[grundle]

This explains all the changes that have been made:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEch4j4KyoU

[martin_fierro]

Disney managed to kill Star Wars for me. Heck, it was in a death spiral by the end of Lucas’s tenure.

[Right_Wing_Madman]

George Lucas loves money above all else (and certainly above artistic accomplishment). It was only a matter of time before the original, and best, version hit the screens again.

[escapefromboston]

I generally like George Lucas’s work even the star wars prequels but not releasing the original versions of star wars was such an oddly petty move on his part.

[RainMan]

Saw the original on opening day at the Cinerama in Seattle. Waited in line around the block. I was in HS.

[where's_the_Outrage?]

Oh, you might think you’ve seen 1977’s Star Wars

Yes I think that as I remember going to the matinee on Wednesday May 25, 1977 with my dad to see the Star Wars opening in Detroit. There was a line to get in. I had just graduated from college and was joining the Army. The next movie my dad and I saw together at a theater was Terminator.

[WKUHilltopper]

So what? A little kid venture.

[sit-rep]

let me guess... there are bestiality scenes with Chewbacca and Princess Leia? a homo scene between Luke and Han or luke and Obi wan??

[trebb]

In 1977, it was best when viewed when on LSD....I think I saw Timothy Leary one row ahead of me...he morphed into R2-D2 and was suddenly on the screen...

[plain talk]

Thanks for the comparison link. I went through some of it. Lots of details were improved.

Good to have the original historic version preserved somewhere as a baseline.

[IYAS9YAS]

Quite ironic, since it was the original that fans of the day loved and made him rich.

[algore]

Han shot first

[RandallFlagg]

Years ago, a FReeper was kind enough to post a link where we could download the 1977 version. It’s on my hard drive.

[Fiji Hill]

I saw Star Wars I in the theater five times in 1977. It always attracted sellout crowds that sometimes stretched for blocks.

At the time, I thought it was the greatest movie ever made. There should never have been any sequels or antecedents. I saw Star Wars II in 1980 and Star Wars III in 1983, and these came nowhere close to the first one’s greatness. When I saw the first of the antecedent versions in 1996, it was so bad that I never saw any of the others.

[GingisK]

I saw Star Wars in 1977, long before it fell from grace.

[sima_yi]

I and a bunch of friends went up to San Francisco to see it on the big screen when it first came out.

In the scene when the Millenium Falcon first went to light speed, the audience cheered. It was the first (and only) time I have ever heard an audience cheer a special effect.

And yes, Han Solo shot first.

[Inyo-Mono]

I saw the original Star Wars film in 1977 with my wife. I was 27 at the time. Watched the next sequel, the one with the teddy bear creatures in it, didn’t care for it, and haven’t seen a Stars Wars film since.

[pepsi_junkie]

There's a video on youtube called "How Star Wars was Saved in the Edit" about how Lucas shot a lot of unusable crap and his then-wife and another editor cut a ton of it, moved a bunch around to make the story flow, and added some new elements to add suspense where there was none.

How Star Wars was saved in the edit (youtube)

The intro:
In February of 1977, George Lucas invited some of his closest friends to watch a rough cut of his new film: Star Wars.

In attendance among a handful of people were Steven Spielberg and Brian De Palma. The response was- not good. According to Spielberg, this is how De Palma reacted: "Well, Brian went off the deep end. WHAT???!!! MAKES NO SENSE! NONSENSE!' "

The film was in trouble. Sure, you can point at the superficial problems with the rough cut. Such as, placeholder VFX, stock footage, unfinished sound, and temp music.

But, we're not gonna focus on those.

No, the real issues were fundamental: the story, the scenes, the characters, the pacing But the film was not beyond saving, because they say a film is written three times: first, in the screenplay, next, in production and finally, in the edit.

The success of Star Wars was not inevitable. In fact, the way things were going, it was almost guaranteed to fail. It was only due to their laborious editorial process that Star Wars snatched victory from the jaws of defeat.

So Lucas turned to his ingenious editing team: Richard Chew, Paul Hirsch, arguably one of George's greatest collaborators: his wife at the time, Marcia Lucas. Their job was to rebuild a bloated first act, cut tons of unnecessary material, create clarity, tension, and drama in places that had none, and restructure scenes and entire sequences to propel the story forward.

Basically, they just had to start from scratch.

[utahb52]

When I saw the title, I first thought of the Holiday Special.