He was never satisfied with the movie. He released it when he did because he had little choice. That didn't stop him from trying to fix as many little flaws as he could at every opportunity.
That is a most disingenuous and simply untrue claim... as Lucas chose to ignore fixing many of the issues in the original theatrical cuts - and also those introduced by his own Special Editions alterations over the years - as fan editors can attest to
(those who have actually taken the time and effort to fix hundreds of issues.
An example, for the 1997 Special Edition George made alterations to scenes in the Battle Of Yavin...
...inadvertently making it so the Death Star has been in clear site of Yavin IV from the beginning of the battle since 1997... and the above is how the Special Edition should have ended
. The scene has remained unfixed in the 2004 SE, 2011SE and 2019SE releases - despite George and Lucasfilm being aware of the mistake / issue. Quite 'a little flaw', no?
To also claim...
"What you so ignorantly call "the original version" isn't any such thing."
is bizarre...
If one walked into a theatrical showing of the 35mm, or 70mm, in mono, or in stereo... back when the OT films were first shown...
(slightly different sound, or vocals, or a few shots/scenes), that doesn't mean they did not see 'the original version'. They were
all the original version - as released to the public at the time.
From what we’ve seen in the ALI OOT Restoration leaks so far... they are the original 35mm widely release cuts. All 3 OT films have been cleaned up with damage having been removed - yet obviously no visual changes have been made. The original stereo, mono, 70mm magnetic 6-track have all been restored, + plus there will be a new 7.1 DTS Mix
(built from the original library) - likely for cinema screenings and home physical media setups. So these are very much the original version that was released to many at the time.
Personally, I hope we also see the '85 mix and '93 mix included on any physical media release as 'audio bonus options'
(for those of us that grew up with these on our taped TV broadcasts, official home media tapes, or laserdiscs, CEDs, or VHDs etc - before the release of the 1997 Special Editions and those respective mixes).
Some additional context... when people refer to the '
original version' or '
unaltered theatrical cuts' they are referring to the releases that came before the 1997 Special Editions - to differentiate between the OT before 1997 and 1997 onwards. You are aware of this - it has been pointed out to you a number of times - though for whatever reason you still choose to ignore it and then 'rinse and repeat'.
So again... some people did used to refer to the pre-1997 releases of the OT as 'the theatrical cuts' - though that became a little confusing over time as the 1997 Special Editions were also released in cinemas... so also could be interpreted as 'theatrical cuts' - hence why people then started referring to the pre1997 releases as 'unaltered theatrical version' or 'original version' etc.
.
