Monster Zero x SciFi Japan - Archive Only

There’s also several fan made projects of the original unaltered trilogy that rival good studio Blu-rays in quality (and beat the pants off the official Star Wars blus) if you know where to look. Heck, there’s now Star Wars ‘77 and very soon to be Return of the Jedi in full 4K sourced entirely from 35mm film prints scanned on professional equipment. Empire Strikes Back is still a little further on the horizon (due to quality film elements being harder to find since it’s all on rapidly fading Eastman stock), but it is slowly be given the 4K treatment too.

So yeah, it’s not “easy” to obtain. But if you do some legwork, the entire original theatrical trilogy is out there, and now (or soon, in the case of ESB) in amazingly high quality that’s as close as you’ll likely ever get to seeing it in the theater on its original release.

Didn't Disney say something about wanting to release the original unaltered prints on BD down the line? I could have sworn I read that some where.

Thanks for the responses. But, all quality and sources aside, there basically is no reason then for someone to claim they cannot see the original trilogy in it's original form though correct? I just want to squash that myth.

yeah, humdingers nailed it. It might not be LITERALLY true that it's impossible, but the average person won't go through the effort...especially as PCs and even laptops are becoming less common as people switch over to tablets and don't have the ability to track down and download and play one of these fan restorations.

It's not IMPOSSIBLE, but there will definitely be an entire generation of Star Wars fans that never sees them unless there winds up being an official release.

^ Perfect. Thanks. I guess just because I do own the DVD's that came out 10 years ago, I assume that since something is always with ME it's always available. Which, as has been explained very well is *complicated*. For me personally I'd find a way to get them, if I didn't own these already, but that's just me. I went to great lengths to track down some rare variants of Toho films, and am still working on it. I guess it's just that when anyone someone says that a Film cant be seen, I take that as a challenge. Unless of course it's something like the Japanese King Kong films from the 1930's that truly are lost to time, at least for now.

Still the Toho films we all enjoy are pretty obscure next to Star Wars, arguably one of the most popular film franchises of all time, and to have it's original three films be *difficult* at best to obtain legally, seems odd. Also I don't ever see the day I wont at least have a laptop, or a device that plays physical media of some type.

While I think this whole situation is a farce, since there was no reason to make the theatrical versions so obscure, I do think people over react towards the other versions. Like I don't agree with every change made, especially the Vader no scream in RotJ, but there are some solid additions and corrections made to them, such as the stuff dealing with Cloud City in ESB.

Nevertheless, since we can get 3 different versions of Blade Runner, Army of Darkness, and Touch of Evil on Blu-Ray, there is no reason why we shouldn't have the same with Star Wars.

For anyone curious:





And their . There’s lots of neat stuff on there if you’re interested in the process of film preservation, the history of changes to Star Wars films over the years, or other film related topics.

Love it. Thanks so much.

Something I hate about all the ‘97 and on versions is the inclusion of special effects that were completely impossible in 1977. It just really draws me out of the movies. Ironically that was Lucas’s goal with the special editions, however, to add shots/characters that he wanted originally but couldn’t accomplish because of the technology. And an added problem with that is that those original scenes as filmed didn’t take those alterations into account. E.g. the Mos Eisley approach scene was not composed to have a bunch of silly creatures in the background. But in ‘97 ILM added them in and cluttered the frame and took the focus off the speeder, which, while boring, is still the emphasis of that shot as it had been filmed. What Lucas should have done is rebuilt that shot up completely from scratch. But even then it would still draw me out of the movie for the reason I mentioned above.

I want them to come out with a "Make Your Own Version Edition" Trilogy. After you put the disc in, it gives you all the different edits and you get to choose what and which edits are in "your" version. Want the Cloud City windows but not Luke screaming as he falls? Want the Sarlac bulb and the Ewoks singing yub nub at the end? There you go. It's the best of all worlds.

There's a HUGE difference between 'fun' and 'cash-grabbing garbage' - which is what 95% of SW has been since ESB, to be brutally honest..

Frankly, I'm glad Rebels wasn't totally serialized. I've grown bored of serialized series because everyone is doing it now. That is one of the biggest flaws with all of the super hero shows these days. They're all so busy building the plot up for the season finale that they forget to be a show about super heroes rescuing people. Hell, even Doctor Who started to do it, which got a tad annoying. Sometimes I want to just see a nice adventure of the week type story. Not everything needs to build up to something bigger every time. It's one of the reasons "Fly" is one of my top favorite episodes of Breaking Bad. Don't get me wrong, Breaking Bad may be the second greatest TV show ever, but it was nice that there was an episode that was just "filler." Even Voltron Legendary Defender knows to have stand alone episodes from time to time.