It’s a big year for Star Wars fans as A New Hope is turning a huge milestone: we’ve officially enjoyed 50 years in a galaxy far far away. What better way to celebrate than to see the movie that started it all back on the big screen? Star Wars: A New Hope is heading back to theaters for a limited run starting February 19. This isn’t the first time the original trilogy has seen a re-release with new footage added for Special Editions. However, George Lucas defends the controversial Star Wars re-release from the ‘90s.
Lucas and his wife Mellody Hobson joined Norah O’Donnell on CBS Sunday Morning to discuss The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, which he has previously mentioned during a panel at SDCC. Of course, no conversation with the Star Wars creator would be complete without bringing up the upcoming re-release. Naturally, Lucas had a very on-brand response to his wife stating that nothing with him is ever done:
Most movies aren’t finished; they’re simply yanked out of your hands and put in the theaters. So you’re always saying. ‘Oh, I wish I could have just finished that one piece of thing.’ But it’s not that way. You have a deadline; you’ve got to make the deadline. But then I went back, after Star Wars, and redid all the movies, in terms of finishing them. So that they’re actually finished.
Nothing truer has been said. Lucas famously altered parts of the original trilogy back in 1997, with the most notable change being the switch of Sebastian Shaw with Hayden Christensen as the Force Spirit of Anakin Skywalker. This was first seen on the 2004 DVD verison and had mixed reactions. Now, Lucas is taking us back to the original screening of A New Hope where we can experience it like it was back in 1977. I also hear it’ll be without a certain Jabba and Han Solo scene, which was reportedly also digitally altered. In it, you see a cocky Han Solo circling Jabba the Hutt and stomping on his tail.
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This isn’t even the only change that has been made. There were A New Hope reshoots that found Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher re-filming the scene when Luke and Leia first meet, because the iconic Skywalker surname hadn’t been created when they first filmed. (Luke’s last name was originally Starkiller.) Though some of his choices have been criticized, Lucas makes no apologies for the changes he’s made. He states:
A lot of people got upset about that, because they said, ‘You’re not allowed to do that.’ I said, ‘Fans are doing that. They’re making alternate versions and all kinds of stuff.’
The man has a point. Despite the alterations to the movies, it hasn’t stopped fans from loving the franchise. Even Hamill’s love for Luke Skywalker has never wavered. In fact, the actor has recently celebrated Star Wars when he visited The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. He even joked about the height of his life-sized Luke Skywalker figure. His post made me excited about the upcoming re-release, which I’m hopeful will build hype for other upcoming Star Wars projects.
I’m looking forward to all the fun ways fans are going to celebrate the franchise’s major milestone. There will be plenty of opportunities in 2027. First, we’ll begin the year by going back to Star Wars’ origins with the re-release. Then, we’ll be taking a trip into a future even further away with the Ryan Gosling-led Starfighter.
While we’re celebrating the past and the future of Star Wars, I hope Lucas keeps defending the choices as everything we love about Star Wars started with A New Hope and yes, even the changes he made in the ‘90s.