Star Wars: Special Editions Review

As I said in my New Hope review, Lucas actually returned to the original trilogy in the nineties and made all sorts of revisions, mainly in the form of adding CG in all sorts of random places. Backgrounds, foregrounds, brand new inserts, you name it. I can’t watch these versions without a barfbag. Imagine Shakespeare returning to an old poem and adding modern slang that throws off both the rhythm and rhyme. The CG is so blatantly obvious, so out of place and so unnecessary that it makes me laugh and tear up at the same time. Lucas even made controversial alterations like having Greedo shoot first at Han in the Cantina (and missing, at point-blank range), and replacing actor Sebastian Shaw with Hayden Christiansen as Anakin’s ghost in the end of Jedi. The true fans agree: these alterations are nothing but a sick joke.

The great irony is that Lucas feels the opposite. He isn’t proud of the original trilogy. In fact, he’s ashamed. I am SO thankful that he decided to make the trilogies out of order, or we never would have gotten these accidental masterpieces. But worst of all… to this very day, Lucas has refused to release restorations of the unaltered trilogy! So you gotta choose. Either you have to settle for grainy, low-quality transfers of the original, unaltered versions, or you can get clean, remastered versions -- with the alterations. GAH! That's like choosing between a child prostitute and an elderly one. Like many others, I desperately long for the day when we’ll get beautiful restorations of the original, unaltered versions. Why is Lucas being such a Sith about it?! Maybe he’ll pull a Vader and have a character arc just before his death. If not, he ain’t gonna live forever. I just hope whoever the rights go to next will be smart enough to do the right thing.

Click here for my review of The Phantom Menace: Pee-yousa!