The Star Wars Trilogy Special Edition (1997) Movie Discussion

 Hey everyone, how were your weekends? Mine was pretty quiet. Almost too quiet in fact, but I think that's actually a good thing. Anyways, yeah, so I'm here to talk about the Star Wars Trilogy Special Edition from 1997. But, I'm also going to be talking about the history of the Star Wars franchise from 1983 when Return of the Jedi was first released in theatres to 1997, when the Special Editions were released. So let's get into it.

The Star Wars Trilogy Special Edition was the first major re-release of the Original Trilogy since each movie's original releases in 1977, 1980, and 1983. Much had changed for the franchise since then. Let's go back to 1983 though, and talk about Return of the Jedi first.

Return of the Jedi was released on May 25th, 1983, exactly six years after Star Wars had first hit theatres in 1977. The movie grossed $480 million at the box office against a production budget of $32.5 million. However, this was the end of the series as George Lucas, the creator of the franchise, decided to focus on raising his adopted daughter, Amanda, following his divorce from his wife, Marcia, which cost him a ton of money. Slowly the franchise started dying out, though the comic would continue for another three to four years, two TV movies based on the Ewoks came out in 1984 and 1985 respectively, and two animated series, Droids and Ewoks would debut on ABC from 1985 to 1986.

In 1985, Kenner released a new Star Wars toyline called The Power of the Force, but with things like G.I. Joe, The Transformers, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, and She-Ra, Princess of Power capturing their imaginations, kids didn't want to play with toys from a series that had ended, so these figures quickly ended up in the bargain bins of various toy stores around the world. Star Wars was dead...

However, on May 1st, 1991 a novel was published that changed the landscape of media forever. That book was Star Wars: Heir to the Empire by Timothy Zahn and published by Bantam Spectra Books. This book was a smash success, proving that Star Wars WASN'T dead. The success of this book led to Zahn completing the trilogy with Dark Force Rising in 1992 and The Last Command in 1993, and convinced Lucasfilm and Bantam to launch a successful publishing program that continues to this very day.

At the same time Dark Horse Comics, a relatively new publisher, released the first issue of a new mini-series, Dark Empire by Tom Veitch, with art by Cam Kennedy. The issue came out on December 12th, 1991, and it also sold extremely well. Like with the novels it launched an entire expanded universe of Star Wars comic book stories that continues to this day. 

To celebrate the final home video release of the trilogy prior to the 1997 theatrical re-releases, Kenner, now owned by Hasbro, who also owned Transformers and G.I. Joe, relaunched their Power of the Force toyline with brand new, ultra-buff, molds for the figures, and updates of the ship playsets, like the Millennium Falcon and Luke's X-Wing. The first wave of these came out in 1995, the year the THX remastered VHS releases came out. Despite Power Rangers and Batman being huge sellers, the new The Power of the Force line cemented Star Wars's hold on 90's pop culture. But, could the movies that had already come out hold their own at the box office, or was Star Wars finished at the cinemas?

With plans to re-release it theatrically in 1997 for its 20th anniversary, George Lucas took a look at the print of Star Wars and realized that it had begun to deteriorate over the last 20 years. However, with the advancements in computer technology that Industrial Light & Magic had made with movies like Jurassic Park, Lucas chose to finish certain sequences that he hadn't been able to finish in 1976, and update the visual effects elements that had been groundbreaking, but still very rudimentary, in 1977. Star Wars: The Special Edition was released in theatres on January 31st, 1997 and ended up grossing a worldwide total of $255.5 million at the box office, adding to the $530 million made during it's original release and subsequent theatrical re-releases in 1978, 1979, 1981, and 1982. It immediately rocketed to #1 at the box office.

The Empire Strikes Back: Special Edition has fewer changes made to it than Star Wars did. Primarily because of how much the technology had changed between 1976 and 1979, and how big the movie's budget was following the huge success of its predecessor. A CGI version of the Wampa Ice Creature replaced the original hand puppet version, Cloud City was opened up, Vader is shown taking his shuttle up to his Super Star Destroyer, and the Emperor's scream was added to the shot where Luke falls from the platform he and Vader had had their duel on, for some reason. The movie was released on February 21st, 1997 and grossed an additional $67.6 million, adding to the money it made during its 1981 (a double bill with Star Wars) and 1982 re-releases.

