Prometheus 1080p Special Edition Fan Edit Films: A Review and Analysis

Star Wars: The Despecialized Edition, also known as Harmy's Despecialized Edition is a fan-created film preservation of the original Star Wars trilogy films: Star Wars (1977), The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983). 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, then an English teacher, from Plzeň, Czech Republic under the online alias Harmy.

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".[1] Consequently, the films are mainly available via various file sharing methods. Reaction to the project has been positive, with critics generally praising the quality and aesthetics of the work.

Prometheus 1080p Special Edition Fan Edit Films

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Petr Harmáček (known online by the alias "Harmy") 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.[9] 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".[10] A fan of the original trilogy, he had written his undergraduate thesis on their cultural impact.[11] After seeing a trailer for a cut of the DVD version of The Empire Strikes Back by a fan known as Adywan,[citation needed] Harmáček was inspired to create a version of the film that "undid" the various post-1977 changes and restored the theatrical releases, in high-definition.[12] 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."[10] Harmáček's edits were the first to recreate the theatrical releases in HD.[9]

Most of the source material used for Harmy's Despecialized Edition was taken from Lucasfilm's official Blu-ray release of the films in 2011, while other sequences were upscaled from previous home video releases.

Harmáček was assisted by a group of like-minded fans from the website OriginalTrilogy.com. In total, they estimated that the project took thousands of hours of work between them.[10] In 2011, one year after the project had begun, the first version of Harmy's Despecialized Edition was published online;[15] new and updated versions were created regularly in the five years that followed.[5] As of October 2021[update], the most recent versions of Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi are v2.7, v2.0 and v2.5 respectively.[11][16] As a result of the project, Harmáček was able to quit his teaching job and in 2015 was hired by UltraFlix to prepare and restore a library of 4K-encoded films for sale and rent. He has since joined UPP, a Prague-based VFX house, as a 2D digital compositor and worked on such projects as Blade Runner 2049, Wonder Woman, and AMC's The Terror.[3][7]

The legality of downloading Harmy's Despecialized Edition is contentious.[2] As a fan edit, the cut cannot be legally bought or sold, and treads a line between fair use and copyright infringement.[17] 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".[7] Consequently, the films are only available via various BitTorrent trackers and through specialized rapid download programs using file sharing sites.[4][18] Harmáček himself remarked: "I'm convinced that 99% of people who download this already bought Star Wars 10 times over on DVD."[11] As of 2015[update], he had received no legal challenge from Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, the owner of Lucasfilm and 20th Century Studios, over the Despecialized Edition.[10]

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".[5] 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".[4] Similarly, Nathan Barry of Wired praised the films as "an absolute joy to watch",[13] while Gizmodo described them as "very, very good".[15] In an article listing Ars Technica's favorite Star Wars items, Sam Machkovech selected Harmy's Despecialized Edition, calling it "a treat".[18]

I'm a big fan of Alien, and I've the Prometheus collector edition (Including Alien Quadrilogy and Prometheus), but in the box, there is only a separate Blu-Ray with all the cut scenes in a single video, after some searching, I found some information about Ridley Scott, who doesn't want to do a Director's Cut.

The two remastered editions of of Star Trek VI is available in the 6-film box set or as a standalone 4K + Blu-ray release. The theatrical cut is also available as a standalone Blu-ray.

Illustrated below from iTunes (picture by @StarTrekVHS on Twitter), the remastered editions of each Star Trek film are identified by the rainbow-colored artwork on many streaming services like Vudu (though not on Paramount+, naturally).

At the recent press day for the Prometheus Blu-ray, Bleeding Cool learned from Charles De Lauzirika, who worked on the special features, that Fox wanted an extended edition of the film. However, Scott refused because the theatrical version is his "Director's Cut". The Blu-ray will still feature 35 minutes of altered, extended, and deleted scenes, but Scott didn't want to edit them back into the movie. I can respect that. Furthermore, just because there's more material, it doesn't mean that making Prometheus longer would fill in any plot holes.

To see the differences, another 2016 YouTube video shows a side-by-side comparison of the same battle as shown in both the 1997 Lucas special edition and the de-specialized edition. A quick watch of that video shows how little was really changed in this part of the film, as opposed to, say, a previously deleted scene with Han Solo that was revived by Lucas in 1997 to include the swashbuckling smuggler stepping on the tail of a comically reactive Jabba the Hut. (Please make that scene go away, George. Seriously.) 2ff7e9595c