The revisions were not publicized and might never have been noticed if it weren’t for some eagle-eyed fans who managed to attend screenings in different theaters and saw the movie again… and again… and again. And we here at The Bits have managed to snag two such fans who have plenty to say about their experiences seeing Empire in a new Q&A.
Initially, in May 1980, The Empire Strikes Back opened primarily in larger markets and exclusively in 70-millimeter format with discrete magnetic audio (save for two drive-in theaters in Southern California). The reasons Lucasfilm and Fox opted for launching as a 70mm exclusive included (1) ensuring the highest quality presentation available to the moviegoer at the time, (2) capitalizing on the increase in 70mm and Dolby Stereo-equipped theaters since the release of the first Star Wars movie, and (3) reducing the chances of the movie being pirated for the then fledgling home video market.
At the time of Empire’s production, its 70mm print order was the industry’s largest ever (for a one-time print order). Thus, the lead time to manufacture those prints (i.e. optically enlarging to a 65mm intermediate element, printing, striping, sounding, QCing, shipping) necessitated the production “lock” the movie several weeks sooner than if it were being distributed only in standard 35mm. What transpired, in essence, is Lucas and Company “unlocked” the movie and kept working on it!
The majority of theaters destined to screen Empire would not do so until the film’s general release which commenced four weeks after the 70mm limited-market launch and continued (depending on market size and other factors) throughout the summer and autumn months of 1980, and 99 percent of the general-release bookings were in theaters sent a 35mm print (some in Dolby Stereo; most in mono). Knowing the 70mm prints would have a one-month head start playing in theaters, the filmmakers capitalized on that window of time to fix things deemed not quite right before the majority of release prints got struck.
So… what was changed? The revised material included three newly-produced shots added to the final scene (along with an extra line of dialogue, a different take used for one shot, and music tracked from another scene to account for the increase in running time) as well as some VFX enhancements (the Millennium Falcon’s radar dish added to a shot, re-compositing shot of Imperial Scout Walker, transmission of holographic Emperor fading in, etc). Other tweaks were editorial in nature, such as revising two scene transitions from a wipe to a straight cut and the exchange between Vader and Luke on the Falcon before the triumphant jump to hyperspace changed from straight cuts to quick dissolves. In addition, the medical center scene at the Rebel Base on Hoth following Luke’s rescue was extended with a shot of Luke being observed through a window. As well, there were some dialogue and sound effects substitutions and changes. (Note this coverage does not address the multitude of tweaks made for the 1997 Special Edition re-release and subsequent home media releases. But that’s another story!)
Now, some context for this column: In May 2020, Star Wars.com (run by Lucasfilm, the company that produced the movie that is the subject of this column) as part of their Empire 40th coverage posted an article (which in turn was based upon extracts from J.W. Rinzler’s 2010 book The Making of The Empire Strikes Back) that misrepresented this situation. And, as is so often the case today, numerous web outlets created copycat articles which, of course, provided the exact same story points and quotes… and omissions. While these articles emphasized the visual tweaks to the final scene, they ignored the numerous other revisions made throughout the movie (described in the previous paragraph), giving the false impression those “three new shots” were the only difference between Empire’s 35mm and 70mm prints. Even in describing the three new shots, depending on the coverage, little-to-no mention was made pertaining to the audio to account for the increased running time. More surprising, the SW.com coverage erred in identifying how many 70mm prints were made for Empire. The SW.com piece claimed Empire opened with only forty-one 70mm prints in sixteen cities. By our count, as cataloged in our earlier coverage, in North America there were one-hundred thirty-six 70mm prints in over 75 markets. (A dozen of those 70mm prints were held for expansion waves. Plus, there were additional 70mm prints destined for theaters in key international markets.) And speaking of expansion waves, the widely-relied-upon Internet Movie Database (IMDb) claims the expansion/general release in the United States commenced June 20th when in fact the earliest such bookings commenced June 18th.
The irony to all of this is that many moviegoers in the largest locales (i.e. longest-running and highest-grossing) never actually saw the changes. The revisions are believed to have been reflected only in the 35mm prints as no record can be found of the 70mm prints (or even selected reels) ever being re-printed to reflect the tweaks. By the time Empire finally arrived on the home video market in 1984 (a much longer-than-typical theatrical-to-video window of that era) — and in the ensuing decades — the fact the movie existed in different versions had largely become forgotten since the home media releases have always been based upon the revised 35mm version.