Then on March 14th, 1997 Return of the Jedi: The Special Edition was released to theatres, grossing $16.29 million in its opening weekend. An entirely new musical number called "Jedi Rocks" replaced the original "Lapti Nek" song during the first act at Jabba's palace, a beak and more tentacles were added to the Sarlacc monster, an entire herd of Banthas were added to the Sail Barge shot, "Celebration", which was a new John Williams piece, replaced the original "Yub Yub" song at the end of the movie, as well as a montage of Tatooine, Cloud City, and Coruscant, the planet's first appearance in a movie, was added in the middle of the Ewok celebration on Endor at the end of the movie as well.

I originally saw Star Wars: The Special Edition in late 1997 when it aired on TV. My parents taped it for me. However, I didn't see these versions of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi until I borrowed the 1997 VHS box set from someone in early 2000. I honestly don't mind most of the changes made to the movie. Particularly Star Wars, because this version was closer to what George Lucas had envisioned when he made the movie in the 70's, but it just wasn't possible back then. I do feel that the Greedo shooting first change was absolutely unnecessary, just because it does soften Han's character just a bit, even though he was SUPPOSED to be someone you weren't sure if he was a good guy or a bad guy. I think George did it because he did have kids by the time he was working on the Special Editions, particularly a fairly young son, and having kids can absolutely change your views on certain things.

I did eventually get the 2000 VHS box set re-release of these versions of the movies, which matched up with the VHS release of The Phantom Menace, which was just coming out at that time. Though I wouldn't get the set until my 16th birthday in 2002. I have the 1997 VHS set in my collection today though, and that's how I watched the movies over the course of the weekend for this discussion.

The soundtracks for all three movies were re-released in 1997. The soundtracks were expanded with "Jedi Rocks" and "Celebration". Of course, the packaging was updated to reflect the Special Edition releases.

All three novelizations were re-published with Special Edition covers. However, unlike the movies themselves, the novelizations weren't rewritten. The novelization for Star Wars contained all of the scenes added back into the movie for the Special Edition, and the other two novelizations were untouched in terms of the text.

Dark Horse published an all new comic book adaptation of Star Wars. This not only altered the original adaptation from Marvel, that Dark Horse had printed a few years earlier under the title, Classic Star Wars: A New Hope.

The new adaptation was published in trade paperback form in January, prior to the single issues being released in January, February, March, and April, 1997. 

Oddly enough though, when the trade paperbacks for the comic book adaptations of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi were published, they didn't contain new adaptations. They simply collected the Classic Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back and Classic Star Wars: Return of the Jedi issues from 1994, which were two issue reprints of the original Marvel Comics adaptations of the movies from 1980 and 1983 respectively.

Kenner and Galoob, released toys for the movie, with Kenner continuing its The Power of the Force line of figures, vessels, and playsets, and Galoob releasing Micro Machines ships and playsets. The toys had continued to sell well, which was a huge change from when Kenner had initially tried to release toys under the Power of the Force banner 12 years earlier in 1985. 

I suspect that the reason George did the Special Editions to begin with, even before it became this huge restoration project, is because he wanted to see if Star Wars could still be successful at the box office. The Phantom Menace was still about four and a half years away from coming out when George began working on the Star Wars Trilogy Special Edition, and if updated versions of the original movies weren't going to succeed, then maybe George feared that Episode I wouldn't do very well either. As I talked about last time, those fears were unfounded, since the Special Editions AND Episode I did extremely well at the box office. Yet those fears were still valid.

While the books and comics had been selling well since they began in 1991, without any movies coming out, Star Wars had become a niche franchise, with the general population being uninterested in the books and comics. Particularly in 1992 and 1993 when DC killed off Superman and broke Batman's back. In fact, the sales for the novels had already started to drop off by 1997, and Lucasfilm was already starting to develop a new publishing initiative that would shake things up, but that's a story for another time. In this instance, with book sales dropping, and comics and toys being niche markets, Lucas was understandably nervous about whether audiences would not only return to theatres to see the updated version of the Original Trilogy, but would go and see a brand new Star Wars movie. Luckily though things worked out very well in both regards.

Overall, 1997 was like a trial run for the massive wave that The Phantom Menace would make, starting with the initial teaser trailer release in 1998. Toys were selling out, merchandise was flying off the shelves faster than stores could stock them. Commercials played on TV constantly. It was a major hit and one that I was on the fringes of, as I saw the commercials on TV, hadn't started reading the books yet, and had only some of the newer toys, though none that came out in 1997. I still enjoy this version of the Original Trilogy, even though you can only watch it on VHS now since Lucas made even more changes for the initial DVD release in 2004.

That's it for me for today. I'll be back later this week with more blog posts. So until then have a great evening and I'll talk to you all later. Take care.