I want to show my kids the best version of Star Wars, but it doesn’t exist. So I’m making it.
Why another Star Wars edit?
Any Star Wars fan can tell you more than any sane person would want to know about the many, many, MANY changes that George Lucas has performed to the Original Trilogy upon each re-release.
When I first heard about the Despecialized Edition, I was very excited. A restoration of the theatrical releases of the trilogy in HD? Yes please!
Having watched the Despecialized, I want to stress that it’s an incredible achievement by Harmy and the others involved, and clearly an enormous amount of work went into it. It’s the high water mark for film preservation projects.
However, as a preservation project, its goal is to restore the original theatrical releases, warts and all. And there are plenty of warts. It’s easy to forget if you haven’t watched the films in a while, but some of the effects are starting to show their age. The standard for home video viewing is no longer a grainy VHS playing on a tiny CRT TV. My kids are going to be old enough to watch Star Wars soon (and if they’re like me, rewatch it repeatedly), and I’d like them to experience the trilogy in as good a quality as possible.
So why not the Despecialized?
It’s only in 720p, not full 1080p
Technically, 720p is still HD, but it’s significantly smaller. Here are some comparisons — I’ve included the 2006 “GOUT” laserdisc transfer for reference, which was the best available release of the theatrical versions prior to the Despecialized. You can see that the Despecialized is a huge improvement, size-wise, over the laserdisc, but still falls short of the Blu-ray.
It un-fixes all the fixes
The Despecialized restores not only the original film assembly and effects (good), but also artifacts of the time such as matte lines, compositing issues, and even errors and inconsistencies that made the final cut (bad). Here are just a few examples; I’m adding to this gallery as I come across more.
Again, I think the Despecialized is a remarkable achievement for preservation, but it’s not the version I want to watch on the regular — or use to introduce a new generation to a trilogy beginning to look its 40+ years. I want these films to wow new viewers who aren’t wearing nostalgia goggles.
So why not the Blu-ray?
Even the official Blu-ray has pros and cons:
Blu-ray pros
- It’s in full 1080p
- Most of the original practical effects have been recomposited to remove things like matte lines. They’re still the original effects, just blended more seamlessly as originally intended.
Blu-ray cons
- It has all the various CGI “enhancements” that have been crammed in over the years. Many of these effects are only 20 years old, but look worse than the 40-year-old practical effects. CGI has a much shorter shelf life.
- Inexplicably, not all the effects were cleaned up. I keep running into things like garbage mattes that could and should have been fixed in the official remaster, but were apparently passed over in favor of putting blinky eyes on Ewoks.
- Many scenes in all three films have had their colors adjusted (or “regraded” in film parlance). I’m not opposed to some slight tweaks if they improve the quality, but these get pretty aggressive at times.
In general the various re-releases have bothered me more and more when I remembered that George Lucas only directed one of them. It’s one thing to go back and revise your own work (although to assign a collaborative medium like film a single creative owner is also dubious) but altering the final product of other directors with entirely new effects, scenes, etc is kinda sketchy — not to mention reselling the modified product over and over again. I think nonprofit fanedits are a fitting response!
So what’s the plan?
My guiding rule is: what looks better? I’m not opposed to some digital cleanup if it makes the film look better, or even some CGI tweaks if they’re executed in a manner consistent with the effects capabilities of the time, or correct original errors or imperfections. The goal is the best-looking version of the films that hew as closely to the theatricals as possible — without compromising quality. No purism for its own sake.
The process
- Use the Blu-ray footage as the basis
- Supplement with the Despecialized as needed to replicate the theatrical versions
- Document my progress on this blog so I’ll have a record of what I did and why. Now that Disney has acquired Fox (and thus the distribution rights to A New Hope), I suspect a 4K release of the saga is in the works, and no telling if that will be the theatricals or some new round of re-edits to shove in sequel trilogy connections. In either case, if better source footage becomes available, I’ll incorporate it.
- After the first pass is done, I plan on going back and fixing any outstanding effect goofs not rectified by the above sources. This will be the most time-intensive part, so delaying it gives more time to see if/when the 4K release happens.
- I’m mastering at 1080p. I don’t have a 4K TV and might never have one. Some of the sources I’m using would look pretty bad if upscaled that high. If/when an official 4K release or remaster comes out, I’ll probably revisit this project. But for now 1080p is sufficient for me.
- I’m not an audiophile, and will probably never own anything better than a stereo sound setup, so my focus is on the visuals. I’m using a combination of 5.1 audio sources from the Blu-ray and the Despecialized to match the visuals, nothing fancy.
I’m starting with Empire, as it seems to be the least modified of the three. I plan on doing the original trilogy, and eventually working my way to the prequel trilogy to either locate or replicate HD versions of the Phantom Edits. I don’t know that I’ll ever touch the Disney canon — as bad as the prequels are, there’s still something endearing about them, as opposed to the corporate product that Disney will be pumping out until the end of time. Sticking with the OT, and eventually the PT, gives me a nice manageable end goal to work toward.
Where can I download it?
Now the bad news. I’m not going to release or distribute this edit. I’m making this for me (and my kids) and have no desire to support the many audio tracks, subtitles, etc that the Despecialized laudably does. However, anyone with some basic editing know-how should be able to replicate my steps. And I’ll provide some files for any complicated effect fixes I undertake, so others don’t have to do the same busywork.
If you’re interested in doing your own edit, here’s how I got started.