Star Wars, the original movies

I'd like to buy the original trilogy on DVD, but I'm confused by all the talk about the modifications made to it, different issues on the market etc. Can anyone explain simply what's available, and whether one can, in fact, find the original trilogy just as it was first released in the theatres, on DVD?

Thanks in advance.

The original versions are the 1970s releases. In the early 1990s, Lucas cleaned up the CGI and added some additional scenes, and rereleased all three films through the cinemas. They're the ones where Han Solo doesn't shoot first.

There are boxed sets available which have both releases of each films, as well as ones which feature just the originals or just the releases.

this edition apparently includes the original releases, as well as the later ones.

Heh, I'm boycotting the Amazons, but for this... so that contains both the original and mutant versions? and, looking at the comments--the originals are letterbox not widescreen? Darn. What to do, what to do... What are the odds the original trilogy could get a decent release? Buy now or wait?

Silly it may be, but I'm annoyed by those IV, V, VI numerals plastered on the cover. Major weirdness around this series.

According to the comments, it has both. I have the trilogy in the black & silver box at home, but I can't remember offhand whether it includes both releases of each film.

But, to tell the truth, I myself don't care overly much about the difference between the original releases and the "special editions". The films are entertaining, but getting upset about the changes Lucas made is... not entirely healthy.

I have another set, not in front of me at the moment, that does include both versions. So they are out there.
And healthy or not, I get a nostalgia kick out of seeing the older f/x and having the on screen scroll say "Star Wars" and not "Episode Four". I was 8 (turning 9) in summer of '77. Who wouldn't want to go back to that?

I'm not exactly a Star Wars fanatic myself, but I am "originalist" on principle. I wouldn't care much for writers reissuing previous work with embellishments and whatnot years later (as opposed to multiple original versions, editing versions etc.)

But, I don't care what he did with the new versions as long as I can have the old ones. That letterbox thing now bothers me--I watch DVDs on a small (relatively, compared to giant TVs) computer screen, and much prefer widescreen to other formats. Moreover... I can't figure out what comments mean by "not cleaned up" in reference to the originals. Don't mean to be fussy, I'm just astonished this apparently hasn't been released in a better package... well, not yet at least.

#5

Oh, OK, so it's watchable? Does the format irk you?

er, widescreen is letterboxed. Unless you're using a widescreen tv/screen, in which case it depends on the aspect ratio. Or do you mean "fullscreen" - which is usually "pan & scan"?

6: I'm confused. Letterbox usually is widescreen.

"Widescreen" fills my entire screen, or has black bands on top and bottom. "Full screen" has black bands left and right. "Letterbox" has black bands all around.

#5

I was eight in the summer of '77 too! But the first inkling of Star Wars reached me in Syria through comics--actually, ads in comics, for merchandise etc.

10: I'm not aware of an aspect ratio that creates black bands all around the picture, unless you are watching a widescreen movie on a widescreen monitor, but have the monitor set to a television aspect ratio. In that case, the problem is your settings, not the aspect ratio of the movie.

Widescreen, at least on my widescreen TeeVee, refers to a 16:9 viewing aspect ratio and covers the entire screen. Letterboxing is a way of creating the 16:9 ratio on a 4:3 (non-widescreen) TeeVee. In order to do this much of the screen is unused. The picture winds up being a narrow band across the center of the screen.

The only way to avoid letterboxing is to either chop off the sides of the picture, typically what small screen TeeVees do, or acquire a wide screen TeeVee capable of projecting the 16:9 ratio. All wide-screens should be able to do that, else, what's the point.

I was eleven in the summer of 1977. I saw Star Wars first in the UK - in Leicester Square - and then again a week or two later at Al Nasr Cinema in Dubai (which is where we lived).

"Letterbox" actually only refers to black bands above and below the picture. Some widescreen aspect ratios are letterboxed on widescreen television screens.

I mean, of course, that we lived in Dubai, not in the Al Nasr Cinema.

#11

I have DVDs in this "letterbox" format, and that's what it appears like on my screen: a rectangular image projected on black background. I don't know what it would look like on TV.

Like this:



http://img89.imageshack.us/i/letterbox43169.jpg/

Anyway, good to know if this isn't the "letterbox" look of the SW originals in the set.

15: Check the settings of your monitor, that will probably fix the problem.

#16

Nope.

Perhaps it's the settings of the software you use to play DVDs on your computer?

#13

Dubai would've been a more likely place to see Star Wars in 1977 than Damascus! While you were watching Star Wars, I was treated to my first ever cinema experience--the 1956 "The hunchback of Notre Dame" with Anthony Quinn and Gina Lollobrigida.

Not that I'm complaining! :)

Aw, c'mon. I can't be the only one with these uber-letterbox DVDs! I'll try to dig an example when I get home (maybe not today--I have several hundred DVDs)--I'd sooner suspect pirated stuff except that IF I were, ahem, to have such items in my possession, I'm certain none of THEM would be so formatted. This is all purely theoretical of course.

I don't see how my program settings could be at fault when it properly registers the formats of other DVDs--full screen, widescreen (both the screen-filling and "letterbox" ratios) etc.

Anyway, it was more the question of what the SW set above looks like, I guess the answer is widescreen with bands top and bottom.

I thought that the original Star Wars had episode IV in the first release. I guess I will have to dig out my Beta tapes and check it out.

#20

I had always seen letterbox used to refer to the bands at the top and bottom only, but have seen the black band around the entire screen before, as well, so I looked it up. According to Wikipedia, the band around the entire screen is windowboxing.

Letterbox

"The resulting videographic image has mattes (black bars) above and below it... The term refers to the shape of a letter box, a slot in a wall or door through which mail is delivered, being rectangular and wider than it is high."

