Vader is not entirely a blank slate--we get a glimpse of his beliefs and possibly who he is beneath the mask in the Imperial meeting. When he says “The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force," he's actually disputing the apparent all-powerful Empire. You'd expect the Villain In the Black Cape to be all in with his fellow bad guys, but this already hints at a deeper character.
Lucas once said the success for this film and the franchise had nothing to do with lightsabers or starships, but the chemistry between the characters. Everyone just bounce well off each other, it’s very fun to watch. That type of chemistry was never replicated in the prequels or sequels unfortunately.
@@benwatkins2836only in Revenge of the Sith. I’ll always think that TPM should never have been 10 years earlier than AOTC. We should’ve been given 3 whole films with Hayden and Ewan to truly showcase the development of that friendship.
The OG Star Wars was such an era-defining event. It literally changed the way movies were made, the theater experience and that industry was forever changed too. Idk if we'll ever see anything like it again, and I'm so proud to have been part of that generation who witnessed it. Every time I reminisce about that time in my life, it's usually a double-edged sword for me because of what Disney did to Luke Skywalker, Han, Obi-Wan, and Leia. It is what it is.
I saw Star Wars in 1977, around my 17th birthday. It had a deep impact on my life, and it is part of the reason I became a video game programmer. The movie stayed in theaters for a long time. It would rotate theaters. After seeing it probably three times, my girlfriend and I saw it at a drive-in very late in the summer of 1977. Something that I remember about the original was a single scene aboard the Death Star that made a sudden cut from one scene to the next. It was slightly jarring and uncharacteristic for Star Wars. I am relying on memory here because it has been a very long time since I saw the original. But this is something I noticed in 1977 while at the drive-in. (Maybe this was a problem with the version we were watching or they switched projectors prematurely.) I used to count the number of times I had seen A New Hope. I would find a way to watch it every few years. I stopped counting after my 18th viewing.
My first real exposure to Star Wars (outside of old posters at a diner we used to eat at) was in fact, when the Special Editions came out in 97. Watched each one back to back from one month to the next. It was a crazy time in my life and I loved it. My only gripe was that the ESB trailer actually showed the "I am your father" scene, so I knew it was coming. Today, I'm still pissed off that I was deprived of one of the greatest twists in cinematic history.
What always gets me is watching first time reaction videos of starwars. They are so impressed with the special effects "especially for the time it was released" and I'm like "well, most of those effects were added later". I think the original version should be more accessible for people.
@@InventiveHarvest naw not really, modern viewers aren't super impressed with the CGI at least the friends I've shown star wars to weren't. The practical effects just objectively look better
I've looked at the despecialised battle of yavin and alot of still really impress me! I was shocked that the smooth, WW2-esque ship movements was all 1977, only a couple parts here and there were little off. And the ship explosions particularly look really, really good! The real explosion and the ship breaking up and spiraling out looks so sweet - I even prefer it to modern, cgi explosions
I saw star wars on my 5th birthday in a drive thru in 77. I remember it being everywhere and being hte talk of hte town. Everyone has their imagination supercharged about it and sci fi.
I'm always suprised at the amount of folks who prefer ANH to ESB, it's alot more than I'd expect of the og fan base. I definitely respect that, ANH is pretty amazing
@@JoRoq1 Dang straight! And with good reason. ANYONE who wins a gunfight is by default the one who shot first-assuming that both are competent gunmen. If Han shot second, he would have been dead.
I promise you, in ‘77 everyone’s imagination was set ablaze! The world literally tilted on its axis when SW was released! It was an amazing and cultural defining moment in time that can only be described or compared to Beatlemania in the 60’s! The crazy thing is that it continued to escalate with Empire and Jedi! MTFBWY
Last year during my annual original 6 rewatch I experienced a similar "surreal/sad" feeling. I told myself "wow. This used to be good and fun!" The Lucas vision was pure. I love Rogue One, Andor, Solo, Clone Wars, and Rebels. But something about the purity of those original 6 made me reflect on more simple times, when the grass was greener.
