Star Wars - Episode IV: 2004 Special Edition Revisited

ANH:R makes one of my favorite movies ever even better. The reason audio editing is not 10 is because of the addition of "Battle of the Heroes" to Vader vs Obi-Wan, and the Imperial March in a couple of scenes, which in my opinion simply don't belong in this movie. That's why the "PURIST" version gets a 10/10. Fine job Adywan. If I was going to be 100% unbiased, it would be a 10/10.

This is the special edition we deserved and this guy alone managed to do justice for what George Lucas did (and didn't do) this all time classic; granted, a couple of shots are clearly 2D images and some musical tracks feel a bit out of place, but for the most part it's an astonishing work.
Bravo!

*This rating was given before reviews were required*

I was 100% prepared to point out every flaw I had with your edit, ady. Now that I’ve seen it, the edit is too good to shoot apart.

Excellent work all around. The changes I thought I wouldn’t be in favor of (the ROTS music in the fight scene) I ended up liking very much. The only real change that I didn’t like was the Tie attack during the Death Star battle. It breaks up the pacing a bit and the first pan shot runs too long. But hell, Biggs gets a kill and that’s enough to make up for it.

Speaking of which, one of favorite subtle change is having Luke scream “Biggs!” over the radio.

Out of all 4 of the Star Wars versions I have, yours probably ranks second, behind the GOUT DVD from 2006. Even if the picture is shoddy, I still prefer the original Star Wars over any Special Edition out there. But your edit most certainly is the best SE of Star Wars out there and damn near beats the original. Now go drink, eat, and take the rest of the year off. You’ve earned it.

That… was… JUST… incredible.

At 4PM today [Jan 20] my download finished. This is something I’ve truly been itching to watch for a long, long, time. Words can ill describe how I wanted to see this.

I opened up my media player and dragged in the file.

The film opened.

The first thing I saw after the logo sequence (which uses the new Fox fanfare) was, well, IT. The logo, then the crawl. I allowed myself to sit back and watch it like a whole new film, and my jaw dropped.

Every laser in this film has been rotoscoped to look much more real. And real they do look. The first shot panning down from the starfield to the battle looked so much better than the Special Edition. It went inside and it actually had a longer corridor battle scene.

For a film that has cut and pruned so much, it’s amazing that it actually runs 7 minutes longer than its original time. But the subtlety lies in the fact that there’s not much radical editing – except there’s some amazing colour correction and a total remix of the soundtrack. The final battle scene of the film is the highlight.

Here nearly the whole sequence has been remastered with new special effects, lasers, colour correction, sound remixes, the works. It runs exactly the same as the original version, but it looks so much better.

And now for the downside. There are some minor spelling mistakes in the end credits. But that’s all I have to fault this utterly perfect version of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.

5 out of 5 for quality, presentation, story, and in anything else you could care to name. This isn’t flattery, this is the truth. I was blown away by this presentation.

Watch it, fool!