A long time ago on a blog post far far away, I sniped a bit at Jon Favreau for his claim that the Kids These Days wouldn’t be that interested in the original trilogy’s original theatrical versions coming back out. Well, it appears we’re going to find out which of us was right, cos the original Star Wars (no, I will NOT call it “A New Hope”, fuck you George Lucas), possibly restored from the original Technicolor print shown at the BFI a few months ago, is coming back to cinemas in early 2027 for the film’s 50th anniversary… which is fascinating, given that Lucas has spent decades insisting he would never let the original version be reissued; however, that BFI screening was attended by Kathleen Kennedy from Lucasfilm which did pretty much legitimise it, and if Lucas objected that much I’m sure he could’ve stopped it. I feel a fair amount of money has changed hands to change his mind…
Anyway, I still have questions, mostly about just how “restored” this re-release will be, cos we know uncle George has always insisted on tinkering with the film—even in 1977 there were differences in dialogue and sound effects between the mono, stereo and six-track 70mm prints—and I find it unlikely that he won’t have fiddled with it yet again by the time it comes out again. And will this reissue go as far as home video? What about the other two original trilogy films? As I said way back when, if Lucas would just let the unfucked-with original versions of the first three films out on disc, they would fly off the shelves. But if all else fails, I suspect cinemas are going to be packed in February ’27 when this one comes out, and I’m sure a lot of the crowd will be made up of the young people Jon Favreau presumably still thinks don’t care about it…