For anyone who wants to watch it unedited, Harmy's Despecialized Editions are the way to go. If you like the film grain, Project 4K77 does the job for the original. I haven't kept up with these versions but I don't think Projects 4K80 and 4K83 (Empire and RotJ) are completed, but Harmy's versions are well and truly done and they're glorious.
I have nearly every U.S. version of the original trilogy (and a couple of VCR's for the VHS tapes). There was a 2006 (I think) DVD that included special editions and 2nd DVD's with the ORIGINAL original versions as seen in theaters in 1977, 1980, and 1983.
Yes, those DVDs exist. I have them. The “bonus” discs with the original versions are the THX versions, not the pure original theatrical versions. THX was just minor visual clean-ups like removing visible matte lines around TIE fighters, and a few minor soundtrack and vocal track adjustments. There was no significant change to anything. The only downside of the THX versions is they removed little fun things like the flying shoe in the asteroid field in ESB. The director was trying to end one take of a scene in the Falcon cockpit, but the actors kept going so he threw his shoe to interrupt the scene. They ended up using that take, and the shoe was still there for the theatrical release.
I remember the trailers leading up to the original release in 77...and all the hoopla that broke out afterward! For weeks, the news was flabbergasted when reporting that people were STILL lining up around the block to see it! We didn't really think there would be sequels, tho...that wasn't a given back then (George even made it to stand alone if need be, like the last line of the opening crawl, the insistence that the Death Star was ALL that could control the galaxy without the senate, the rebels not being that concerned by Imperial revenge at the end). I still remember hearing the news that "Star Wars 2" was coming, and being pretty happy about it! 😁
I watched New Hope as a child to the point we wore out the VHS rental. It was practically committed to memory. For me the Special Editions are still the greatest offense the franchise ever committed as the first real fracture of the "canon". I became much more skeptical of Lucas and the franchise in general after that. I could still enjoy it to varying degrees but in more objective ways and less dogmatic.
The original theatrical versions of the original trilogy are my favorite. They are what I grew up with (I'm in my late 40s now). The updated with new scenes and effects versions of the original trilogy you mostly see these days are ok but they have lost the some of the magic of the original versions.
I agree, the original version of STAR WARS was the best version, without any of the changes made in The Special Edition. When I saw this in the movies in 1977 as a kid, I was literally blown away. I loved every minute of it and wore out countless VHS and Betamax tapes. When I was kid and Return Of The Jedi hadn't come out yet, my favorite was The Empire Strikes Back, and it still is. I still watch the original version of STAR WARS, and I have multiple copies of those old THX tapes in blue with old backup VCRs. I don't own a laserdisc and laserdisc copies of the originals, but if I did, then that would really have been the way to go. But, life happened.
If you get the 2006 limited edition you can have the best of both worlds. It is mostly the original version with a few useful changes. The main cleanup I noticed is that there’s no orange blob under the speeder.
@@StarwarsNut2 Yeah! They took the laserdisc edition and mapped it to DVD. That is Ok, I guess, but I'm old, so I prefer the original laserdisc editions more even though they are 3 discs per movie and they are each as big as a vinyl record. lol
I critically rewatched the VHS copies My family got me for Christmas when I was 5. Star Wars was almost unwatchable because it was so worn out. I can recognize the flaws, the awkwardness of the dialogue, when the matte paintings were used and where the lines are for many of the special effects. I know I’m watching it on a large 4k TV where all those visual faults are easy to spot. I’ve taken multiple film classes and shot my own short story. I helped with stage direction, set manufacturing, and costume creation. I can see the short cuts, I can see the errors, I can see the effects. But I love it. It was designed to be seen from an older theater setting and using older film technology. I love the film and still feel like a child when I watch Star Wars. I advert my eyes when we see uncle Owen and Aunt Beru burned. I can’t help but be a child again when I watch that film.
