Harmy's work on releasing high-quality versions of the Star Wars films — which strive to recreate the theatrical versions of the movies while also keeping their resolution as high as possible — has made his work the definitive way to watch the Original Trilogy for many fans, especially those still waiting for an official release of the original, untouched trilogy.
We've already gushed about the edit of A New Hope Harmy released in 2014, and now version 2.5 of Return of the Jedi has been given to fans.
"This is a reconstruction of the 1983 theatrical version of Return of the Jedi," the description states. "The original shots were painstakingly restored using various sources (listed below) and the film received an extensive shot-by-shot color correction based on a fade-free 1983 LPP Print. ROTJ v2.5 is pretty much completely despecialized, apart from a couple of wipes, which were recomposited optically in 1997 and look nearly identical to the originals, so for all intents and purposes this is the original version."
Here are the video sources:
- Star Wars Episode VI Return of the Jedi Official Blu-Ray (2011)
- LPP 35mm print scans (Team Negative 1 and Poita)
- Schorman's HDTV Preservation — Return of the Jedi (2004 DVD version)
- RETURN OF THE JEDI 2006 Bonus DVD (sourced from the 1993 Definitive Edition Laser Disc Master - upscaled by Dark Jedi)
- RETURN OF THE PUG (1983 16mm print transfer)
- Custom mattes
The goal is to present a clear, beautiful image using a combination of the best sources while stripping out the special effects and changes added in later versions of Return of the Jedi. What's left is something close to the holy grail for Star Wars fans: A near Blu-ray quality release of the original film, in a package that in many ways stomps the official releases.
So what's new in version 2.5? "The remastered version (v2.5) represents a significant improvement in picture quality over the earlier 1.0 version due to the use of better encoding and higher quality sources and replacing many of the despecialized shots with higher quality ones," the release states.
No, we can't point out towards any sources for these files, and please remember that buying or selling this edition of the film may land you in legal problems. "Fan edits and preservations are an art form and to be shared among legal owners of the officially available releases only," the release says."Do not support piracy."