I would actually be kind of okay with the SE embellishments if they blended well, but unfortunately they don't - they just look like primitive 90's CGI clumsily added to a movie with a distinctly 70's look and feel.
I agree. It's funny, I used to have a really bad eye for seeing visual effects, but now that it's become keener, some of that stuff really does look awkward. It would be an interesting project to redo all the primitive visual effects with practicals or to redo and modernize all the effects in the film.
I agree with you with all the pre-disney releases. But I just watched the 4k ultra HD on Disney+ and it looks amazing. I don't know if its just in my head, but I think they touched up on some of the CGI, it actually fits really well now. The CGI use to stick out like a sore thumb.
I recently got the Despecialized versions and want to throw all my previous Star Wars video purchases away. The Despecialized editions have such clarity and detail that I’ve seen things in these movies I never noticed before. I don’t think Lucas/Fox/Disney could’ve given the attention to detail that Harmy & his co-contributors did. I’ve rewatched them several times and feel like these are the definitive versions of the movies.
Got my 2.7 versions + documentaries of making the movie and deleted scenes. In one Luke agrees to sell his landspeeder because he is not considering to return. I made really nice glossy paper covers for them and all. They look so good and are so precious. 2.7 is the only way to go and it makes every other star wars thing out there simply redundant.
Just thinking that these original classic versions that made Star Wars a world phenomenon will never have an official release in a restored edition makes my blood boil!
@@chiyo-chanholocaust8143 The main reason is probably due to George Lucas insisting that the Special Editions are the final versions and that the original versions were rough cuts so they shouldn't be released. It's a shame because those original versions would rake out trillions of dollars.
@@chiyo-chanholocaust8143 Another thing I just realised is that the 35mm prints of the original versions are way too dirty and contains lots of scratches. This means that it would require lots of effort to restore the movies to their original glory.
Ever since 1977, I’ve been laughing every time all the patrons go back to drinking after that thug gets killed by Kenobi. Just another day at the pub lol.
@@dreckel6572 I would say not really, because Tatooine was a far flung backwater somewhere. Not too many people would be up on stuff like that. Also, anyone in the know wouldn’t want to touch that with a ten foot Bantha stick.
@@blockmasterscott yeah that was my theory too. The empire doesnt have too much influence on Tatooine and people there dont care about politics. But still, him just casually pulling the light saber in a room full of corrupt creatures who would sell everything for money feels a bit weird if you start to think about it. Esp with the storm troopers right before and the fact he stayed completely undercover for such a long time
I will admit if there is one change that I like from the extended Mos Eisley sequence, it’s the removal of the vaseline to hide the wheels of the land speeder to create the illusion of the land speeder flying. That’s actually one of the few changes I can get behind.
Agreed, there were some changes Lucas made in the original Star Wars that worked very well. Two that I always liked come just before the final battle, where the Rebel fighters are taking off from the Base and the panning shot as they pass the gas giant of Yavin.
watching side by side, the special edition is like someone who added to their car a massive spoiler, a big exhaust, blacked out windows, stickers, alloy wheels, sports brake pads, sports suspension, body kit. All the car needed was a polish and a service to run better.
For the most part the Despecialized version looks better - better detail and sharpness and color. A couple shots look a little overly-sharp, but I suspect that's the result of drawing from an inferior element.
The most ruined classic line ever: “Mos Eisley spaceport. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious.” Cut to CGI aliens doing Three Stooges style comedy fights, woowoowoo, boing!
The original version doesn't make any sense. Ben builds it up as this big impressive place, complete with horns blaring on the soundtrack, and then it just cuts to a dinky little street with a few bland-looking extras strolling around. It was obviously supposed to be the space version of Casablanca--a lively, bustling port city. That was not communicated at all in the original version. And I don't see what the problem is with some mild slapstick upon first entry into the city. We see some dock workers brawling and a traffic incident. That's standard "Welcome to the Big City" stuff. Mos Eisley isn't supposed to be deadly and sinister, it's supposed to be like a rough-and-tumble pirate's haven--violent, but also kind of fun. The cantina has basically the same tone. Someone gets killed, the music stops for a beat, and then it starts up again comedically. It's like a scene from out of one of the classic Disney animated features.
