There are huge lists of these inconsistencies online at places like SaveStarWars.com and OriginalTrilogy.com, where fans dissect the films and point out discrepancies. And on these message boards, Harmy is a bit of a superhero—although in many ways an unlikely one.

Harmy

Harmy—a 25-year-old from the Czech Republic—never saw the original Star Wars in theaters. Instead, he had a VHS tape that he watched as a kid. And when he first saw the special editions, he actually liked them. But as his Star Wars fandom grew—he did his undergraduate thesis on the cultural impact of the original movies—so did his desire to see the film in its earliest state. Using skills he picked up in college, he created his first despecialized version four years ago. Now, he’s on version 2.5, and between new copies of the movie being made available, and the techniques he’s learned along the way, he’s confident this version is the best one yet. “I’m pretty proud of these latest ones,” he told me.

For Harmy, the project is all about being able to show people who haven’t seen the original Star Wars what the film was like when it first became a phenomenon. “Look at this awesome film that was made in the '70s,” he says, “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.”

It’s not that fans want to ban the new versions of Star Wars—no matter how much they may dislike them. They simply want to have a choice. Harmy even admits that he might watch the special edition every now and then. “If both versions were available in the same quality I would probably enjoy watching the special edition once in a while. It’s not about George Lucas not being able to do these special editions. If people like the special editing, they can continue watching those. As long as both versions are available.”

Harmy

For his part, George Lucas doesn’t really care what Harmy and his cohort want. In 2004, when a new DVD special edition came out, Lucas told the Associated Press he had little sympathy for fans who yearn for the 1977 original. “It’s like this is the movie I wanted it to be, and I’m sorry if you saw half a completed film and fell in love with it,” he said. “But I want it to be the way I want it to be.”

But fans aren’t the only ones who want Lucas to release the original. Curators at the National Film Registry picked the 1977 version of Star Wars to preserve for history’s sake, but they still don’t have a copy in the registry. When they asked for a copy, Lucas refused, saying that he would no longer authorize the release of the original version. The Library of Congress does have a 35mm print of Star Wars, one that was filed in 1978 as part of the movie’s copyright deposit, but the registry, where films are meant to be preserved for history, is still without one.

Harmy

And here’s the real plot twist. In 1988 George Lucas actually gave a speech before Congress about the importance of cinematic preservation. In the late 1980s, Ted Turner bought studios like MGM and began releasing colorized versions of classic movies. The directors of those movies weren’t happy, and a group of movie makers came together and argued before Congress that people had the right to their cultural heritage, in the form of original versions of classic films.