Coate: Can you describe how you reacted to observing the differences?
Matessino: As a couple of them went by, I could only make a mental note that something seemed different, but I really knew there were noticeable changes when the final scene began with different music. I found it interesting that there was an extra bit of dialogue that clarified that Lando and Chewbacca were going after Boba Fett and Jabba the Hutt.
I wrote about the 70mm variations for some Star Wars coverage in Film Score Monthly (Volume 2, Issue 1, January/February 1997). The differences I recall in the 70mm version include a wipe from probe exiting screen left to “aerial” shot of Luke on tauntaun and another wipe from Luke falling face down in snow to ground level angle of Han on tauntaun riding away from camera. (As I understand it, the opticals came back from the lab with a purple tint, so they nixed it and reverted to hard cuts on the negative. I guess the wipes would technically be filmmaker preference but I don’t think it hurts to lose them.) Also: the Bacta tank scene begins on 2-1B and pans over to Luke and then cuts to FX-7 extending its arm to the tank; scene does not show Han, Leia and C-3PO observing… After Luke throws grenade into walker and drops to ground, there’s a shot of him on the ground with AT-ST in the background which was missing an added layer of atmospheric depth… Holographic Emperor is fully present in the first angle he appears in, rather than the image fading and coalescing as we watch… Following magic cave scene, extra TIE Fighter sound effect over establishing shot of Vader’s ship… As Luke falls into the Falcon from the bottom of Cloud City, the ship’s radar dish had not been added… Ending scene extended — three new miniature shots, one added line of dialogue (“Luke, when we find that bounty hunter we’ll contact you.”), and a different take of Lando saying “Luke, we’re ready for takeoff.” I’d say all these others are improvements.
Pincus: Well, oddly the first things to trigger my brain weren’t the differences in content, but the color timing. As I’d learn later, the 70mm [65mm] inter-negative was made weeks or more before the 35mm version; it had to be, because 70mm prints took a lot longer per print to manufacture. Because of this, a number of ILM visual effects that made it into the 70s weren’t the slightly more-refined composites we’d see in the 35mm version. More unfinished, though, were many of the famous wipe transitions created outside ILM; I clearly recall the transition from Han’s scanning for Luke to the Rebel Base (where Leia agrees to close the shield doors), and Han’s side in the 70s was a vivid magenta — which on a white ice planet stuck out painfully! Also, when I saw the 35 I noticed certain wipes were gone or just hadn’t been there on the 70. At first I thought my brain was playing tricks, that things like a shorter Bacta tank sequence I thought I’d seen on the 70 was a figment of my imagination. But more evidence convinced me otherwise. The pre-hyperspace sequence where Vader communicates with Luke, which had been straight cuts in the 70s, was now soft cuts (fast dissolves) in the 35s. And of course there’s the final sequence with the added material of the Rebel fleet that’s on record as having been shot after the 70mm version had premiered, made at Lucas’ request to help better establish the geography and emotional connection between Lando and Chewie on the Falcon and Luke, Leia, R2-D2 and C-3PO on the Medical Frigate. Not to mention numerous dialogue changes throughout the movie. What further added to the confusion was that by the fall of 1981 I also owned the two-part, 32-minute Super-8 Empire Ken Films digest — and it appeared to feature some images taken from the 70mm version! So the process of getting the experience straight in my head was both a bit fun and a bit annoying.
Coate: Do you think the tweaks improved the movie?
Matessino: The ending bit of dialogue is an overall improvement, I think, but then again I also like the simplicity of the shorter version and the fact that the musical transition is the way that John Williams had intended it.
Pincus: In terms of pace and clarity, yes. The visual changes were most welcome because even on first viewing I’d always felt the Bacta tank and the Medical Frigate were a bit rushed. I’m speaking now at a very microscopic, rhythmic level. I have been an editor by trade and you’d be amazed the things you wished you could correct after the music and sound effects are done, after the visual effects are in — when you finally see what’s in front of you and how it plays. You still wish you could nip and tuck. Lucas had the power to do this, and my feeling is that he made the right choices in parking the 35mm general-release version. It flows better.
Coate: Conflicting information exists as to whether or not new 70mm prints were ever struck to reflect the revisions. Producer Gary Kurtz claimed in a 2000 interview that the revisions were completed in time to be included in the 70mm prints, but his view is contradicted by other sources and eyewitness recollections. So… have you ever seen a 70mm presentation of Empire that include the revisions present in 35mm presentations?
Matessino: Any time I’ve seen it in 70mm it was always the same. In addition to the 1980 screenings, in 1983 I attended two 70mm screenings at the RKO Warner Twin in New York City [during the Star Wars / Empire double feature], July 30th an August 6th. Then the Trilogy screening at the same theater (in the other house) on March 28th 1985. And the last time I saw it in 70mm was in Arizona in 1989. So I’m inclined to doubt that a revised 65mm blowup IP was ever made, but I have no hard information about it.
Pincus: No, but if they were, they never made it north of the border — at least not to my town. Had they, my dogged, drawn-out cross-checking exercise between the 70s and 35s, and then the 35s and 70s, would have ended a lot earlier and I might have questioned my young memory more harshly!
Coate: What are your thoughts on the practice of filmmakers revisiting and tweaking their films during release and/or years later?
Matessino: Generally speaking I have no problem with it, especially if the movie was not well received or was legitimately not completed at the time of release. But I do question changing films that were hugely successful and embraced by the masses, and particularly if a movie became a true phenomenon, but at the end of the day I don’t really have a problem with altered versions provided that the original theatrical version is made available in equal quality.