The tradeoff, ultimately, in the original theatrical release at least, was more of a sideways move in that the 35s were more complete and fine-tuned but the 70s unquestionably touted a superior sound mix and for the most part played larger, better maintained theaters.
So the big question, of course, is: Did these changes make a difference to the quality of the filmmaking or to one’s enjoyment of The Empire Strikes Back? Let’s find out…
The Q&A participants for this column are…
Mike Matessino is an accomplished music producer, mixer, editor, mastering engineer and film music historian and has been associated with dozens of CD soundtrack projects including The Star Wars Trilogy (1977-83 + 97 SE). His other projects include 1941, Back to the Future, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Disaster Movie Collection (Earthquake, The Poseidon Adventure, The Towering Inferno), E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, Harry Potter, Home Alone, Jaws, Jurassic Park, Schindler’s List, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and Superman.
He has written for Film Score Monthly and worked on the film screenings with live concert performances of the scores for Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Jaws, and Superman. As well, he was the Restoration Supervisor for The Director’s Edition of Star Trek: The Motion Picture and directed behind-the-scenes documentaries on The Sound of Music, Alien, The Last Starfighter, and John Carpenter’s The Thing, which have been included as Value Added Material on some of those films’ LaserDisc, DVD and/or Blu-ray releases.
Saul Pincus an award-winning writer, director and editor.
He co-wrote and directed Nocturne, a multi-award-winning feature film about an insomniac who falls in love with a sleepwalker; Nocturne premiered at the Warsaw Film Festival and is available on iTunes, Amazon, Google Play, and X-Box in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and four-dozen other countries around the world.
Saul contributed extensively to Film Score Monthly magazine and FSM Online, and his foremost collaboration as film editor, with veteran director Sidney J. Furie (The Ipcress File, Lady Sings the Blues), spanned eight films and sixteen years.
The interviews were conducted separately and have been edited into a “roundtable” conversation format.
===
Michael Coate (The Digital Bits): How many times did you see The Empire Strikes Back in its original release?
Mike Matessino: Twenty-seven during the summer of 1980. (To date, fifty-five.) Amazingly I kept a record of viewings: Of the first twenty-six between May 21st and September 13th: viewings 1-12, 14-17, 19-21, 23, and 25-26 were at Central Plaza in Yonkers, New York. Viewings 13, 14, 18, 22 and 24 were at RKO Quad in New Rochelle. And number 27 was at Loews Astor Plaza in Manhattan on September 20th.
Saul Pincus: The 70mm print of The Empire Strikes Back played the cavernous, single-screen Place du Canada in my hometown of Montréal upon its initial release; that summer I saw it there three times. The first time I experienced Empire in 35mm anamorphic Dolby A was the first day of its first re-release, in late July 1981, at the Decarie Square two-plex. That fall I saw a scratched-up 35mm Empire print during its brief rep run at The Seville Theatre, just around the corner from the old Montréal Forum. I saw it twice again in October 1982 when the Star Wars / Empire 70mm double feature (complete with a 70mm Revenge of the Jedi teaser) played the city’s most stunning and acoustically impressive cinema, the Imperial, and once more when this double feature was moved to The Palace Theatre in January 1983. In April of ’86, I saw it again at the Imperial, this time as part of a Star Wars / Empire / Jedi 70mm triple feature. This would be the last time I saw Empire on film until its Special Edition re-release in 1997, though I owned the pan-and-scan as well as letterbox VHS versions, as well as The Definitive Edition CAV Laserdisc box set between 1985 and 1994; needless to say, I wore that home media out!
Coate: When did you first become aware that there were content-related differences between the 70mm and 35mm versions of Empire and not just the more-obvious presentation-related differences (i.e. superior projection and sound quality)?
Matessino: Not until my 13th viewing on July 2nd 1980, which was the first time I saw it at a different theater than the one I’d gone to since opening day.
Pincus: I didn’t have a frame of reference till I saw it in 35mm for the first time the summer of ’81. I was sure it was different, but I didn’t make a mental list till I saw a 35mm print again that fall at The Seville. I cross-checked the experience with my next viewing, at the Star Wars / Empire 70mm double feature in October ’82, and I’d run the beats alongside the book of the script, titled The Empire Strikes Back Notebook — which also contained a large selection of storyboards. They weren’t complete, but the films were obviously so quotable and visually distinctive that you’d feel if a beat was missing, or lengthened. Also, Empire contains the arguably saga-best John Williams score and Ben Burtt’s parallel aural world-building, which combines to result in a distinctive moment-to-moment impact and sensory imprint quite unlike many other films.
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.
---END---
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)
