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‘Star Wars’ “Looks Terrible” in Screening of Long Lost Original 1977 Version
(www.hollywoodreporter.com)
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this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2025
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Literally, the first paragraph. They tweaked it after the original release. Very few people saw this original print. You haven’t seen this print.
Apart from different sounds mixes and adding the title "A New Hope" for it's re-release in 1980 (I think), there were no significant changes until the Special Editions in 1997.
Maybe I’m wrong, then. The article left the impression that this was a limited release but your explanation makes more sense. Mea culpa.
It's really hard to tell from the article just how different it is. You've got Kathy Kennedy saying "I’m not even sure there’s another one quite like it.... It’s that rare." But then you've got them talking like it's exactly what anyone who watched the film from 1977-1980 would have seen. Maybe it's just that the print quality was rare in light of George's occasional purges?
The headline also oversells how "bad" it was. This from the article (with adequate context) felt more on point:
To the extent it's relevant, Mr. Collin is also juuust young enough (born 82 or 83) to have missed all three OT films in their original run. For the record, I saw ROTJ first-run as a little kid and it remains the one for which I am the most irrationally protective. This would be as opposed to The Last Jedi, which is the one for which I am the most defensibly and objectively protective. Pardon me while I retrieve my asbestos suit.
There's a lovely ten minute video on the BFI YouTube channel talking about this lovely Technicolour print of the film.
I'm pretty sure the only reason everyone is calling this rare is because it doesn't have the "episode 4" title which was added later.
This is the same film, for people of a certain age, grew up with on TV and VHS. I don't understand why it's being sold as a version barely anyone has seen.
If you want a version no one has seen, in the Lucasfilm archives is a copy of Star Wars where the travelling shots in the Falcon and land speeder were achieved with rear projection. Just like the TV shows of the 70s and 80s when characters were talking in cars.
Thanks. Yeah, I don’t know what all the hullabaloo about “a different movie” would be then. Maybe a pristine print hits a little different and reveals details that make it feel more like what it is, but I tend to agree this is just people with unrealistic expectations of the movie that basically started modern VFX.
Since you seem to be informed, I have a potential Mandela effect to discuss. I have a distinct recollection of seeing multiple pre-SE versions on TV and/or VHS, but the only difference I remember is that one of them included a few seconds of Threepio explaining the contents of the plans/maps Artoo was downloading in the initial guard room they take over. The dialogue sounded distinctly and sloppily ADR’d. Have you ever heard of anything like that?
I don't know about that instance in particular but that's not to say it didn't happen. As new sound mixes were created over the first few years, I think different sounds and lines were tinkered with.
The only one that I definitely know of is during Han and Chewie's escape from the Death Star.
You can hear a Trooper shouting "close the blast doors". Then once they're closed, a Trooper hurriedly shouts, "open the blast doors, open the blast doors!" I can't remember which, but one of those two lines was added at a later date, I'm sure.