We all love the Star Wars movies, right? Even now after all these years and in the new hands of Disney we still can't get enough of them. But how do we feel about George Lucas and his restored special editions with all that CGI? Not so hot, I think. Is there any chance we might see an original, unharmed version of those classic movies some day? There may be some hope on the horizon.
Speaking with Little White Lies, 'Rogue One' director Gareth Edwards reveals that Lucasfilm has a new 4K restoration of Episode IV: A New Hope. It was commissioned over a year ago and now...I don't know...it's just sitting on some guy's desk somewhere waiting to get dropped on a fanbase that is hot for anything Star Wars right now? He doesn't say whether this version is the classic version or the one Lucas tinkered with, but we can all hope it's the former. Edwards says...
“On day one, we were in Lucasfilm in San Francisco with Industrial Light and Magic and John Knowles, our supervisor, he said that they’ve got a brand new 4K restoration print of A New Hope – it had literally just been finished. He suggested we sit and watch it. Obviously, I was up for that. Me, the writer, lots of the story people and John all sat down, we all had our little notepads, we were all ready for this. I’ll add that I’ve seen A New Hope hundreds of times.
So I was sat there, ready to take notes and really delve under the surface of the film. You have the Fox fanfare, then scrolling text with ‘A long time ago…’, and then the main music begins. Next thing we knew it had ended, and we looked around to one another and just thought – shit, we didn’t take any notes. You can’t watch it without getting carried away. It’s really hard to get into an analytical filmmaker headspace with this film. It just turns you into a child.”
You'll note that he mentioned "Fox" there, and that's because 20th Century Fox still holds the distribution rights to the original movies, despite Disney shelling out all that cash a few years ago. So think about it; they could drop this next year, which happens to be the 40th anniversary of 'A New Hope' (!!!), and totally piggyback on the momentum Disney has been building with their new movies. Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if both camps worked together on this, would you? Re-release of 'A New Hope' in the summer, with an 'Episode VIII' teaser in front of it?
