The Lost Art of Star Wars

The current version of the “Original” Star Wars Trilogy available is only the most recent version of the Special Edition. This version has shots that completely replace or obscure paintings, models, or effects that the original artists worked hard on a deadline using technology they were sometimes inventing to complete. While some of the Special

What We Want And How To Make It

Consider this a short sequel to my WIRED article. What We Want For almost 25 years, the fans have been handed one version at a time and told this is as good as it gets. Star Wars is one of the few movies treated like this. Most other movies with alternate cuts give you a

List of Academy Awards for The Original Trilogy

Star Wars Won Academy Award for Best Art Direction Won Academy Award for Best Costume Design Won Academy Award for Best Film Editing* Won Academy Award for Best Visual Effects* Won Academy Award for Best Original Score Won Academy Award for Best Sound* Won Special Achievement Award for Sound Effects Editing* Nominated for Academy Award

Greedo Shoots First, Take 4: Maclunkey

The most obvious changes to the 4K Master is the Greedo scene, per usual. In the previous study, we only compared the actual Special Edition-created two-shot. The 4K version has modified the previous and the following shot, which we’ll get into. So now, immediately after Han’s “Yes, I bet you have” threat, we have a

“A Long Time Ago” Preface Changes

This is a preservation of the Twitter thread. The 2019 4K Version reverts the preface cards to their 1997 state. I started really looking at the preface cards & wanted to make some observations that don’t really fit in with the daily use of this account. Here are all of the currently released Episode prefaces:

Greedo Shoots First

This is a preservation of the Twitter thread showing the changes through the 2011 Blu-ray. The Disney+ version can be found here. Greedo shoots first. (1997/2004)

Star Wars Visual Comparisons

Welcome to the new site for Star Wars Visual Comparisons. Here you are going to find overviews of all of the major releases of the Star Wars Special Edition and links to the exhaustive photo albums cataloging all of the changes. The changes to the Star Wars Trilogy create a “Saga Edition” that requires all