Windowbox (and Pillarbox)

"Windowboxing occurs when an image appears centered in a television screen, with blank space on all four sides of the image, such as when a widescreen image that has been previously letterboxed to fit 1.33:1 is then pillarboxed to fit 16:9."

#21

Huh, never heard that.

Okay, for now, I just remembered one example of the "letterbox" with black bands all around--I sold this DVD recently BECAUSE I replaced it with a new screen-filling version (also available on Amazon, I see). The data on Amazon is a total jumble--all I can tell you as a viewer is that the image was formatted like the one in post #15.

The Five Venoms

replaced by screen-filling

The 5 deadly venoms

#22

A-haaa! Thanks, AshLad--if that means I'm not crazy! :)

P.S. Never heard of "windowboxing" before--all my DVDs which appear like that are marked "letterbox". Good to know.

Also, list of changes to Star Wars re-releases and Star Wars DVD Releases. I didn't wade through all that information myself, but I hope they're helpful.

When I saw Star Wars in the theatre when it first came out, I am positive, positive I say, that there was no Episode IV stuff, just the "in a galaxy far, far away" scroll. I don't know exactly when the episode IV business showed up in the prints, but the very best faith I can put out there is it was not in the originals.

Well I remember 'Episode IV: A New Hope' as the titling to the scrolling bit from my first viewing in '77 ... but then my mind has started letting me down on significant issues in the last few years, so I'm not putting too much reliance on it.

I think episode 4 was added when it was re-released before Empire Strikes Back came out, but not positive on that one. And I'd bet it will be on even a Beta tape. But I am positive that it was NOT on screen in 1977 (I went 4 times that summer!), and it isn't on the original version in the dvd.
But, Lucas has tweaked the movie for basically every release, so even that dvd isn't the exact same thing that was on the big screen. I'm told that they thought the original beginning was lost, only to discover it on the original (pre-dvd) laserdisc.
#7>My dvd is the widescreen edition, but I'd go with fullscreen to watch it on a PC.

Hmmm - I wonder if the UK got a different printing then, because it was there when I saw it in the Manchester Odeon?

Probably just a case of memory playing tricks. I've seen the movie so many times, it's hard to say what I remember fron which release. I only remember the lack of episode 4 titling, because I hated it so much when it was added.

No, I saw SW three times in the first couple of years, and the 'Episode' headings didn't turn up until after 'Empire' came out.

And one of those showings was at the 1979 Worldcon, immediately after the world premiere of the trailer for 'Empire'.

I saw Star Wars when it first came out. I'm not positive about anything except we waited in a line that became a wonderful sidewalk party. They crammed us in to see the show breaking every fire regulation. I remember the desert scene vividly because the girl sitting on my lap & I suddenly realized we didn't know each other & we'd been pretty friendly waiting for the movie to start... Well, it was the 70's.

I first saw Star Wars at a drive-in. (remember those?)

I loved drive-ins. We were bemoaning their loss in another topic not long ago.

I went to my first and only drive-in while on vacation in Canada, in 2002. I was 34. I know I missed out on something...and it was the last day that theater was in business...

If you went to the drive-in and actually, you know, saw a movie, you were doing it all wrong.

If you knew the person I was visiting, you'd know that the drive-in was a breather
>:-)

#5 - Duke is right. On first release, there was no mention of 'Episode IV' in the crawl.

Regarding 'Episode IV' versus just 'Star Wars', here's what IMDb has to say:

Upon its original release, the opening crawl did not include "Episode IV: A New Hope." According to Lucasfilm, this was added upon its re-release in 1978 or as late as 1981. The later print was the first one to be released on video, and all video, laserdisc or DVD releases have featured the subtitles. The theatrical cut DVDs, set to be released in September 2006, will be the first time that the original opening crawl, without subtitle, has been released on home video.

#25

Har, Wookieepedia!! Thanks for that.

Well, I swung by the library last night and actually found a 2-disc edition of Star Wars, which, according to the info above, should be the same as what's included in the box set. Watched the old version and a bit of the new version, and yeah, whatever is labelled "4:3 letterbox" on the DVD displays as "windowbox" on the computer:



The new version (labelled "widescreen") fills the entire screen. The black bands on "full screen" format should have given me a clue, but I never thought about what the picture might look like on a TV.

I guess the moral is to buy a TV, but I won't, I won't! Maybe there'll be yet another release...

#38

Speaking of IMDB, I was originally going to ask about this on one of their boards--impenetrable morass of mostly drivel though they are--but it wouldn't let me post without "authenticating" my login (years old) by giving them credit card info or logging into Amazon etc. If anyone knows a workaround...

Random observation: one of the droids the Jawas captured along R2 and CP30 is a dead ringer for Wall-E, know which one I mean? At least the part we see, the head.

And... is Chewbacca a girl?

>40

I thought it was from Silent Running.

Wall-E or that droid? Not familiar with "Silent running".

Wall-E was the same model as Huey, Louie & Dewey? That makes sense, both movies have an ecological theme. I have to watch Silent Running again, I have not seen it in at least twenty years.

Hit the button twice and what do you get?

#'s 40, 41 - one of the droids the Jawas captured along R2 and CP30 is a dead ringer for Wall-E

I thought it was from Silent Running.

I know what Lola is talking about. There's a droid in the background on the sandcrawler or beside it when Luke buys the droids that has two big headlights for a head. A lot like Wall-E.

I was gonna post an image here, but I've had a devil of a time finding images. There's just too much Star Wars junk online.

From Wikipedia: Silent Running drone with actor.

Well, let's be honest, the drones in Silent Running were the character prototypes for R2-D2 anyway.

Inside the sandcrawler:

That's the one!