Star Wars: Episode IV Special Edition Released 20 Years Ago Today

Having celebrated one Star Wars anniversary already today, there’s another that is a little more […]

September 5, 2017, 9:01pm

Having celebrated one Star Wars anniversary already today, there’s another that is a little more auspicious: today is the 20th anniversary of the release of the Special Edition of Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope. Many fans, naturally, won’t exactly celebrate the day; there’s a contingency of fans who dislike the changes made in the remastered re-releases of the films, including new CGI and an especially controversial change to the scene involving Han Solo and Greedo in the Cantina.

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But the Special Editions did a few things that fans of any stripe can appreciate. They brought the Star Wars movies to a new generation, and represented the first time many people had ever seen the movies. Remember, in 1997 when this was released, there hadn’t been a Star Wars movie in theaters for almost a decade and a half. While the then-Expanded Universe, now referred to as Legends, carried the torch with books, comics, and games, it wasn’t the same thing as seeing a movie on the big screen.

The remastered Special Editions also offered up crystal clear quality of these classic films, a huge upgrade from the remaining VHS copies that fans had watched tens or hundreds of times. And, like it or not, they offered up the purest version of George Lucas’s vision of the galaxy far, far away.

Owning the box office for a few months (thanks to the back-to-back releases of the special edition versions of the original trilogy), these also drummed up more interest in the prequel trilogy. The prequel trilogy’s success likewise paved the way for Star Wars: The Clone Wars, and eventually for Lucasfilm to be sold to Disney and commence production on not just the sequel trilogy but also the standalone Star Wars Story movies.

In other words, without the Special Editions, we might not have had the last twenty years of Star Wars, and all the amazing stories that have come with that. That’s worth one extra blaster bolt and a slightly repeated conversation with a CGI space slug, isn’t it? Plus, we got this sick Drew Struzan poster.

Happy birthday, Star Wars: Special Editions, and thanks for keeping the franchise alive.