Harmy's Despecialized Edition

Harmy's Despecialized Edition is a fan-created film preservation of the original Star Wars trilogy films: Star Wars (1977), The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983). It is a high quality replica of the out-of-print theatrical versions created by a team of Star Wars fans, with the intention of preserving the films, culturally and historically. The project was led by Petr Harmáček, an English teacher from Plzeň, Czech Republic under the online alias Harmy.

Blu-ray cover

The original Star Wars trilogy was created by George Lucas and released theatrically between 1977 and 1983. For the "Special Edition" theatrical re-release of the films in 1997, Lucas introduced noticeable changes to address his dissatisfaction with the original cuts. These included additional scenes and altered dialogue, and new sound-effects and computer-generated imagery. These changes were included in subsequent releases of the films for home viewing. As of 2020 the original theatrical releases are not commercially available, and have never been released in high definition.

Some of the alterations were met with a negative response from both critics and fans. Harmáček felt that altering the films in this way constituted "an act of cultural vandalism". In 2010, he began to create a high definition reconstruction of the films' theatrical versions. Harmáček and a team of eight other fans used the 2011 Blu-ray releases for the majority of material, the lower-definition 1993 LaserDisc releases as a guide to the original version, and various other sources. The first version was published online in 2011, and updated versions have been released since.

As a derivative work, Harmy's Despecialized Edition cannot be legally bought or sold in the United States and other countries with treaties respecting US copyrights, and is "to be shared among legal owners of the officially available releases only".[1] Consequently, the films are only available via various file sharing methods. Reaction to the project has been positive, with critics generally praising the quality and aesthetics of the work.

Background
Further information: Changes in Star Wars re-releases
Star Wars logo

The original Star Wars trilogy was a Lucasfilm production released theatrically by 20th Century Fox between 1977 and 1983, and was subsequently released on home media during the 1980s and 1990s. The films were distributed by CBS/Fox Video on several formats, such as VHS, Betamax, and LaserDisc.[2] In 1997, to coincide with the 20th anniversary of Star Wars, Lucas re-released new cuts of the trilogy to theaters, naming them the "Special Editions". The Special Editions made a number of changes to the original releases, including additions such as enhanced digital effects, previously unreleased scenes, altered dialogue and sound-effects by THX and Skywalker Sound, and entirely new CGI sequences from Industrial Light & Magic.[3]

Reaction to the new cuts was mixed, with commentators criticising unnecessary additions such as a computer-generated Jabba the Hutt in the first film and a new musical number in Return of the Jedi;[4] an alteration involving the bounty hunter Greedo shooting at Han Solo drew significant ire.[5] Star Wars producer Gary Kurtz was among those criticising the changes. Further changes to the series were added to the 2004 DVD and the 2011 Blu-ray releases – these changes also drew criticism. The final release of the original cuts was in 2006, when unrestored masters used for the 1993 LaserDisc were added as a bonus feature to a limited run of DVDs – fans named this release "George's Original Unaltered Trilogy" (GOUT).[6] In 2010, Lucas stated that bringing the original cuts to Blu-ray would be a "very, very expensive" process;[7] as of 2020, the films are still only widely available in their altered versions.[8]

As a result of these changes, a group of fans met on various Internet forums to construct higher quality cuts as fan edits by using the available home media and blending the Special Edition DVDs with the LaserDisc transfers. One such edit for The Empire Strikes Back was created by Star Wars fan Adywan.[9]

Production

Conception

Petr Harmáček (known online by the alias "Harmy") had watched a dubbed version of the original cut of Star Wars at the age of six, and had then seen the Special Editions of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi on their 1997 release.[10] Although initially admiring them, he became disappointed when he learned how much the films had been changed retroactively; he argued that replacing the original effects with re-composited digital effects was "an act of cultural vandalism".[9] A fan of the original trilogy, he had written his undergraduate thesis on their cultural impact.[11] After seeing a trailer for Adywan's cut of The Empire Strikes Back, Harmáček was inspired to create a version of the film that "undid" the post-1977 changes and restored the theatrical releases in high-definition.[12] He described his motivation as: "I wanted to be able to show people who haven't seen Star Wars yet, like my little brother or my girlfriend, the original, Oscar-winning version, but I didn't want to have to show it to them in bad quality."[9] Harmáček's edits were the first to recreate the theatrical releases in HD.[10]

Editing
"Look at this awesome film that was made in the '70s ... I want to show that to people. I wanted to show my brother. He was three when I started working and I showed it to him when he was five and he loved it."

