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by diogenescynic 216 days ago
You can’t trust corporations to respect or protect art. You can’t even buy or screen the original theatrical release of Star Wars. The only option is as you say. There are many more examples of the owners of IP altering it in subsequence editions/iterations. This still seems so insane to me that it’s not even for sale anywhere…
2 comments
4gotunameagain 216 days ago
I don't understand why you're getting downvoted. So many beautiful things have been lost to perpetual IP, e.g. old games that could be easily ported by volunteers given source code, which can never be monetised again.

Sometimes people create things that surpass them, and I think it is totally fair for them to belong to humanity after the people that created them generated enough money for their efforts.

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haunter 216 days ago
> You can’t even buy or screen the original theatrical release of Star Wars

You can actually, the 2006 Limited Edition DVD is a double disc version one being the original version.

However they are not DVD quality because they were transferred from LaserDisc and not the original film stock

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phantasmish 216 days ago
Even those aren’t accurate to the 1977 film.

To pick an arguably-minor but very easy to see point: the title’s different.

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phantasmish 216 days ago
Self-reply because I’m outside the edit window: the dvd “original” releases are based on the laserdisc, but supposedly they modify it to restore the pre-1981-re-release title, so I’m actually wrong!

I can’t find out if they fix the 3% speed-up from the laser disc. The audio mix, at any rate, will be a combination of the three (stereo, mono, 70mm) original mixes, like on the laser disc, so identical to none of them. The source should predate the replacement of Latin script with made-up letters (not conceived until ROTJ then retrofitted on some releases of SW and Empire) so that’ll be intact unless they “fixed” it.

Still stuck with sub-ordinary-dvd-quality picture, as far as official releases go, so that’s too bad. Oh well, fan 35mm scan projects solved that problem.

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haunter 216 days ago
I have these DVDs and you are right. But still the closest thing to the OG theatrical version officially available.
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