Over the years the movies have been changed almost half a dozen times. Changes that were made in 1997 were redone in 2004, changes were made in 2011 that just don't make sense, and then there's “maclunkey”—which feels like a middle finger to those who complain about all the tweaks. The myriad alterations made over the years also create a confusing mishmash of versions. This week the “Skywalker Saga” is being released in a UHD set, but there will also be individual releases. These UHD/Blu-ray packages have a 19SE Blu-ray disc (maclunkey) on the shelf next to a Blu-ray-only package that has a 11SE disc. Customers wanting to watch the movies on Blu-ray will get two wildly different experiences based on whether they pay extra to get the UHD disc also.

ABOUT Drew Stewart Drew Stewart is the creator of Star Wars Visual Comparisons. He lives in Knoxville, Tennessee, with his family. He would like to thank David C. Fein for eye-opening revelations, Greg Harbin for letting him bounce theories off of him for years, and his parents for reading the opening crawls to him before he could.

I propose a relabeling of the films. Since the "Special Edition" moniker was quickly removed when they became the default versions, I would like to suggest that the 19SE be labeled "The Saga Edition." This opens up the possibility that Disney could reintroduce the original theatrical cuts as “The Classic Edition.” These are clear, well-defined terms that would allow the public to make a choice about what to watch. If they really wanted to keep with the current branding, Lucasfilm could even release them under the "Legends" banner that its publishing side utilizes. The publishing side has kept the non-canon books and comics in print with a label to prevent customer confusion. “Public confusion” on which version of the movies is “canon” should not be a concern. The public understands the difference already.

Directors and studios release alternate cuts all the time. Each of the Alien franchise films has a clearly-labeled alternate cut available, and those have not tarnished the franchise. There are multiple versions of Blade Runner, and Ridley Scott is seemingly as disappointed with the theatrical cut of that movie as Lucas is with original cuts of Star Wars films. There’s a “Saga” cut of The Godfather movies that has managed to coexist with the Best Picture winners. Hell, fans are still begging for the Snyder Cut of Justice League. Consumers can handle having multiple cuts of movies—and don't pretend that people won't buy all the editions of Star Wars. If they make a really good package of both editions, or even nice Criterion Collection-esque releases of just the Classics, they'll make tons of money.

Even if Lucas has lost his sense of pacing and dramatic structure, audiences haven’t. Fans forgive the Saga Editions for all of their flaws simply because they’re still Star Wars. But those movies wouldn’t be Star Wars without the originals. Lucas may have felt like the original movies were only a percentage of what he thought they should be, but that's what fans saw. That's what they fell in love with. The originals are what the Academy nominated. They're what the National Film Registry deemed to be "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” movies. They're what changed the way movies were made and inspired generations of artists.

For the past 20-plus years, we've been allowing the Saga Editions to stand in for the originals in box sets and in retrospective videos. An entire generation is growing up under the mistaken impression that these are the movies their parents fell in love with. We can't stand for this anymore. The Saga Editions could exist in their own corner, but there is no reason that the original pieces of film history should be locked in a vault somewhere.

The problem I’ve been seeing recently is an “I got mine” attitude. Disney doesn’t seem to mind the fan restorations, and the more people go around saying “Well, I guess it’s not coming—doesn’t matter to me because I’ve got [Despecialized/4K77/VHS],” the less likely it becomes that Disney will bother to release the original versions. I’m not saying we can’t have and enjoy the fan preservations, I’m saying we can’t pretend they would be anything compared to a professional restoration of backups we know they have just sitting in an archive. We have to make the demand.

Even J.J. Abrams recently said in an interview that "it would be great to have [the originals] available for a mainstream audience.” But when he asked about it, he was told such a release was not necessarily possible “for reasons I don’t quite understand.” So when he watches the originals, he has to watch Despecialized. The man directed two Star Wars movies probably has to pirate the same versions fans do. That's insane.

The simple fact is that the originals are historical artifacts that can stand on their own, separate from the franchise they birthed. For all the reasons detailed here, fans should be able to watch the versions that hit theaters some four decades ago. Moreover, Disney paid $4 billion for this franchise, it should want fans to want to watch them. The demand is there; the company could likely bring a lot of converts to Disney+ if they just met it.

This isn’t a call for a boycott, nor is it a call for a Disney/Lucasfilm pile-on. Instead, it’s a call for one thing, and one thing only: #ReleaseTheOriginalTrilogy.

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