The Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope you remember watching wasn’t original. Let me take that back: it wasn’t the original version of the first Star Wars film to crash land in theaters in 1977. But after over more than 46 years of being locked away in a temperature-controlled tomb in England, the public will get to see the first cut, a special, extra-colorful and well-preserved “dye-transfer imbibition” print of the movie, and George Lucas likely won’t be too happy about it.
The upcoming British Film Institute’s Film on Film Festival will open in June with a screening of a rare Technicolor film print of the original Star Wars film that was released during its initial run in Britain. While it has been released on home video, this will be the first time the public will be able to watch it in theaters since December 1978. If Lucas had it his way, the world would probably have never seen it.
George Lucas has been tinkering with Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope for years, attempting to revamp the film with additional scenes here, a new opening sequence there, and a slew of special effects changes. The first changes happened in 1981, when a new cut with the subtitle added replaced the 1977 original print. Since then, Lucas has spent decades avoiding being beholden to his first attempt at his magnum opus. Since 1997, theaters have only been permitted to screen the rejigged, updated version. To Lucas, the version the British Film Institute will be screening “is not very good,” and he won’t acknowledge its existence.
“The Special Edition, that’s the one I wanted out there. The other movie, it’s on VHS, if anybody wants it. I’m not going to spend the—we’re talking millions of dollars here—the money and the time to refurbish that, because to me, it doesn’t really exist anymore,” Lucas told the Associated Press in 2004. “It’s like this is the movie I wanted it to be, and I’m sorry you saw a half-completed film and fell in love with it. But I want it to be the way I want it to be.”
Unfortunately for him, Lucasfilm and Disney gave permission to the BFI to screen the original print of the Star Wars film. He may believe “a film belongs to its creator,” according to what he told the audience during his masterclass seminar at last year’s Cannes Film Festival. But, when you sell your company for $4 billion, you quickly learn it does not. After the two screenings at the BFI Film on Film Festival, the movie is “going straight back to the Master Film Store and those sub-zero conditions” which maintained the film’s pristine quality over the decades, according to BFI National Archive’s Senior Curator of Fiction and Programme Director of the festival James Bell.
The festival will open on June 12 in London.
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