Harmy's Despecialized Edition


Harmy's Despecialized Edition is a fan-created film preservation of the original Star Wars trilogy films: Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. It is a high quality replica of the out-of-print theatrical versions created by a team of Star Wars fans, with the intention of preserving the films, culturally and historically. The project was led by Petr Harmáček, an English teacher from Plzeň, Czech Republic under the online alias Harmy.
The original Star Wars trilogy was created by George Lucas and released theatrically between 1977 and 1983. For the "Special Edition" theatrical re-release of the films in 1997, Lucas introduced noticeable changes to address his dissatisfaction with the original cuts. These included additional scenes and altered dialogue, and new sound-effects and computer-generated imagery. These changes were included in subsequent releases of the films for home viewing. the original theatrical releases are not commercially available, and have never been released in high definition.
Some of the alterations were met with a negative response from both critics and fans. Harmáček felt that altering the films in this way constituted "an act of cultural vandalism". In 2010, he began to create a high definition reconstruction of the films' theatrical versions. Harmáček and a team of eight other fans used the 2011 Blu-ray releases for the majority of material, the lower-definition 1993 LaserDisc releases as a guide to the original version, and various other sources. The first version was published online in 2011, and updated versions have been released since.
As a derivative work, Harmy's Despecialized Edition cannot be legally bought or sold in the United States and other countries with treaties respecting US copyrights, and is "to be shared among legal owners of the officially available releases only". Consequently, the films are only available via various file sharing methods. Reaction to the project has been positive, with critics generally praising the quality and aesthetics of the work.

Background

The original Star Wars trilogy was a Lucasfilm production released theatrically by 20th Century Fox between 1977 and 1983, and was subsequently released on home media during the 1980s and 1990s. The films were distributed by CBS/Fox Video on several formats, such as VHS, Betamax, and LaserDisc. In 1997, to coincide with the 20th anniversary of Star Wars, Lucas re-released new cuts of the trilogy to theaters, naming them the "Special Editions". The Special Editions made a number of changes to the original releases, including additions such as enhanced digital effects, previously unreleased scenes, altered dialogue and sound-effects by THX and Skywalker Sound, and entirely new CGI sequences from Industrial Light & Magic.
Reaction to the new cuts was mixed, with commentators criticising unnecessary additions such as a computer-generated Jabba the Hutt in the first film and a new musical number in Return of the Jedi; an alteration involving the bounty hunter Greedo shooting at Han Solo drew significant ire. Further changes to the series were added to the 2004 DVD and the 2011 Blu-ray releases – these changes also drew criticism. The final release of the original cuts was in 2006, when unrestored masters used for the 1993 LaserDisc were added as a bonus feature to a limited run of DVDs – fans named this release "George's Original Unaltered Trilogy". In 2010, Lucas stated that bringing the original cuts to Blu-ray would be a "very, very expensive" process; as of 2020, the films are still only widely available in their altered versions.
As a result of these changes, a group of fans met on various Internet forums to construct higher quality cuts as fan edits by using the available home media and blending the Special Edition DVDs with the LaserDisc transfers. One such edit for The Empire Strikes Back was created by Star Wars fan Adywan.

Production

Conception

Petr Harmáček had watched a dubbed version of the original cut of Star Wars at the age of six, and had then seen the Special Editions of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi on their 1997 release. Although initially admiring them, he became disappointed when he learned how much the films had been changed retroactively; he argued that replacing the original effects with re-composited digital effects was "an act of cultural vandalism". A fan of the original trilogy, he had written his undergraduate thesis on their cultural impact. After seeing a trailer for Adywan's cut of The Empire Strikes Back, Harmáček was inspired to create a version of the film that "undid" the post-1977 changes and restored the theatrical releases in high-definition. He described his motivation as: "I wanted to be able to show people who haven't seen Star Wars yet, like my little brother or my girlfriend, the original, Oscar-winning version, but I didn't want to have to show it to them in bad quality." Harmáček's edits were the first to recreate the theatrical releases in HD.

Editing

Harmáček began creating his new cuts in 2010. At the time, he was working as an English teacher in Plzeň and had no professional experience with film editing. Instead, he taught himself programs such as Avisynth and Adobe After Effects as the project progressed, beginning with Photoshop skills that he had developed in college. To remove the post-1977 changes, Harmáček was required to go through the film frame-by-frame, correcting colors and rotoscoping. Undoing some shots took only an hour, while others took hundreds. Lightsabers were color-corrected, shots of the Millennium Falcon cockpit were un-cropped, Boba Fett's original voice was restored, and CGI characters and backgrounds were removed.

Legality

The legality of downloading Harmy's Despecialized Edition is contentious. As a fan edit, the cut cannot be legally bought or sold, and treads a line between fair use and copyright infringement. OriginalTrilogy.com states that the edits are "made for culturally historical and educational purposes" and that they are "to be shared among legal owners of the officially available releases only". Consequently, the films are only available via various BitTorrent trackers and through specialized rapid download programs using file sharing sites. Harmáček himself remarked: "I'm convinced that 99% of people who download this already bought Star Wars 10 times over on DVD.", he had received no legal challenge from either Lucasfilm, Disney, or 20th Century over the Despecialized Edition.

Reception

Reaction to Harmy's Despecialized Edition has been universally positive. Writing for Inverse, Sean Hutchinson placed it at number one on his list of the best Star Wars fan edits, and described it as "the perfect pre-1997 way to experience the saga". Whitson Gordon of Lifehacker called the edits "the best version of Star Wars you can watch", and named them "the version of Star Wars we've all been clamoring for the last 20 years". Similarly, Nathan Barry of Wired praised the films as "an absolute joy to watch", while Gizmodo described them as "very, very good". In an article listing Ars Technica's favorite Star Wars items, Sam Machkovech selected Harmy's Despecialized Edition, calling it "a treat".