I remember getting a vhs set of the star wars special edition when it first came out, and popping them out to put the original set in everytime they said they changed something during the intro section discussing what they changed and why. Saying "whoa, never noticed that" seeing how it was done originally
In 2019-2020 school year I hosted a weekly retro night for a bunch of college kids. It was where we watched movies or played videos games that were pre-2000. I wanted to show them a lot of older stuff and they loved it. Classic films and they really enjoyed the Atari games. We watch the original trilogy during the semester and when I showed it to them I showed them the despecialized editions. Fun times.
When the original movie came out, there was nothing in the Sci-Fi genre to compare it with. The goofy aliens, and ridiculously light-speed jumping spacecraft and the chemistry by the cast was so enjoyable to watch, we 20 somethings kept coming back to watch it again.
I saw Star Wars in the cinema back in 78 and have loved it ever since. I still enjoy watching my vhs copies of the theatrical release and also have 4K77, Silver Screen Edition and a Grindhouse version as well. I actually prefer the Grindhouse and vhs copies with all of the grain and imperfections. Nothing beats Star Wars in my book.
I have a 2006 limited edition version. It’s mostly the original version with some improvements. For example there’s no orange blob under the speeder. I consider there to be three versions of the Star Wars saga: - [ ] The Original Trilogy - [ ] The addition of the prequels and tv series - [ ] The addition of the EU - [ ] Disney doesn’t exist. There are many parts of the trilogy that I can call my favourite scene but maybe the best is the trench run. Luke’s use of mystical instinct truly defines what Force truly is.
I owned, probably still own, the 1997 VHS box and it was glorious. I watched the OT myriads of times as a kid, at least during the years 1997-2002. I lent the box out to my friends a lot as well. _____ An odd experience I have. This must have happened somewhere around (1997/)1998, as I remember getting the inspiration to watch the films (again) by hearing TPM was coming out in a year (or two). I rented the OG Star Wars from a shop and noticing watching it that _waaaaait a minute, this_ is not _the same SW I remember._ The timeline doesn't make any sense. I'd first seen SW (or at least parts of it) in the early 90s. Thus the 1997 SE couldn't have been my first SW experience, but I surely didn't own the set yet as I had to rent it. And yet it was _as if the OG version was unfamiliar to me_ - the way Obi-Wans lightsaber blade was almost white, and how the prop was visible from the tip, &c. I can only explain this by possibly, at the time of these events and experiences, having first watched the brand new 1997 SE films with my older siblings, then later in the-not-too-far-future being inspired again and renting them to watch'em all by me lonesome _not understanding there might exist different versions out there._ As said above I certainly didn't own the set at this point. That must have changed come next Christmas, though. Probably the best gift I ever received, judged by the hours spent watching the films _or_ by the sentimental value they accrued.
I am of the opinion that STAR WARS is the greatest film ever made. Like The Big Bang, “0ut of Darkness there came Light”. Empire is just as good a film. I view it as The Godfather 2 to STAR WARS’ Godfather. It relies on having seen the former movie (for the most part). I saw STAR WARS at The Mann’s Chinese Theater in 1977 when I was 5. Empire at the Egyptian Theater when I was 8, and back at The Chinese for Jedi when I was 11. Those were good days!
Autumn 1976 at age 8: The only movie that I fell sound asleep at. The dragging scene after they escape from the death star and are plotting the final attack on it.
We had Ep 4 recorded off of TBS or something growing up. Other than that, I saw the special editions in theaters and always had all that up until I got that exact VHS set depicted here at the thrift store. And then got the despecialized editions as well now. My kid turned on the Disney plus version the other day… I can’t stand it now!
There is something so intrinsically exciting about the original battle of Yavin before the special edition changes. I think the CGI does a pretty good job at updating how the battle looks visually, but sometimes about the original just gives me that rush of energy that the special edition can't match.
