What seemed like a win-win situation for the already massively successful franchise turned into long-running fan controversy that has now outlasted Lucas\u2019 own involvement in Star Wars<\/em>. Many of the changes that Lucas made in the Special Editions have since become notorious, from the altered confrontation between Harrison Ford\u2019s Han Solo and bounty hunter Greedo to the addition of a CGI version of Jabba the Hutt. In subsequent years, Lucas continued to make changes to the movies, adding in elements from his Star Wars<\/em> prequels and even tinkering once again with the Han\/Greedo scene before the debut of Star Wars<\/em> on Disney+.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While it\u2019s frustrating to fans that Lucas often seems to misunderstand what made the original Star Wars<\/em> movies so appealing, what\u2019s more troubling is the way that Lucas (and his subsequent corporate partners at Disney) seems intent on obliterating every previous version of the movies once any new change is made. An entire fan culture has sprung up around the efforts to obtain and view the original cuts of the Star Wars<\/em> trilogy, which are only commercially available on out-of-print VHS, DVD, and even laserdisc releases. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The fan-created \u201cdespecialized edition,\u201d which is a high-definition version of the original trilogy without the Special Edition alterations, has been widely circulated online<\/a>, but is, of course, a copyright violation. For an entire generation of viewers, the Special Edition of Star Wars<\/em> is the only edition. The original films, which were seen by millions, nominated for Oscars, and integral to the evolution of cinema, have been effectively erased.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lucas\u2019 changes to the Star Wars<\/em> movies may be the most notorious example of a director erasing their own cinematic past, but he\u2019s far from alone. Want to watch Milos Forman\u2019s Best Picture-winning 1984 biopic Amadeus<\/em>? It seems easy, since Amadeus <\/em>is available for digital rental and\/or purchase from the usual range of outlets, as well as on a beautifully remastered Blu-ray. But look a little closer at all of these options, and you\u2019ll see that none of them include the movie as it was released in 1984. Every currently available home video option for Amadeus <\/em>is Forman\u2019s 2002 director\u2019s cut, which adds nearly 20 extra minutes of footage. If you want to see the version of the movie that won eight Oscars, your only option is a double-sided DVD released in 1997.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There aren\u2019t nearly as many hardcore fans of Amadeus <\/em>as there are of Star Wars<\/em>, but plenty of viewers are still outraged that they can\u2019t watch it in its original form (just take a look at the Amazon reviews<\/a> for the Blu-ray). Amadeus <\/em>even has its own fan-created \u201cdespecialized edition,\u201d painstakingly reconstructed from the director\u2019s cut Blu-ray and upgraded elements of the 1997 DVD. It\u2019s hosted<\/a>, naturally, on a site dedicated to the preservation of the original Star Wars<\/em> trilogy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOnce we are re-releasing it on DVD, it doesn\u2019t matter if it is two hours and 40 minutes long, or three hours long. So why don\u2019t we do the version as it was written in the script?\u201d Forman told the AV Club<\/a> in 2002, and his cavalier attitude doesn\u2019t indicate anything close to the level of obsessive control that Lucas exercised over Star Wars<\/em>. Forman died in 2018, so he\u2019s not standing in the way of a reissue of the theatrical cut of Amadeus<\/em>, but no one is clamoring loudly enough for it to be worth the necessary time and money, apparently. Twenty years later, the new version is now the only version.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Whether or not any of these new versions are improvements over the originals, they still shouldn\u2019t make the previous cuts obsolete. Take Lucas\u2019 fellow film school brat Francis Ford Coppola, who\u2019s made a habit of retooling his films after their initial releases. The various versions of Coppola\u2019s classic Apocalypse Now<\/em> are all readily available, but the same isn\u2019t true for his 1984 box-office flop The Cotton Club<\/em>, which was re-released in a director\u2019s cut titled The Cotton Club: Encore<\/em> in 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Like Amadeus<\/em>, The Cotton Club<\/em> seems to be available to watch online, both as a digital rental or purchase and streaming for free on services like Hoopla, Kanopy and Pluto TV. But all of those versions, as well as the only DVD\/Blu-ray release currently in print, are The Cotton Club: Encore<\/em>, without the original cut. Upon its release, The Cotton Club: Encore<\/em> received much more positive reviews than the original version. Jordan Hoffman in The Guardian<\/em><\/a> gave it five stars and called it \u201cabsolutely terrific\u201d and \u201ca gift to cinephiles everywhere.\u201d But even if this version is much better, does that justify burying the previous version? Does Coppola get to rewrite cinema history?<\/p>\n\n\n\n When Criterion released the massive box set World of Wong Kar-Wai<\/em> last year, featuring new restorations of classic Wong films including Chungking Express<\/em>, In the Mood for Love<\/em> and Fallen Angels<\/em>, the Hong Kong auteur defended his choice to make alterations to those beloved films, whose previous versions are available now only on pricey out-of-print releases in the U.S. \u201cWhen a film needs to be restored, there are always things that can be fixed, otherwise why bother with the restoration in the first place,\u201d he told IndieWire<\/a>. \u201cI invite the audience to join me in starting afresh, as these are not the same films, and we are no longer the same audience.\u201d But in making those original cuts so difficult to watch, he turns that invitation into a command.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/amadeus-1024x576.jpg\")
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