> It's not that easy, in my opinion. George Lucas and James Cameron have both said that their restorations were how they would have wanted to release the movie if they had had the technology/budget.

I dunno about Cameron's films (I don't think I've seen an original and an unchanged from him), but for Star Wars, the constraints helped make the film good. Yes, there's some rough bits, but all of the additions subtract rather than add.

Maybe it's not what his vision was, but we liked it as it was. If you watch ROTJ, you can already see where unconstrained technology distracts Lucas and it turns into too much of a green screen affair in parts. The prequel trilogy is so much green screen and it just feels so sterile and unbelievable; none of the characters interact with the environment at all; they're not hot in the desert or even when having a light saber duel in lava fields or whatever. They don't get cold or wet, etc. In ROTJ, the speeder bike stuff is mostly gratituous, but there's interaction with the environment.

George Lucas had to shoot his Star Wars movie in Englandd instead of California and its what gave us the iconic Empire portrayed by British theater actors.

> If I had seen them in the opposite order, would I feel the same way? I don't know.

This can go both ways. Sometimes you like things because you saw them that way first. Sometimes you're exposed to two versions of something and the second version is clearly an improvement on the first.

Example (A): I prefer the PC speaker soundtrack to The Secret of Monkey Island. I played it on an IBM. Without the exposure, there's no real reason to believe I'd have the same preference.

Example (B): The Swedish dub of the Moana musical number Shiny enjoys the considerable disadvantages that: (1) I heard the English version first; (2) I don't understand Swedish; (3) the English version is more authoritative, because the film was developed in English; and (4) the translation isn't especially close.† But I strongly prefer it anyway; to me the Swedish lyrics (as represented in the English subtitles I found on Youtube) give a very different feeling to the song and the character, one that greatly improves the film.

I'd lean toward taking people at their word if they seem to have a reason for the preference they express. The 2011 Blu-Ray Star Wars release pans down from outer space to a view of a planet more rapidly than the original film does. This seems like an issue where views either won't exist or will be dominated by the idea that whatever it was like before, it should stay that way.

"Han shot first", on the other hand, is a strong point of characterization, and objections to the change seem unlikely to be dominated by conservatism.

† Actually, I spent a fair amount of time listening to various dubs of Moana songs, and my favorite versions all make a significant change to the message of the song as I perceive it. I didn't care too much for the English Shiny, but this was also true of the songs that I liked in the original. My best model of why that might be is: every dub makes some more-or-less random changes to the song, and by methodically searching through a large number of them, I ended up finding the changes that appealed to me.

They have millions of dollars at stake, so it is hard for me to take them at face value.

There is also decades of years between production, so the directors are different people as well. Modern George Lucas doesnt think that Han Solo is the kind of guy who shoots first, now that hes rolling is Disney franchise money. What would 1977 Lucas think if asked?

The counter argument is that once art is released into the world, it becomes a conversation with the people consuming it and no longer belongs solely to the creator.

I empathize with, and see the validity in, both sides.