I have the original version on VHS along with the 1st Special edition too. When going to see each Special edition on theaters it was fin to see what changes were made. New Hope did have the most changes it seems out of the 3. I liked the Special Editions overall they are just fine. That's also what people don't seem to get either is how they also cleaned up the movies because the original version it's dated and not all the Special Effects hold up.
I still have the tv premiere of Star Wars on recorded VHS… complete with opening presentation by Hamill in front of the searchlights and various groups of fans proclaiming how many dozens or hundreds of times they have seen it. I still have the tv premiere of Caravan of Courage on vhs… complete with the best commercials of 85… I still have the late 80’s vhs tapes of the OT…. And the THX Widescreen vhs set…. And the first special edition widescreen vhs set (which I only watched once or twice)… and the rare Executor Black Box UK tin collectors set of the THX widescreen with 10 hours of special features, posters, scripts etc… I’m 43 and with starting to have kids in 2005, I raised them on the 2006 dvd bonus unaltered OT. To this day, none of my kids has seen a special edition version all the way through…. And now I have the project 4K versions…. The circle is now complete. I have not viewed the special editions since maybe ‘99 (apart from comparative clips), and I watched them each 7-9 times in the theater. I had to stop watching them because every bit of cgi added was like staring down the phlegmy throat of that cgi singer in Jabba’s palace. 🤢
Personally I think the Special Editions get a bit of a bad wrap. Sure there's some extra stuff in there that I don't like eg Han shoots first, Han & Jabba in ANH, the dance number in the RoTJ, adding the No! to Vader throwing Sidious but like you say some of the other changes are actually good eg the opening up of Cloud City. Most changes people wouldn't notice are the SFX cleanup's like the snow speeders dash & canopy is actually a bit transparent in the original to lessen the blue screen effect on the snow back grounds. Lots of those small compromises were just due to the technology available to at the time which bugged George so I can see why he wanted to go back and address them, digitally adding the pilots heads moving while heading to the Death Star is a nice little touch. Like George admitted in the PT "I may have gone too far in places" which he did with the SE. I love that there's fan projects to get the theatrical releases available to fans. If LucasFilm wanted to make a massive amount of money quick an official re-release would be welcomed by many fans. I'd sure as hell buy them on 4K UHD disc.
the version of the original trilogy I have on VHS isn't the original original version (as it calls them A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi, and episodes 4, 5, and 6, not 1, 2, and 3 as they were once known) but it pre-dates the Special Editions. I'm 99% sure I didn't buy them (at a market stall) until 2000, but yeah. By that stage I had seen the Special Editions (in reverse order for some reason) and Phantom Menace
They’re hiding in a box in my garage, but I have two VHS box sets of the original trilogy. The part that the box containing the VHS is slides into is half of Darth Vader’s helmet; in the box holding the cassettes for one of them is silver, the other one is gold. I think that means I have VHS copies of the original original and special edition. If I could find them, I would love to get them converted to digital. although I would totally keep the physicals if that’s at all possible. Especially if I’m ever lucky enough and Rich enough to go to a convention, I’d love to get them signed at the very least by Harrison Ford and Mark Hamill. Any other living cast members that played a major role, actually. I wish I could’ve gotten them signed by James before he passed away, but still so sad that he’s gone. Same with Carrie. I like how I first named them as if I met them personally 😂. I wish I had.
I sold the OT special editions on VHS lol. I remember trying to convince customers to preorder the widescreen instead of Pan and Scan. It didn't go well.
I have an odd false memory of Vader moving his lightsabre in a circular motion while saying 'the circle is now complete'. I'd have been more sure of that happening than about Dolly in Moonraker having braces.
It's strange because, for me, I find it difficult to return to the Special Editions, as I always watch the original versions, I find them to be a better experience. And when Darth Vader appears at the start of Star Wars (ANH), I still feel as if we don't know anything about him. When I see him, I don't think about Anakin in the prequels, of what his story is, but rather the mysterious figure in black who seems to be leading the bad guys. I still see this movie as the first of six, and I think that's why I still enjoy the original trilogy as much as I did when I was a kid.
