Over the years, the original Star Wars films have been subject to many changes and additions. According to Lucas, the original cuts have been lost to time. Well, sorry George. We the fans cannot let that happen. This is the story of how the fans saved Star Wars.
This is Part I in a new series I’m creating documenting the fan preservation of the Theatrical Cuts of Star Wars. This episode focuses on Laserdisc Bootlegs.
This bought back some memories. I remember downloading the TR47 bootlegs which were really good copies for the time.
@zeratul @UKFilmNerd
Yeah, I can believe that Lucas himself doesn’t want to release the original versions. They are, however, in my opinion of historical significance. They should be preserved.
I do have the original versions myself in a format that I can no longer watch. VHS.
One day, I’m hopeful the original versions will be made available again.
By “the original” you mean the non-special edition.
But interesting to note that the true theatrical versions were never released on VHS. By the time it was released on home video, small changes had already started to be made. Pretty common for a lot of movies.
For example, the opening crawl was changed for A New Hope after 1981 to refer to it as “Episode IV”. The original theatrical version didn’t say that. There were also changes to accommodate the poor technology that would be used to play them back in homes, like brightening certain scenes.
But those were like 1.0.1, 1.0.2… where the Special Editions would be 2.0. I don’t know that anyone really cares about the “mini” version changes. When they talk about the original, they mean 1.0.x.
There are definitely people who care about those differences. There are even a few actually changes in footage, making some 1.1
Go look at some of the sites that cover all the changes
When articles like this talk about people who are worried about preserving the original they mean original. There are a bazillion copies of the VHS version out there.