Pincus: It can result in better movies… occasionally, if the filmmaker’s motivations are artistically legitimate. I think the 1989 restoration of Lawrence of Arabia is superior to the 35mm general release version that most people — including me — were familiar with. There are others, such as Touch of Evil and Blade Runner: The Final Cut. Or even Star Trek: The Motion Picture (The Director’s Edition), where the man who cut Citizen Kane and directed The Day the Earth Stood Still, West Side Story and The Sound of Music had never truly finished his film. But as I think we’ve seen, most films just don’t need it — especially those that weren’t cut to shreds like Lawrence. Most hit films were hits because they worked, because they clicked — and whatever changes they endured in the months, days and final precious hours preceding their releases were in all cases validated not so much by audiences of the time and critics, but by their staying power over decades. The differences between the 70mm and 35mm versions of The Empire Strikes Back in its original 1980 incarnation are relatively minor when compared to the work done to the climax of the film for its 1997 Special Edition release, where among other things, Lucas absolutely, totally destroyed the climax — just wrecked it in what was an ill-conceived mission to make it crystal clear how Vader got from Cloud City to the bridge of his Super Star Destroyer. In the original, he just says “Bring my shuttle” — we know where he’s heading. In the Special Edition he hails a cab, checks in to his hotel, hails a bell boy, goes to his room, enjoys the view and… oh yeah, we’re in the middle of a climax! I mean, Lucas has admitted that the Special Editions exist first for marketing reasons and so ILM could experiment with digital techniques; I feel artistic legitimacy ran a distant third. And don’t get me started on how, with each successive home video transfer, the original trilogy films have been remixed to bury the music further and further underneath the sound effects — to the point where you now actually struggle to hear key swathes of John Williams’ score.
Coate: Do you think the “original” 70mm version ought to be preserved and included as a supplement on home media releases?
Matessino: It would be nice to have at least the different pieces as bonus content, sure. But I think the 35mm version represents the movie as George Lucas wanted it seen.
Pincus: No question — because of its significance as a link in the creative chain. I wish George Lucas had marketed a “legacy” line of Lucasfilm home video beginning decades ago: deluxe releases that would include everything, much like the document Ridley Scott and Charles de Lauzirika created with the home video release of Blade Runner: The Final Cut. And it’s plain odd that he hasn’t, given how keen Lucas has always been to share his process with his fans and be a guiding light for young filmmakers and how much he’s schooled all of us in how he makes his films and in new technology since the late 1970s. The films he’s overseen closely, including Empire, reflect a sensibility and visual and audio perspective so unique that it’s worthy of having documentation at the ready showing how he got there. The list of 70mm differences is relatively paltry by the modern-day standards by which we as filmgoers judge the significance of these things, but it’d be great to have the 70mm version of Empire available as such a document — because the process is a continuum. Even the workprint of Empire that John Williams worked from — not the final cut of the film, but the one that inspired his work — is valid too. This goes for the original trilogy as a whole; forty years on, with the multiple versions of the films available on home video and considering the number of times even the casual fan has re-bought them in new formats, all key versions of the films should really be there for us to examine as fans, aficionados, and scholars. It may be just a dream, but it’s one that matches decades of Lucas’ logic in teaching us how his films were made.
Coate: Thank you, Mike and Saul, for your thoughts on The Empire Strikes Back on the occasion of is 40th anniversary.
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IMAGES:
Selected images copyright/courtesy Disney, Dolby Labs, (Peoria) Journal Star, Lucasfilm Ltd., Mike Matessino, Saul Pincus, Twentieth Century Fox, Brian Walters.
All figures and data included in this article pertain to the United States and Canada except where stated otherwise.
IN MEMORIAM:
- Leigh Brackett (Screenwriter), 1915-1978
- John Barry (Second Unit Director), 1935-1979
- Jack Purvis (“Chief Ugnaught”), 1937-1997
- Alec Guinness (“Ben ’Obi-Wan’ Kenobi”), 1914-2000
- Terry Liebling (Casting), 1942-2001
- Des Webb (“Snow Creature”), 1932-2002
- Bruce Boa (“General Rieekan”), 1930-2004
- Peter Diamond (Stunt Coordinator), 1929-2004
- John Hollis (“Lando’s Aide”), 1931-2005
- Michael Sheard (“Admiral Ozzel”), 1938-2005
- David Tomblin (First Assistant Director), 1930-2005
- Peter Sutton (Production Sound), 19??-2008
- Irvin Kershner (Director), 1923-2010
- Bill Varney (Re-Recording Mixer), 1934-2011
- Ralph McQuarrie (Design Consultant and Conceptual Artist), 1929-2012
- Stuart Freeborn (Make-up and Special Creature Design), 1914-2013
- Christopher Malcolm (“Zev [Rogue 2]”), 1946-2014
- Kenny Baker (“R2-D2”), 1934-2016
- Carrie Fisher (“Princess Leia”), 1956-2016
- John Mollo (Costume Designer), 1931-2017
- Gary Kurtz (Producer), 1940-2018
- Peter Mayhew (“Chewbacca”), 1944-2019
- David Prowse (“Darth Vader”), 1935-2020
- Jeremy Bullock (“Boba Fett”), 1945-2020
- Michael Coate
Michael Coate can be reached via e-mail through this link. (You can also follow Michael on social media at these links: Twitter and Facebook)