I find that I have no problems rekindling my childhood enjoyment when I'm reliving those parts of Star Wars that actually deserve my love. I don't required perfection, just (in)spirit(ation) and authenticity. I find that it is very easy to to edit the inauthentic installments out of my head-canon. The only problem, of course, is that LucasFilm is not making any new stuff for my head-canon anymore. No authenticity - and very little inspiration either - to be found there, unfortunately. Oh, and I always watch the Despecialized Edition by Harmy these days.
The first time i saw star wars i called it. "The boring old movie that the adults like." (They were watching a new hope in ~2001ish) I did not care and went and played with the other kids 5 years later it was my favorite movie. Lol😂
It was just such a grand adventure. It didn't dawn on me that the score decision was most likely brought about by Lucas watching 2001: A Space Odyssey. I always wondered why Artoo looked odd during the trench run. Never dawned on me that the blue blended in with the bluescreen.
Your exactly right! Lucas was actually going to do kinda the same thing 2001 did, compile a bunch of real classical music as the score, and began listening to a bunch as he was writing the redrafts
It's been a while since I watched the original versions. But I found the DVD limited editions of all 3 that had both the original theatrical cut as well as the special editions. I found them new and they're still in the original packaging. So I haven't opened them up to watch.
I watched the original trilogy for the first time about four years before the special editions came along and became a fan even then. I never had issues with the changes Lucas made since they were his movies and some of the shots were starting to show their age, but I always had issue with the fact that Lucas wanted to practically erase the original versions and would never have made the originals available again until he reluctantly slapped them on as an extra on the second DVD release with no remastering done for the sake of placating the fans. Then, he felt the need to make more changes for each format release, which made sense for the DVDs but got excessive for the Blurays and apparently for the streaming release. I think if he made the original versions regularly available and cleaned them up like he did with the special editions sans the new CGI, then the fan animosity he experienced would’ve been significantly less. Perhaps to the point where he wouldn’t have sold his company to Disney, though he claims the fans had nothing to do with that decision. Regardless of which version you watch, the original trilogy still works and will always be the definitive stories in the saga.
The Special Edition changes in Star Wars that I dislike are Han shooing second and having a weird head-jerk, the inclusion of Jabba (although I have mixed feelings about that) and the dinosaur wandering in front of the 'not the droids you're looking for' scene. In Empire Strikes Back there are a couple of dialogue changes that are minor irritations. The most annoying changes are in RotJ, being the over-sized front door at Jabba's palace and the infernal 'Jedi Rock' song which ruins the Oola's execution scene. I probably preferred the Saarlac pit without a beak, too. I also don't like the celebration scenes around the galaxy, added at the end, which make no sense. The various planets would still be controlled by imperial governors and garrisons at that point. These would not melt away immediately just because the Empire had suffered a defeat on Endor.
A friend of mine wrote a humorous review that pretends that "Star Wars" was simply a one-off movie that George Lucas made...and never followed up on, supposedly leaving it a somewhat well-known curiosity of the late 70s!😅
Pretty sure I’ve never seen the original ep 4 or 6. I was born right around when the remasters came out. Although I did have ep 5 on vhs but don’t know which version it was. I mostly watched the OT from the dvd box set I had with the newest versions. I remember watching the shorts on the bonus dvds that showed how they did the remasters, despite not knowing the originals at all lol
I remember waiting all year, hoping for Star Wars to play on TV... TBS or TNT... You had to wait and wait, some years it never played. All I had was my X-Wing and lame ass Storm IV Cloud Car.
Download the de-specialized versions. They're based on the laserdisc version and look great. And Han is the only one who got a shot off. Greedo didn't shoot at all.