@@nineleafclover because all the effects and looks where groundbreaking and got prices and pushed the industrie. And they have been removed. Almost all of the space fights are redone. It's not the film that has been published under financial and time pressure. If you want to remake it then remake it. But this was a piece of film history. Now it's not. So why not reshoot all the bad interiors in the the prequels? And all the bad dialogue? Like, all dialogue? And most of the plot? And completely reshoot the sequels?
The actual disks that came out in 2020 are way more cleaner. The colors are even better. But harmys is special because it preserves the original with enhancements.
Why replace the werewolf creature in the Cantina scene? I get that Lucas wanted more going on in the spaceport area, but why replace creatures and change the Greedo scene?
He didn’t replace the Wolfman, he only took out 2 of the 3 scenes he’s in, and Greedo shot first because the MPAA threatened Lucas with a P.G-13 rating if the scene wasn’t changed
Lucas unchecked: 0:22 "And then a worker robot is gonna whack a flying robot for pffft NO REASON! Hahahahaha!" 0:40 "We're gonna see a traffic accident, and the Jawas are gonna go all over the place! Hohohohoho!" Yes-men: "Very good, sir! A sound decision!"
I like both versions, although some bits of the specialized version aren’t in keeping with the Original Trilogy atmosphere-For example, when the little robot teases the big one, so he smacks it down. That felt very prequel trilogy
when i watch your new videos in comparison to version 2.7, the color grading so perfect,that i also thinking to throw all my Star Wars DVDS and Blu rays away.
There's a problem with that. The 2006 limited edition bonus DVDs were recycled Laserdisc masters and we're lower quality than the previous 2004 Special Edition DVD release
Not only did they ruin these movies with pointless and now dated-looking CGI, but they couldn't even bother to maintain shot continuity. There's a replaced background element at 0:47 (the vertical wooden platform on the left) that mysteriously reappears at 1:34. I don't mind the touch-ups at all, like the removal of the speeder vaseline smudge, addition of a few details on the black droid @ 0:45, etc, but the sloppy revisionism is just way overboard in general.
@@EpicBunty I think they removed his close ups because back in ‘77, they didn’t have enough masks to fill the cantina scene, so they used masks from other movies. This wolf guy was considered “unoriginal”, and was replaced by a puppet that actually had two faces: one a lizard, and the other an elephant. The puppet is now the center stage in these close ups.
@Kylo Ren Some of the changes aren't great but it improves slightly on the 2004 versions. In terms of picture saturation it's still far superior to the Disney releases.
@@goodsuc81 in Harmy's version he had to animate the movement himself because he only had a still image to work with. It aaaaaaalmost works and matches the theatrical cut but ultimately would've looked better static.
@@goodsuc81 he stated in the documentary that the only available shots of the original background were too low quality to splice together with the HD stuff around it so he had to use a hi-res photo of the original scene and animate the head itself so it blended better. Otherwise there would be a crisp 1080 picture with a less-than-vhs quality blob where the original puppet was. The trade-off had to be made somewhere.
Otaku_GameFan well I said Disney in reality it was the work of George Lucas about 7 years ago that Disney is taking credit for now he mad these for the 3D release that never happens
@@WordLizard Disney didn't do shit, they just released what was already provided to them after they bought Lucasfilm whenever they felt the time was right. These 4K versions were completed in 2012.
Unrelated to the changes, but you do gotta love how George Lucas decided to randomly put in anti-droid racism in as a background element for no reason.
4:35 I wish they should’ve realized that when Obi-Wan cuts Dr. Evazan’s arm off with his lightsaber, you don’t bleed, because a lightsaber would cauterize the wound. We never saw anyone bleed out getting their body parts cut off by Lightsabers in the Prequel Trilogy.
@@alejandrovelez6358 Ya but maybe there is never blood involved with lightsaber cuts for censorship reasons because that could make the movie rating higher.
