28 Years Later, One Star Wars Leak Confirms What Fans Have Wanted All Along
A Star Wars leak suggests the massively popular theory around an upcoming anniversary may actually be true.
Star Wars is like an ocean: never the same, always changing. From new projects to confirmed fan theories to the complex issue of what is and isn’t canon, the Star Wars landscape is always evolving. Even the most fixed pillars of Star Wars — the original trilogy — aren’t set in stone. In fact, when A New Hope first premiered, it wasn’t even called that. It was just Star Wars.
But as that first movie prepares to celebrate its 50th anniversary, Star Wars may turn back the clock and give fans the theatrical Star Wars experience they’ve been clamoring for, even if it means undoing George Lucas’s past work.
Star Wars got a theatrical “special edition” re-release in 1997, the 20th anniversary of the first movie.
Leaked clips and screenshots appear to show 4K restorations of the original Star Wars trilogy, presumedly getting restored for a theatrical IMAX release in 2027, the 50th anniversary of the first movie. That was expected — it’s already been announced on StarWars.com — but what comes as a surprise is the fact that these appear to be the original theatrical versions of the trilogy.
George Lucas has always been clear that he version of Star Wars that premiered in theaters wasn’t the finished project he imagined, so in 1997 he created a theatrical “Special Edition” re-release including deleted scenes and updated special effects, like the originally deleted A New Hope scene where Han Solo meets Jabba the Hutt, but Jabba the Hutt is shown in crude ‘90s CGI. It’s also the origin of the infamous “Han Shot First” debate.
The 2004 DVD release of the Star Wars original trilogy was a massive event, as it was the first time the movies were ever available on the format.
Nowadays, if you were to pull up the Star Wars movies on Disney+, the version that would play would be the version that premiered on the 2004 DVD release of the movies, the versions that updated the ‘90s effects and added new elements like prequel-era Anakin Skywalker appearing as a Force ghost at the end of Return of the Jedi.
Even though the special editions may be Lucas-approved, fans have wondered if they’d ever be able to watch the Star Wars original trilogy not how it was intended to be seen, but as it was first seen, reliving the same experience as the fans who decided to check out a movie not called Star Wars Episode IV — A New Hope, but simply Star Wars.