— Petr "Harmy" Harmáček explaining his motivation for creating the Despecialized Edition[11]

Harmáček began creating his new cuts in 2010.[7] At the time, he was working as an English teacher in Plzeň and had no professional experience with film editing.[10] Instead, he taught himself programs such as Avisynth and Adobe After Effects as the project progressed, beginning with Photoshop skills that he had developed in college.[3][11] To remove the post-1977 changes, Harmáček was required to go through the film frame-by-frame, correcting colors and rotoscoping.[2][13] Undoing some shots took only an hour, while others took hundreds. Lightsabers were color-corrected, shots of the Millennium Falcon cockpit were un-cropped, Boba Fett's original voice was restored, and CGI characters and backgrounds were removed.[3]

Sources

Most of the source material used for Harmy's Despecialized Edition was taken from Lucasfilm's official Blu-ray release of the films in 2011, while other sequences were upscaled from previous home video releases.

These include:

  • The 2-disc "Limited Edition" DVD release from 2006. This set contains a low resolution copy of the theatrical cuts on a bonus disc. Harmy refers to this disc as "George's Original Unaltered Trilogy" (GOUT).[14]
  • The official trilogy on DVD box set from 2004, primarily the HDTV broadcasts of those versions of the films.
  • The 1997 "Special Edition" re-releases, most notably digital broadcasts of those cuts along with their LaserDisc releases.
  • The 1993 LaserDisc box set.
  • Digital transfers of a Spanish 35 mm Kodak LPP and 70 mm film cels, a 16 mm print.
  • A collection of still images of the original matte paintings.

Harmáček edited these sources together using programs such as Avisynth and Adobe After Effects.[9]

To help, Harmáček was assisted by a group of similarly-minded fans from the website OriginalTrilogy.com,[6] whom he knew by their online aliases Dark Jedi, YouToo, Puggo, Team Negative 1, Belbucus, Hairy_Hen, CatBus and Laserschwert.[3] In total, the project took thousands of hours of work between them.[9] In 2011, one year after the project had begun, the first version of Harmy's Despecialized Edition was published online;[15] new and updated versions have been created regularly in the five years that followed.[5] As of February 2017, the most recent "despecialized" versions of Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi are v2.7, v2.0 and v2.5 respectively.[11] As a result of the project, Harmáček was able to quit his teaching job and in 2015 was hired by UltraFlix to prepare and restore a library of 4K-encoded films for sale and rent. He has since joined UPP, a Prague-based VFX house, as a 2D digital compositor and worked on such projects as Blade Runner 2049, Wonder Woman, and AMC's The Terror.[3][7]

Legality

The legality of downloading Harmy's Despecialized Edition is contentious.[2] As a fan edit, the cut cannot be legally bought or sold, and treads a line between fair use and copyright infringement.[16] OriginalTrilogy.com states that the edits are "made for culturally historical and educational purposes" and that they are "to be shared among legal owners of the officially available releases only".[7] Consequently, the films are only available via various BitTorrent trackers and through specialized rapid download programs using file sharing sites.[4][17] Harmáček himself remarked: "I'm convinced that 99% of people who download this already bought Star Wars 10 times over on DVD."[11] As of January 2020, he had received no legal challenge from either Lucasfilm, Disney, or 20th Century (all of whom are now sister companies) over the Despecialized Edition.[9]

