Film Discussion of the Week: Star Wars "Special Editions"

I actually don't mind the SE versions. I know, 90's CGI looks tacky by today's standard and some bits were fine the way they were, e.g. the original wampa scene in Ep5 was more suspenseful and the original Lapti Nek in Ep6 sounded more alien than Jedi Rock did.

No matter which version, the movies were never perfect. There was one cut scene, where Yoda, on his death bed, explains to Luke why Obi Wan lied about his father. I would've preferred that to be added. It was better than "Anakin became Darth Vader, so it's true from a certain point of view". Ugh!

If you guys didn't like the Special Edition, the BluRay edition will give you serious nerd rage! For one thing, Daddy Skywalker aged in his suit, but suddenly he's Hayden Christensen again as a force ghost!

I have the originals and the SEs on VHS, so both are on hand if ever a casual or hardcore fan happens to come visit. The only thing is, will my VCR die before then?

Ep2 sucked BTW

I wonder if it was our old friend Fuckface Mcgee.

I guess I could understand it if you were so young all you ever got where the Special Editions. Being older, I grew up on whatever versions were on VHS during the 80s to mid 90s, so I found the special editions to be ghastly. I still shudder when I think of the band in Jedi.

I grew up on the Special editions, but after watching the original versions, the changes seem incredibly pointless and ruins more than it tries to fix.

What I find it interesting is that there is another movie from that time that also was edited countless times and received many different versions by its director: Blade Runner. While Star Wars' numerous edits are usually reviled, I don't see many complaining about Blade Runner.

This convinces me of one thing: the reason why people complain about Star Wars isn't just because it's not in its original state anymore; people complain because most of the additions were bad and clash with the rest of the movie. Unlike Star Wars, Blade Runners' edits don't clash with the original movie (no pointless CGI additions that quickly got outdated) and are usually improvements, like taking out the original expository narration and the tacked on "feel good" ending".

I think the difference is that the Blade Runner edits actually significantly improved the movie where the Star Wars special editions changes were more distractions than improvements. Also, the theatrical version of Blade Runner is still floating out there, so if you for some reason like that version the best, you can still get it. Not so much for Star Wars. The original theatrical version isn’t available in any official capacity and may be lost to time.

Also fans of big long running six-fi franchises tend to be a prickly bunch. A similar CG remastering of the original Star Trek TOS happened in the mid aughts. Although I find the remasters pretty inoffensive since all they did was updated some effects redid the ship scenes in CG (no giant beasts filling up the frame while Kirk and Spock are conversing) but some people found them to be sacrilege.

You know what bothers me the most? When people say "Hey, these are Lucas' movies, he can do whatever he wants to them!"

This bothers me because... Just look at the credits. There were a lot of people working in each element of those movies, so when, let's say, he replaces an original SFX scene for one made in CGI, he is discarding the work of a few talented SFX people. Or like when he inserted Hayden Christensen as Vader's ghost: to do that, he discarded a bit of Sebastian Shaw's performance.

But it all comes down to the fact that the changes are bad and that the theatrical versions aren't commercially available (unlike how Blade Runner masterfully did both things). For the first two movies, it's just strange to see a few CG scenes in the middle of a 70s-80s movie; in Return of the Jedi, we have longer, pointless inclusions like the band scene.


Don't tell me those CG characters aren't totally out of place. It's just cringe inducing.