My little girl, who is 7, needs to see “Star Wars.” I mean the movie first released in 1977.
What is the LEAST screwed-up-with-new-VFX version that is reasonably available and can be played on a computer, Blu-Ray, or DVD player?
Easy, first get a time machine…
You can get an unrestored DVD of the theatrical version (in a package with one of the monkey editions) for something above $25, used.
You want the 2-disk DVD set released in 2004/2006. It will have the screwed-up version on one disk, and the ‘original theatrical version’ (which isn’t QUITE, but is damn close) on the other.
Otherwise, you have to have a VHS player and go back to the THX release from 1995.
If watching in segments on YouTube is an option, (or downloading from websites) the last time I checked (about a year ago), Harmy’s Despecialized Edition was ruled as fair use under literary criticism, and can be watched on YouTube. I actually prefer his re-edits to the originals, just for image-quality considerations (we have a HUGE TV - not very nice to older DVDs)
A good article about his re-version is here.
You can get it on laserdisc too
One caveat about the DVD version, it’s not anamorphic. If your kid’s going to watch on an old 4:3 tv this won’t matter, but on a modern 16:9 tv it can cause issues. Nothing insurmountable, but just something to be aware of.
Or the laserdisc version, in the unlikely event he has such a player.
eta: darn you psxer!
Oh, God, those looked awful, but Han shot first.
I saw something in a second-run theater a year or two ago that was damned close, so it’s possible. But I’m not sure what source they were using.
There’s a guy called Adywan who has made his own version of Star Wars, taking out the most egregious adjustments, but then going in and making some more of his own, fixing up glaring VFX errors and editing mistakes, smoothing out jump cuts and flipped shots, that kind of thing. He completely re-edited both the Vader Kenobi duel, and the Trench Run sequence, to make them more exciting.
Personally I think it has improved the movie a lot. But it’s definitely not the original, nor the Special Editions. It’s something else again.
I’m searching Adywan’s page and cannot for the life of me find where you can actually watch his version.
You have to torrent it - it’s worth persevering though he’s done a brilliant job.
Most to the point, Han shot only. Lucas’ Jedi mind tricks will not work on me: The controversy over who shot first, Greedo or Han Solo, in Episode IV, what I did was try to clean up the confusion, but obviously it upset people because they wanted Solo to be a cold-blooded killer, but he actually isn’t. It had been done in all close-ups and it was confusing about who did what to whom. I put a little wider shot in there that made it clear that Greedo is the one who shot first, but everyone wanted to think that Han shot first, because they wanted to think that he actually just gunned him down. 2012 interview with The Hollywood Reporter
Han shooting first/only doesn’t make him a cold-blooded killer. It just means that he isn’t an idiot.
Right. Greedo wants to take him back a prisoner, for the money, unless Han pays him to “forget.” It makes no sense to tell Han, “you can tell that to Jabba. He may only take your ship,” if Greedo’s planning to just kill him now.
Rick, I feel your pain, dude, but she won’t know the difference. To us super-fans, it’s important, to her- not at all.
It should be important to her if you want to raise her right
Do any of these options have the pre-1981 opening crawl sans “Episode IV: A NEW HOPE”
But a better presentation still is better.
I’m not a super-fan, but I would feel as the OP does (except my daughter prefers Trek), not in geeky devotion to the Original Star Wars, but because the story is simply better that way (maybe the fan edit mentioned above is better too, IDK).
I mean, think about introducing your kid to anything. They never “know the difference,” at the time; it’s all new! You could get away with all kinds of cut-rate shit, but why would you do that to your kid? Give them the best stuff you know, the real stuff, whatever it is, and if they ever encounter the other, then they’ll know better.
The DVDs opening crawl just says “Star Wars”
the laserdisc and vhs say A New Hope
Sheesh, am I the only Star Wars fan in the world who didn’t even NOTICE the Han/Greedo thing in the original?
I AM a fan, not just a Star-dilletante. I saw the first movie in the theater in 1977. I bought the original Kenner action figures, even sent away my proofs-of-purchase to get the free Boba Fett. I bought the Marvel Star Wars comics (for a while). I collected the trading cards.
But you know what? To me, it was a story about LUKE. Luke Skywalker was the hero of the story, and everyone else (who wasn’t a villain) was nothing but a mechanism to get Luke from Tatooine to the Death Star to the rebel base. If no one had made a peep about the Han/Greedo thing, I probably would have never noticed that the scene was different when I watched the “Special Edition” in 1997 (though I do think I would have realized that the Jabba scene hadn’t been in the original).
It may be about Luke, but Luke is boring.