works of art belong to the American public; they are part of ourcultural history," he said.
And while it raises legal questions, Harmy doesn’t think that his work is in anyway jeopardizing the value of Star Wars. “I’m convinced that 99% of people whodownload this already bought Star Wars 10 times over on DVD.”
When Disney bought LucasFilms in 2012, rumors were reignited over thepossibility of a true original being released. “I’m really hoping that now thatDisney has the rights that they will release the original versions in a properrestored quality, and then I can take all this stuff down and enjoy Star Wars asit’s meant to be,” Harmy told me. But that day may never come. In themeantime, fans will continue to hunt for original copies of the film, and recreatethe 1977 movie’s magic.
An earlier version of this post misidentified the actor who originally voiced Boba Fett as Jeremy
Bulloch. Bulloch was the actor who played Boba Fett, but the character was voiced by Jason
Wingreen. We regret the error.
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