"In “a new hope” we see that Obi-wan cuts off an alien's arm for assaulting luke. ... Arachnids have a different blood circulatory system this means that blood doesn't flow it is stored in a large body cavity.So when Obi wan cut off his arm the blood cavity leaks out more blood causing it to bleed."
His "weak mind" is the reason Star Wars is so unique and successful. He's allowed to make mistakes. Disney, on the other hand, doesn't even try. Star Wars is in terrible hands under Disney.
There’s no such thing as a “Disney version” since all the changes were made by George Lucas before he sold it to them. Part of the deal was that Disney is not allowed to alter the films in any way.
@@reeseexplains8935 There are a lot of great old movies that have dated and terrible special effects but they are still great movies. That is not as important as whether it communicates what it is supposed to or not. Babylon 5 has TERRIBLE effects, but I still think it is one of the greatest sci-fi series of all time.
If you're going to add more shots of Mos Eisley because you only got to film down 2 streets, can't you add an aerial view that similar to the end of Return of the Jedi? When I saw the latter, I asked myself, "Is that supposed to be Mos Eisley?"
@@michaelnelson4236 your very welcome, people are very mis-informed about the Special Editions so I like to make the facts straight when ever I can, for example in this case Lucas didn’t get rid of Wolfman he just got rid of his reappearances to create more Alien diversity
@@alcarbo8613Well, let me go ahead and say that you are mostly right. Wolfman is only in two shots in the original. There is another different werewolf looking creature in a third shot that was also replaced with a CGI alien, but it is actually a different character than Wolfman. And while this did create more alien diversity, the real reason was Lucas just didn't like that these looked like Halloween masks and didn't feel that werewolves were spacey enough anyway.
One thing the old iteration lacked was footage of spacecraft actually landing, taking off, and flying. After all, it’s called Mos Eisley’s Spaceport. Not Mos Eisley’s no port. The specialized edition rightly corrected that oversight.
The transfer / color in the Despecialized is a lot better. The changes / upgrades really don't add much imo. at 2:20 when they first enter the cantina is when they needed to make changes and they didn't even do so. I never liked the very first alien you see with the sparkle eyes. It's so fake looking. All they had to do was some basic CG upgrades. Like, how about giving that same alien more believable eyes? Just subtle changes. The land speeder effect? I like the old one better. Don't know why.
It depends of the gamma, contrast, brightness settings and the quality of your screen. I'm watching this video on my PC connected to 3 different screens and if I move this page over the screens, it looks different on each screen but on each of them it's just look washed and burned while the remaster (from 1997, not 2019, nothing to do with Disney who bought those movies 15 years later) looks good to me. If you want more brightness on the remaster, you can just increase the brightness of your screen or in your video player
Well, I'm gonna say I prefer the Disney Special Edition in terms of restoration (and brightness). Mainly cuz it now has less crushed blacks and white crush like the Lowry restoration had. Special Edition changes aside, I much prefer the colour palette in the Disney/4K release as it's closer to matching the colour palette of the theatrical release than Despecialized does.
The Disney 4k special editions look amazing. I just watched A New Hope and it was like seeing it again for the first time. I think they really touched up the added CGI, because 90% of it looks fitting now, as opposed to the 2011 editions where the CGI looks silly as f. I'm really happy about it.
@@LukeLovesRose I wasn't talking about the CGI garbage. I was talking about how the restoration looks better this time than it did on the 2004 DVD/2011 Blu-ray. And better matches the colour palette of the theatrical release fans have uploaded in 4K. Whereas Despecialized was mostly sourced from the Blu-ray with black and white crushes.
@@LukeLovesRose Well RU-vidr, Prometheus of Videos has recently uploaded 4K clips of Despecialized and they look way better than the initial HD version of Despecialized. And also this Disney version. And there's also 4K77.
Changes aside, Despecialized easily wins color-wise, more saturated and dynamic but still filmic and fairly '77-accurate. I discovered Star Wars via the Special Editions and don't hate them, but the original cut is definitely better here. The flow of the editing is ruined and the scene clashes tonally in the SEs.
