Star Wars “Despecialized” by Fan

As many of you know, each time the Star Wars trilogy has been rereleased in theaters, on DVD or Blu-ray, there have been alterations to the original films as they came out over 30 years ago. While many of the changes were done at the command of George Lucas, there were also issues with quality and color correction in the currently available recordings. And while there have been rumors that a completely unaltered version of the movies might eventually come out on Blu-ray, a dedicated fan managed to create his own remastered edition of Episode IV, which is the most accurate replication of the movie to be available in years.

A guy named Harmy assembled footage from multiple sources, including DVD, Blu-ray, broadcast video tapes, and even a transfer of an old 16mm print of the film. All of these bits and pieces were hand corrected, cleaned up and reassembled – in many instances frame by frame – to bring the 1977 masterpiece as close to its original theatrical presentation as possible. They even had to find scans of original matte paintings and hand-animated bits to cover up some of the CGI changes which appeared in later editions of the movie.

If you’re interested in watching the complete Star Wars Despecialized Edition, head on over to this Pastebin link. Downloading generally involves digging through torrents, but the end result is worth it. In the mean time, be sure to watch the entire documentary video above to hear all about the work that went into the project, and there’s an in-depth gallery of all of the changes available up on Google+. And if this page is accurate, it looks like there are already Despecialized Editions of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi too.