Fifty years on, the farm boy is going back to the pictures. On Thursday Lucasfilm and Disney announced a year of celebrations for Star Wars’ 50th anniversary. The centrepiece is a restored release of the original 1977 film, in cinemas worldwide from 19 February 2027, including “nationwide” in the UK, according to Disney’s British press office. It will show in IMAX 70mm, ordinary 70mm, 35mm, Digital IMAX, 4DX and D-BOX, so for a few extra quid your seat can lurch about every time the Falcon makes the jump to lightspeed. Ticket details are “to follow”.
The second announcement is the one that will keep the fan forums up past their bedtime. The Hero Awakens, a documentary directed by R.J. Cutler, arrives on Disney+ on 4 May 2027, naturally, and is built from archive footage and audio “captured during and around the making” of the 1977 film. Lucasfilm hasn’t said who appears in it. One of the images on StarWars.com has a filename that mentions George Lucas and Anthony Daniels, which is either a clue or a very optimistic intern.
Now for the small print, because with Star Wars there is always small print. Lucasfilm’s official wording is a “restored version of the original Star Wars (1977)”, and co-president Lynwen Brennan talks about “returning the original version of Star Wars to theaters”. Word that the untampered-with cut was on its way first got out last December. What none of the releases actually says, in so many words, is that this isn’t the Special Edition. Since 1997 Greedo has been firing first in the Mos Eisley cantina, and since the 2019 Disney+ version he has also been shouting “Maclunkey” for reasons known only to the Force. The Cosm dome screenings that start in March, in Atlanta, Dallas, Detroit and Los Angeles, are of the 2019 version. So the question every reader of a certain age wants answered on 19 February is a simple one: does Han shoot first? On the evidence of the word “original”, repeated with some care, the answer is probably yes. We’ll believe it when we see Greedo slump over the table without having got a shot off.
There’s a British footnote too. Star Wars was made largely at Elstree, with a British crew and a good many British actors under the stormtrooper helmets, and Peter Cushing was the man in charge of the Death Star. Yet British audiences didn’t get to see it until late December 1977, months after America had queued around the block. The fiftieth-anniversary release closes that gap rather neatly: everyone gets it on the same Friday this time.
The rest of the year’s Star Wars calendar has filled up in one go. Ahsoka season two lands on Disney+ on 20 January. Star Wars Celebration takes over the Los Angeles Convention Center from 1 to 4 April, and the Hollywood Bowl will host Star Wars in Concert: The Skywalker Saga on 2 and 3 April, presented by Anthony Daniels, who has earned the right to present anything he likes. Shawn Levy’s Star Wars: Starfighter, with Ryan Gosling, opens on 28 May. There’s a new 50th-anniversary logo with a freshly orchestrated John Williams fanfare, a poster by Matt Ferguson that tips its hat to the 1977 artwork, seven LEGO sets from 1 January, and Hasbro figures inspired by the original film, for which pre-orders open today. Kenner fans who kept their boxes can now look smug.
A making-of documentary assembled from material nobody has seen is potentially the real treasure here. The behind-the-scenes story has been told before, in Kevin Burns’s Empire of Dreams in 2004 and in J.W. Rinzler’s doorstop of a book, and the received version is famously glum: rain in the Tunisian desert, droids that wouldn’t drive in straight lines, and a director who thought he had made a children’s film nobody would watch. If Cutler has found footage that adds anything to that, it will be worth the subscription. If it’s the same anecdotes in sharper focus, there’s always the 70mm print.
Here at SFcrowsnest, which is old enough to remember the queues, we’ll be watching the February listings closely and the cantina even more closely. Fifty years is a long time to wait for an apology from Greedo.
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