Really? I think the Special Editions win easily here when it comes to the colours, with the exception of that one ronto that goes in front of the camera (I get why, the original scene had a bunch of guys going in front of the camera but still) I think it makes Mos Eisley feel way more alive.
The speeder looks like garbage in the despecialized version with the black borders or the blury button of the speeder shadows, but keep complaining about how all changes are bad, because one dino was blocking the shot which destroyed your childhood memory. The city has so much more life, especially when the speeder enters the city. I prefer this before all the old mistakes, like unfinished light saber effects etc. etc. I must say Star Wars "Fans" are a pain in the ass. The only good thing here is the color grading. My humble opinion as a Star Wars fan since the Original and yes, I am a George Lucas Fan Boy and I like the prequels, besides their flaws.
A thousand times better the remastered version. So boring many absurd complaints. Like that CGI creature, blocking the screen and not showing.. a building in the background and little else. Nothing really important. But, yes, is true, Lucas should never have remastered the OT. He must have left them forever with the poor image quality that they had. Many deserve that.
Yawn The special editions came out decades before Disney had anything to do with the franchise. Honestly, have nerds got nothing better to get angry about?
There is only one thing I'd change about this scene, that is the scene with the alien getting it arm chopped off. Instead the arm being hollow with blood spilling out it would have nice to seen a cauterized wound as being that the lightsaber cut through and sears everything shut. Sorta like Luke's hand wound from empire. Nevertheless the de-specialized version is the way no doubt.
A lot of the bad CGI additions look like cutscenes of a 90s videogame, like Z or Warcraft 2. Problem is, these cutscenes were cool at their time, but they certainly dont age well or are timeless. Hence why watching an old movie or TV series with actual scenery and handmade spceial effects is far better and more timeless. I get it, Star Trek TNG or Star Wars 1977 sometimes have visual oddities or appear weird. I mean, the "computers" in the old Star Trek Series are absolutely funny because they are bad and cheap. But it doesnt matter, because it all fits the premise and scenery. These CGI scenes however stick out because they arent like the rest of the movie. They are bad, outdated and even if they were made with new technology, they would stick out and not be as good as the old verisons. No one needs a few jumping rats or CGI robots, it doesnt enhance immersion, it destroys it.
You have no idea about most of the changes that were made, and they clearly improve on the original version of all three movies. You only protest for two trifles of seconds that hardly change anything. The attitude of a crying child. I hope you get your long-awaited original movie,..., and stop talking nonsense when you see what it was like. I tell you, because I have both and the Special Ed. infinitely improves the original.
Disney did jack shit. Just because they own and released something doesn't mean the work was actually done by them. All that you see in the current versions available for streaming on Disney+ was done by Lucasfilm and Reliance MediaWorks in 2012.
I love all of George Lucas' changes… except for the "humor"! I mean what on earth was he thinking adding puerile "preschool" humor to what is supposed to be a dangerous place and a tense moment!? It's like the man knows nothing about storytelling.
"It's like the man knows nothing about storytelling" Ok... that has to be the dumbest shit I've read in my life. Seriously. I would have liked your comment if you didn't include that.
0:23 I like the 1997 20th Century Fox slash 2019 Disney version with the newly enhanced visual effects. Especially with one of the known Creatures of Tatooine. 0:40, 1:24-1:27 & 1:34-1:39 Like those Rontos for example. 1:58, 2:12 & 5:03 Including those Omnivorous Reptiles known as the Dewbacks.
I dislike Disney as the next person but the way you titled the video and the 2019 footage is just disingenuous. All of these changes were made by George Lucas almost 2 decades ago before he sold the rights to Disney. I feel you purposely left that context out so that people can continue to lose their minds over Disney. Hatred should not muddy the truth.
Why labeled it DIsney? It was george who did the special editions and signed off on the last blu ray release with all the vfx changes and mclunkey and vader saying noooo. George made also those changes not disney. He made sure that Disney could not release original trilogy in its original form. I gets its fun to hate on Disney but they didn't make the changes.