Hey Thor Skywalker I have a question what are your thoughts on Warhammer 40k and are you interested recommending the Warhammer 40k series? I really enjoy your videos.
Born in 1990, had A New Hope and Return of the Jedi on VHS with the George Lucas interview at the beginning, not sure why we didn't have Empire Strikes Back. I don't even know if that is the special edition or not, but definitely fell in love with it as a kid, watched it many times over. My dad was a big fan of the movies and sci-fi in general, and my mom was a fan of Harrison Ford 😂 I think we still have the movies but haven't had a VHS player in many years unfortunately. Hearing this review makes me want to try and buy a VHS player to try and watch them again.
Haven't seen the original in years, but I do have a VHS copy somewhere. But no player. I do believe the story is good, in it's simplicity maybe. But it is George's vision and his way of putting it together. With all creatiive people he hade around him of course. But I still remember the first feeling I had when I watched it back then. It felt so real, It felt like this really did happen a long long time ago, in a galaxy far far away. I think that George's way of telling the story might be one of the things that makes it so great
I agree. Jedi was lacking in my opinion. The original treatment was much more interesting and removed the Leia sister piece( imo the worst thing in the original trilogy)
@@Deuteromis in the original treatment Han dies, Leia leads the rebellion/new republic, and Luke goes out into the galaxy in search of his sister to team up and go after the escaped emperor. Lucas made Leia the sister because he wanted to quickly end the series.
There are 4 different cuts of the Special Edition. You have to be more specific. 1997, 2004, 2011 and 2020. The original Star Wars has been suppressed for over 40 years and has never been on home video. the 2006 DVD is a facsimile.
I have both(the aforementioned tapes and a DVD/VHS player in storage)😅l was 16yo in 1977 when l first saw that Star Destroyer cruise across the screen 😉
You know the only thing I objected to most was the changes to story seems for Star Wars han should have always shot first cuz he was living as an outlaw and I thought the cluttered scenes in the town special edition were too cluttered but I liked the version where it was mostly just remastered effects
Luke is your freaking logo and namesake. Please read George's original novel written on the first movie. And if you haven't seen it, watch the amazing Making Of which came with the DVD sets.
Interesting take on being entertained...While I'd agree it IS clearly the job of the company to make "good" content, I don't think it's fair to say that they can "make" us enjoy it. Certainly there are many fans among us who seem hellbent on NOT enjoying anything, no matter how well made, for their own reasons. It IS possible to be a Bad Faith fan, and to be so biased (knowingly or not) that no amount of high-quality entertainment will be able to get through one's determination to be displeased... To some degree, sometimes being able to regain that enjoyment from our youth involves us being willing and able to "let go"...not of a targeting computer, but of our super-high standards. That sounds bad, because we've been so programmed to think of "high standards" as obviously a good thing, that anything less automatically sounds like racheting them down to a super low standard of "anything goes", but that just reveals the Binary Mindset so many of us have these days, of shooting from one extreme end of a spectrum to the other, without considering that there is a wide middle-ground of degrees in between. And, in this case, it IS possible to lower one's standards *somewhat*, so that one can relax and actually ENJOY things again, while also not letting every mistake or bad idea slip by. After all, it's not that entertainment really changed since these movies came out; WE changed, by growing up. It's up to US, not the entertainment industry, to recapture that feeling of childhood wonder again. They can't do it for us, that power has always been within US. And perhaps it starts by unlearning what we have learned...
I still have the originals on VHS (just never wanted to give them up) and bought the special edition three pack that also in included the original versions. I prefer the original "A New Hope" and "Return of the Jedi", but like the changes to Empire. Don't care for the Jaba scene and don't like the song changes in Jedi.
I haven't seen the original version of the OT since I saw it on cable in the 90's. They were better but I wouldn't go so far to say the revised versions ruined the movies. I swear though Disney has ruined Star Wars I feel sad when I rewatch the OT and prequels now. That should be a crime against imagination and humanity in my opinion!
