Harmy's Despecialized Edition: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 15:17, 10 July 2023

Revision as of 15:17, 10 July 2023

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'''''Star Wars: The Despecialized Edition''''', also known as '''''Harmy's Despecialized Edition''''', is a [[Fan edit|fan-created]] [[film preservation]] of the [[Star Wars original trilogy|original ''Star Wars'' trilogy]] films: ''[[Star Wars (film)|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, then an English teacher, from [[Plzeň]], [[Czech Republic]] under the online alias ''Harmy''.

The original ''Star Wars'' trilogy was created by [[George Lucas]] and released theatrically between 1977 and 1983. For the franchise's 20th anniversary in 1997, Lucas introduced noticeable [[Changes in Star Wars re-releases|changes]] within the films to address his dissatisfaction with the original cuts. These versions, promoted as the "Special Edition"," included additional scenes, different dialogue, new sound-effects and [[computer-generated imagery]]. These changes, along with more changes added in 2004 and 2011, were carried over into subsequent home video releases. {{As of|2023}}, the original theatrical releases are not commercially available, and have never been officially released in [[High-definition video|high definition]].

The new changes were met with a mixed to negative response from some critics and fans. Harmáček felt that changing 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. He 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.