Fans Restored Star Wars To Its Former Glory And Now It Looks Amazing

A group of dedicated ‘Star Wars’ fans have defied George Lucas wishes and released a restored HD version of the original film online, giving franchise enthusiasts the chance to experience the sci-fi classic as it would have been seen in cinemas in 1977.

Warning: This is an unofficial release and illegally downloading movies online is piracy.

The Silver Screen Edition, created by a group of fans calling themselves Team Negative1, is based on a 1977 35mm theatrical print bought on eBay that they painstakingly restored after Lucas refused to release the original unaltered cut of ‘Star Wars’ in any form.

The restoration features none of the many controversial changes made to the film since its first release in 1977, so instead of the opening crawl reading ‘Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope’, it simply reads ‘Star Wars’, and in this version Han Solo definitively shoots Greedo first, killing him in cold blood.

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The film now looks very much of its era, complete with 1970s film grain and a washed out colour palette.

George Lucas continuously tinkered with the original ‘Star Wars’ trilogy since their theatrical release, most dramatically for the 90s ‘Special Edition’ re-releases which restored deleted scenes, inserted CGI characters, and in some cases added whole new sequences.

Up to this point fans that wanted to watch the film, shorn of its Special Edition CGI additions, had to make do with the 2004 DVD version but even this wasn’t the version projected in cinemas in 1977 and it definitely wasn’t in HD.

Every subsequent DVD, Blu-ray, and digital release has tinkered with the image quality in some way, and the most recent HD releases feature a much darker image with a shift toward pink colour tones.

In an interview with Movie Mezzanine the team’s leader, known only as Mr. Black, explained the exhaustive approach they took to restoring the faded 35mm print back to its theatrical glory, which included photographing and restoring the film frame by frame, a process that took years.

A single second of movie footage is comprised of 24 frames and the original cut of ‘Star Wars’ was 120 minutes and 50 seconds long – you do the maths.

“We didn’t want to make the same mistakes that the professional people make. They all take shortcuts,” Mr. Black says. “They all do this auto-cleanup. They all do this digital noise reduction and grain reduction, and every other thing you can think of. That’s why the Blu-ray just looks scrubbed. Don’t get me wrong, I think it looks fantastic, I think the detail is great, and there’s so much eye-popping stuff in there, but they also made a whole bunch of mistakes. The colours are off, and the sound is off. It’s such a mishmash.”

The group is now working on restored versions of ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ and 'Return of the Jedi’ which they hope to release before the end of 2016. Late last year, director John Landis hinted that Disney was prepping rereleases of the original unedited 'Star Wars’ trilogy, but that remains unsubstantiated for now.

Until then, hardcore fans will have to make do with The Silver Screen Edition.

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Image credits: Disney/Imgur/Movie Mezzanine