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On February 19th, 2027, to celebrate its 50th anniversary, Star Wars, as it was edited in 1977, will return for a limited theatrical engagement. This is a victory for cinema and a justice of a team that had, for decades, had their award-winning work hidden from view.

Disney Studios

Now, let’s make one thing absolutely clear: George Lucas has every legal right to re-edit, reconceptualize, and do what he will with the original Star Wars, add episode numbers and sub-titles, insert newly crafted CGI effects, manipulate sequences to suit his newfound sensibilities, and so on. Lucas was the rights holder, and that was his prerogative. Just because you can do a thing doesn’t mean you should do a thing. Lucas has the legal right to do as he wanted, but it was disrespectful not only to the fans who had loved the film as it had been projected, but also to the team that has edited the movie and had been recognized by the Academy for that outstanding achievement.

Paul Hirsch, Richard Chew, and Marcia Lucas (then George Lucas’ spouse) took home from the Academy Awards an Oscar for Best Film Editing, one of the six competitive Oscars that Star Wars won that night. Of those six Oscars only one survived uncorrupted by Lucas’ reworking of the film, Best Costume Design, all the others were impacted to greater or lesser degrees by the inserted sequences, music, and effects but only editing was directly destroyed by the Special Editions.

It is said that a film is made three times before the audience sees the work: once when the script is written, then again during production, when the reality of what can actually be achieved places constraints on the script’s vision, and then in the editing suite when the pieces are assembled, constrained by what production actually shot and sometimes by the discovery of what had worked on the page fails on the screen. The editing of a film is where the rhythm is crafted. Like a symphony a feature film is comprised of movements that guide an audience through fast and slow sequences building towards a satisfying climax.

There is a powerful argument to be made that Star Wars was saved by its editing. Others have detailed just how much was changed in that suite before anyone paid for a ticket. How the Death Star battle originally did not take place while threatening the Rebellion’s immediate destruction on Yavin 4. I know this much, the work that won the Oscar has not been seen in its award-winning form in decades and I, for one, am looking forward to seeing that movie, the one I watched as a teenager in 1977.