In what is surely great news to everyone but George Lucas, it’s being reported that Disney, who now owns Lucasfilm LTD and all its properties, plans to undo all the CGI “improvements” Lucas made to his classic ‘Star Wars’ trilogy in the 90s and re-release the movies as they were originally made and seen.

This news comes courtesy of Empire Magazine who got the scoop from John Landis, who spoke at a Halloween Horror Night Q&A.  And Landis (‘An American Werewolf In London’, ‘Twilight Zone: The Movie’, Michael jackson’s ‘Thriller’) it seems got the news from Lucas himself, as you can see in the tweets below:

In 1997, Lucas re-released the ‘Star Wars’ trilogy in theaters to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the first film.  But special effects technology had improved by lightyears by that point (see: ‘Jurassic Park’) and Lucas decided that rather than simply clean up the original films, he would improve them with modern technology, inserting larger, more sweeping landscapes and packing the screen with loads of extra characters, usually alien and “comedic.”  Then he added unnecessary scenes and made other changes– most notably having Greedo shoot at Han Solo first– that pissed people off.

But fans rolled with it and shelled out money to see the films in theaters and even bought them when they were released on VHS.  (DVD hadn’t even become popular yet at this point.)

But that soured when Lucas declared that these new ‘Special Editions’ were the ONLY editions.  The original movies would never be re-released as they had originally been seen.  If you wanted the original trilogy, you were stuck with these “new improved” versions.

So for going on two decades now, SW fans have been butt hurt over the fact that the original versions of the movies have not been available in modern home video formats to be enjoyed on high tech home theater systems.  Instead they’ve had to endure Greedo shooting first, a slimmer Jabba in ‘A New Hope’ and extended musical numbers (because that’s what ‘Star Wars’ was lacking).

Now this comes as secondhand information, from a casual conversation between two noted directors, and it isn’t clear whether the plan is to release the original movies on BluRay or in theaters.  (Considering how crowded theaters are about to get with new ‘Star Wars’ flicks, I would assume not.)

I would, for now, take this news with a grain of salt, but at least it’s a glimmer of (a new) hope that these movies will once more see the light of day unencumbered by the glaring “improvements” that the 90s brought.

How do you feel on the subject?  Would you like to see and own the movies as they originally were made or do you think it’s better to look to the future and embrace change?

Source: Cinema Blend