Reception

Reaction to Harmy's Despecialized Edition has been universally positive. Writing for Inverse, Sean Hutchinson placed it at number one on his list of the best Star Wars fan edits, and described it as "the perfect pre-1997 way to experience the saga".[5] Whitson Gordon of Lifehacker called the edits "the best version of Star Wars you can watch", and named them "the version of Star Wars we've all been clamoring for the last 20 years".[4] Similarly, Nathan Barry of Wired praised the films as "an absolute joy to watch",[13] while Gizmodo described them as "very, very good".[15] In an article listing Ars Technica's favorite Star Wars items, Sam Machkovech selected Harmy's Despecialized Edition, calling it "a treat".[17]

References
  1. "The Ultimate Introductory Guide to Harmy's Star Wars Trilogy Despecialized Editions". docs.google.com. Retrieved 20 May 2020.
  2. Goldberg, Matt (December 14, 2015). "Yes, an HD Version of the Unaltered 'Star Wars' Original Trilogy Lurks Online". Collider. Archived from the original on December 21, 2015. Retrieved January 27, 2016.
  3. Miller, Daniel (December 2015). "Restoring Star Wars". Sydney: Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Archived from the original on December 14, 2015. Retrieved January 27, 2016.
  4. Gordon, Whitston (December 14, 2015). "Watch the Original Star Wars Trilogy As It Was Before George Lucas Screwed It Up". Lifehacker. Archived from the original on December 14, 2015. Retrieved January 27, 2015.
  5. Hutchinson, Sean (January 22, 2016). "These Are the 5 Best 'Star Wars' Fan Edits". San Francisco: Inverse. Archived from the original on January 27, 2016. Retrieved January 27, 2016.
  6. Smith, Chris (December 15, 2015). "How to watch the original Star Wars trilogy from before George Lucas altered it". Boy Genius Report. Archived from the original on December 16, 2015. Retrieved January 27, 2015.
  7. Brew, Simon (May 20, 2015). "Star Wars: Fan creates 'despecialized' original trilogy". London: Den of Geek. Archived from the original on May 23, 2015. Retrieved January 27, 2016.
  8. Hutchinson, Lee (May 10, 2014). "Could Disney finally give us the remastered, unedited Star Wars we want?". Ars Technica. Archived from the original on May 11, 2014. Retrieved April 19, 2016.
  9. Hosie, Ewen (November 17, 2015). "'Star Wars: Despecialized Edition' Restores the Original, Unedited Trilogy". Vice. New York City. ISSN 1077-6788. OCLC 30856250. Archived from the original on November 18, 2015. Retrieved January 27, 2016.
  10. Jun, Dominik (November 8, 2014). "The Czech guerilla restorationist battling to 'save Star Wars'". Prague: Radio Prague. Archived from the original on November 13, 2014. Retrieved April 25, 2016.
  11. Eveleth, Rose (August 27, 2014). "The Star Wars George Lucas Doesn't Want You To See". The Atlantic. Washington, D.C.: Atlantic. ISSN 1072-7825. OCLC 783915762. Archived from the original on August 28, 2014. Retrieved March 20, 2016.
  12. Johncock, Benjamin (December 21, 2015). "On Star Wars, The Craft of Writing and What Novelists Can Learn From 'The Force Awakens'". The Huffington Post. Archived from the original on January 27, 2016. Retrieved January 27, 2016.
  13. Barry, Nathan (February 12, 2013). "Star Wars – The Fandom Editors". Wired. Archived from the original on October 31, 2015. Retrieved January 27, 2016.
  14. Barry, Nathan (May 2, 2013). "Star Wars – The Fandom Editors – A Real New Hope". GeekDad. Archived from the original on May 5, 2013. Retrieved January 27, 2016.
  15. "Two Entirely Different Ways to Watch the Original Star Wars". Australia: Gizmodo. December 18, 2015. Archived from the original on December 21, 2015. Retrieved January 27, 2016.
  16. Broughall, Nick (December 18, 2015). "Awakening the Force in my son was easier with the Harmy Despecialized Editions". TechRadar. Archived from the original on January 27, 2016. Retrieved January 27, 2016.
  17. Machkovech, Sam (November 26, 2015). "Star Wars beyond the films: Ars' staff picks its fave games, toys, more". Ars Technica. Archived from the original on November 29, 2015. Retrieved January 27, 2016.
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