The story told in Star Wars is a classic. Every few hundred years it is retold again, because we have a tendency to repeat what has been done. Power corrupts, and when you are at the helm, you begin to do what you think is right, although in fact it is wrong.

George Lucas, Wired interview

While Disney is preparing to once again defile the already thrice-raped corpse of the original Star Wars trilogy and seriously think about stereoscopic reissue, it's worth remembering how its creator relates to his brainchild. The first three films - and we are not talking about three episodes shot much later (thanks, Lucas, for this need for clarification) - received a lot of blatantly unnecessary changes in re-release on Blu-ray.
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Lists in “Wikipedia” can be perceived as a certain statement of a certain fact or a characteristic of an object. Thus, the list of lists clearly demonstrates the vastness and orderliness of the Internet encyclopedia, and the list of Brezhnev awards better than any article shows the vice-secretary’s flaw. The 60 kilobytes of only a partial textual description of the changes in the reprints of the Star Wars films is perfectly illustrated by the number of alterations that have accumulated since 1981, 1997, 2004 and 2011.

Of course, some of the changes are related to the primitiveness of the special effects technology of the era of the original trilogy, but many fans would not agree, for example, with the fact that the scene with Jabba Hutt cut from the first episode was worth returning. Lucas himself declares that the original versions were only 25-30 percent of what he intended to do. But is it worth blaming the viewers for not being able to accept the growing number of unusual changes from publication to publication?

A group of loyal fans working on the project Star Wars Despecialized Edition. This is a triumph of video editing and restoration equipment made by non-professionals. Nobody specially provided master copies, all materials used in the project were available to the general public.


The most vivid example of the stupidity of the changes of the 2011 reissue on Blu-ray. Judging by the statements of Lucas, the underdevelopment of video editing technology and special effects for 34 years prevented him from adding this additional stone. This picture has already become an Internet meme.

The Star Wars Despecialized Edition project provides the ability to bring your viewing experience as close as possible to the original 1977 rental in HD quality. (Most likely, the 720p quality — not 1080p — was chosen to not make the upscale of many scenes too obvious.)

Here we will talk about the project of re-creating the film “Star Wars. Episode 4: New Hope ”, which in the original box office bore the name“ Star Wars ”. The project was launched by a group of participants on the OriginalTrilogy.com website.


Comparison of the 2006 edition of GOUT, for some reason, the added crowd of attack aircraft in a special edition of 2004, and the Despecialized Edition

There will be only one [version of each of the films]. And it will not be what I would call a pre-assembly, it will be a final assembly. The rest will be just some kind of artifact, looking at that, people will say: "And there was also an earlier draft." The same happens with plays and early versions of books. In essence, films are never fully prepared, they are only abandoned. At a certain stage, someone with the words “okay, done” pulls you away from the picture while you wave with your fists and scream. The situation should not be quite like that. Sometimes you can go back and create your own new version, which I did with the films “American Graffiti” and “THX 1138”; such films will remain in eternity. Therefore, my main thing is what the DVD version will look like, since this is something that everyone will remember. Other versions will disappear. Even the existing 35mm Star Wars films have not been stretched for more than 30 or 40 years. After a hundred years, the only version that will be remembered will remain the DVD version of [a special edition], and you will be able to project it onto a standard movie screen with perfect quality. I believe that the return and renewal of the film - it is the privilege of the director, not the studio.

George Lucas on special editions , 1997

Sources

When it comes to special editions, it is worth remembering that in addition to a significant number of additions of objects, the colors have also changed. Therefore, by the way, the significantly modified edition of 2011 on Blu-ray is not the best in quality and requires serious improvement. However, it is the main source of the project.

Are you disappointed that the 2011 edition came from the same master copy as the DVD release of 2004, which led to the inheritance of all the same problems? The Blu-ray edition has the same black color, in which many important details drown, and a very strongly modified color palette. Fortunately, the bit rate and resolution of the source allowed to adjust these artifacts to a certain extent.





For the initial color editing, you should thank You_Too, who wrote the script for AviSynth and removed the disgusting purple color in most scenes, especially noticeable in blaster-fire scenes.



Even for the correction of colors, a well-preserved film technicolor copy was used after the post.



Also in the publication on Blu-ray digital cleaning was performed, so some scenes looked very, very unnatural. This problem has been partially fixed.

As well as being positive in the work on the special edition was the opportunity to return and make the original “Star Wars: New Hope” exactly as George wanted. As he wrote them. It doesn't matter if people liked it, this is his film, and he could not make it the first time, because he went on so many compromises.

