One of my favorite trivia items about A New Hope:

- there was a children's book (that my family had) that accompanied the movie

- there is a scene in the book where Biggs comes back to talk to Luke

- this didn't make any sense to me as a child b/c that scene isn't in the movie

- I realized years later that they cut the scene but AFTER the book was printed.

The scene in question is here btw: https://youtu.be/O7J_IZ9agRI?t=318

I have the original trilogy's original version on VHS still, and just recently watched them. I would say they hold up very well and weren't really in need of any post release changes or updates. The effects look great today compared to some other movies that actually came out later, probably because Star Wars used more practical effects vs some early Sci-Fi CGI that ended up not aging as well.

The changes are mostly just window dressings around the original footage, like extra CGI in transition scenes. They don't really change much of the core movie experience. It does end up causing some funny side effects though. Like when the main characters move from one place to another you'll see a splashy dinosaur like creature or fancy robot, but once they actually arrive in the scene the background falls back to the original with a lot less of that added CGI action.

Another part of the story a lot of people don't know is apparently Lucas's cut of the original Star Wars was horrible, so his wife came in and redid everything and that's the version that went to theaters. And she was the editor on the remaining two of the original trilogy as well.

I think it's pretty clear to everyone now that when Lucas is flying solo his final output is... not great. He obviously imagined a universe a lot of people find compelling, but wasn't always the best person to realize the vision of that universe.

Luckily, it seems like they are all being undone for the 50th next year. Most of them, anyway. We'll have to wait to see the release to be sure, but it's a definite improvement. Maybe the definitive version, finally.

I was talking to Bob Gale once about this topic and he said that him and Zemeckis had put a veto clause in their contract when they sold BTTF to Universal in the 90s giving them the power over any later fuckery with the releases, while they are alive. This was during the height of the 3D TV craze and he said Universal had asked for permission to do a 2D->3D conversion of BTTF and both Bobs had refused. So there's one franchise at least that won't get dicked with in the near future.

[I'm not totally against 2D->3D conversions if done right. The Titanic conversion looks like it was filmed 3D-native, beautifully done. The Star Wars: Episode 1 conversion is essentially unwatchable and killed the whole project.]

What about Bladerunner? It also has a bunch of different versions, with some pretty big changes: with or without the voice over.

Few have made so much money from a trilogy or had such creative freedom. I admit I disliked the laser bolt changes of special editions. Yet otherwise loved seeing some modern CGI fleshing out those worlds.

Well, maybe some of Ridley Scott's.

It's pretty funny, he took something that was very much a product of its time and beloved in large part for that reasons, and slowly turned it into something even hardcore fans want nothing to do with.

Very little was really lost IMO if you look at those movies with an eye free of nostalgia, but I'm sure many MANY people would disagree with that.