Rick McCallum 2001

At the moment, the official editions of the original, unaltered film “Star Wars: Episode 4 - New Hope” of acceptable quality simply does not exist. There is only a DVD release of 2006 (it is widely known among fans as “George's unchanged original trilogy”, Geoge's Original Unaltered Trilogy, GOUT for short), which was not a major disc in the publication, but was a bonus, and its quality leaves much to be desired.

GOUT is a non-amorphous copy of 1993, and this, unfortunately, is the best official source of the unchanged trilogy. In addition to its poor quality, terrible aliasing of images and faded colors in some scenes, it has artifacts of a primitive algorithm for removing digital noise: fast moving objects leave a trace from their own image in previous frames.



How was this impressive picture quality obtained even in changed scenes, if there was simply no other source?

Apskeil of this outdated image so that it looks acceptable next to the HD scenes, and its color correction is not an easy task. This work was done by dark_jedi. But often only parts of the GOUT image were used.



The aforementioned 2004 edition on DVD was also used as a source, but for this purpose they did not take the very publication on DVD, but the HD broadcast of the same master copy on television. This broadcast was the main source of the first editions of the Despecialized Edition and remains the source of some scenes of the current version.

In order to remove some changes in the 2004 edition, the analog quality PAL recording SD of the notorious first special edition of 1997 was used. We all "appreciate" the reissue, made in honor of the twentieth anniversary of the original, the first appearance of computer Jabba the Hutt in "New Hope."



A self-respecting fan of the original trilogy will easily be able to stretch a grunt about it for several tens of minutes. The fact is that this scene did not appear at the box office in 1977, since it was planned to use stop motion animation to replace the doubler with a slime-like gangster, Harrison Ford circled around the fat guy Declan Mulholland . In 1977, Lucas was not satisfied with the result, and, thank God, there was no computer animation, so the scene was simply not included in the film. This made the appearance of the Hutt in the Return of the Jedi event. In the course of the two previous films, we could hear about this head of the tattoo gangsters only from the stories of other characters, but we didn’t know what he looked like and said. Now, his appearance did not cause any special impressions. By the way, the 1997 Hutt Digital and its later version look bad and unnatural.

Another reason to hate Lucas is the scene at the bar. The phrase “Khan shot first” became a symbol of the disobedience of the audience to the will of the director. In the 1997 edition, technology had already allowed the scene to be changed so that the Ford hero did not shoot first, although in the original Grido had no chance to do anything. Han Solo, who calmly and without hesitation roasted a bounty hunter and left “Sorry about the mess” at the exit, speaks about his own character of a smuggler who is ready for anything much more than a forcedly defending character. Of course, in the Despecialized Edition this scene is recreated in its original version.

People who change or destroy works of art and our cultural heritage for the sake of gain [...] are barbarians [...]

George Lucas, 1988

Again, some frames of the final result carry only parts of the 1997 edition. Here was taken only part of the corridor in the background.



But some shots were replaced entirely. In the 2011 edition of Blu-ray, these inscriptions were made in Imperial.



The following sources are somewhat exotic, and we owe their appearance to the occasion, as well as to the healthy share of DIY. In the tenacious hands of the creators of the Despecialized Edition, a scan of the 35-mm film of the scene in the spaceport of Mos-Eisley made by Team Negative1 at home was hit.



Despite the relatively good picture quality, in order to improve it, the Laserschwert member had to remove a lot of dirt and grit using AviSynth. And again, to hide the additions of special editions, both whole frames and only parts of the picture were used, as shown below.



In addition, one of the auxiliary sources was a copy on a 16 mm film called Puggo Grande. The timings and location of the Grido subtitles in a dialogue with Han Solo were taken from there. In this frame, it was used to minimize the aliasing of the wings of the X-wing / X-Wing GOUT images.



The latest source was a group of still pictures from 35 mm films obtained from various sources, some of which prefer to remain anonymous. The quality of the images was also quite rough, but after digital cleaning they were used to restore scenes with mat-painting technique and to improve the quality of the picture with GOUT.



They were also used to cover the changes in the 2011 edition on Blu-ray. Here, even had to animate some movements and use rotoscoping.


On the left - the addition of the 2011 edition using computer graphics, on the right - its restored version



In this album, you can find a lot of screenshots with comparisons showing despecialized Edition 2.5 improvements with respect to project version 1.0, GOUT (the only official edition of the unchanged film) and Blu-ray (maximum number of controversial changes).

The finished draft of the current version 2.5 can be found on Pirate Bay by a search query.

Star Wars Despecialized Edition mkv

In the same distribution there are Russian subtitles and several types of audio track. Do not forget about the nature of the peer networks, stay on hand for a while.