BACK IN FORCE : LEADING SPECIAL EFFECTS COMPANY GIVES CLASSIC A DIGITAL FACELIFT.

Byline: Dave McNary Daily News Staff Writer

George Lucas and 20th Century Fox are about to find out whether ``Star Wars'' still works its magic.

It has been two decades since audiences first read the words ``a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away,'' setting off one of the major cultural fads of all time.

Now, Fox is re-releasing an upgraded version of the classic on Jan. 31, billing it as a celebration of the original.

The new ``Star Wars'' contains 4-1/2 minutes of new visuals including a digitally created scene with the sluglike villain Jabba the Hutt. And Fox is betting that it will sell.

After all, the movie - featuring futuristic derring-do that left a generation starry-eyed - created a movie-going frenzy in 1977 when it was released. People would wait for three hours to see it and then brag about it.

Lucas merely had wanted to make a space adventure like the ``Flash Gordon'' serials of his youth, filled with cliffhangers, and instead created what some believe is the single most influential movie since ``Gone With the Wind.''

``I hate to admit it, but I was one of those people who went crazy when `Star Wars' came out because the special effects were something we'd never seen before,'' recalls Cary Tobaben, a Los Angeles writer and stand-up comedian. ``I still remember the first time saw it, at the Westcove in West Covina, and I was hooked after that, especially on Darth Vader.''

Chris Lanier, who runs the Motion Picture Intelligencer analysis service, said Fox is on new turf.

``There has not been a re-release of this kind in 30 or 40 years, so it's impossible for me to say how the trilogy will do,'' he said. ``There's no basis for comparison except for the Disney animated films, which are an entirely different category.''

Parts of ``Star Wars'' have been digitally re-created through technology Lucas pioneered 21 years ago. At that point, he formed Industrial Light and Magic simply because he could not find anyone else to create the special effects.

ILM became the most successful digital effects producer in the business, and LucasArts Entertainment became a major video game supplier and kept the ``Star Wars'' phenomenon alive. Lucas has maintained that computer games are ``the movies of the future.''

Most notable in the new ``Star Wars'' is an entirely new scene in which Harrison Ford's Han Solo confronts Jabba the Hutt. Lucas originally shot the scene with Jabba as a human, then deleted it from the film, and has now shot new scenes with Jabba as a massive slug, as he appeared in 1983's ``Return of the Jedi,'' and inserted them into the original material with a young Ford.

Lucas has also erased some of the lines around spaceships in the original and remixed the sound to make it compatible with his THX format.

Fox plans to re-release the sequels, ``The Empire Strikes Back'' on Feb. 21 and ``Return of the Jedi'' on March 7, which also carry new scenes and improved sound from Lucas. The studio has been using the slogan ``Three reasons why they build movie theaters'' and ``see it the way it was meant to be seen'' as the cornerstones of the campaign.

For the millions of ``Star Wars'' fans, perhaps as much excitement has come from reports that Lucas has been in England recently to cast the first part of the next trilogy, representing the story leading up to the ``Star Wars'' films. The first new film, reportedly focusing on the young Anakin Skywalker who eventually becomes Darth Vader, tentatively is set for release in 1999.

No distribution deal has been set yet for the next trilogy, but Fox executives say that Lucas has promised he will come to that studio first.

So it's no surprise that Fox - regarded as one of the more able marketers of blockbusters with six among the top 20 domestic grossers of all time - has committed to a major publicity push. Cynics have suggested that the studio's agenda has as much to do with wooing Lucas as it does with the performance of the re-releases.

``Star Wars'' was so successful that it is still the fourth-highest domestic grosser of all time at $322 million, trailing only ``E.T. The Extraterrestrial,'' ``Jurassic Park'' and ``Forrest Gump.'' It also raised expectations of the audience and ushered in an era where never-before-seen special effects became a virtual requirement.

The movie would also make Lucas one of the richest men on the planet through the foresight of his deal with Fox. Lucas, who had made ``THX-1138'' and ``American Graffiti,'' gave up part of his salary to direct in exchange for 40 percent of the net profits and ownership of the publishing, music, merchandising and sequel rights.

That led to Lucas financing ``The Empire Strikes Back,'' which carried a then-enormous $30 million price tag in 1980, and ``Return of the Jedi'' in 1983. He also negotiated a deal with Paramount to have the studio finance the Indiana Jones trilogy while Lucas retained ownership of the movies.

Tom Sherak, senior executive vice president of Fox, said the idea of re-releasing the trilogy first came up in 1991 with work starting on the campaign two years later.

``Our idea is that `Star Wars' is about to be 20 years old and there's a whole generation of kids and grown-ups who have not seen it on the big screen,'' Sherak says. ``It was a cultural event that changed the whole way that people saw movies, and it's one of those very few films where people can tell you where they were when they saw it.''

``Lucas wanted to give it a 1990s look and include some of the scenes he had to leave out originally,'' Sherak said. ``We think it's a great way to celebrate.''

The strategy behind re-releasing the trio of movies - which grossed a cumulative $808 million domestically - is to take advantage of the intertwining of the films. ``It really is one story, so we wanted to make it as close to a serial as possible,'' Sherak said. ``We wanted to say to the public you can see one and not wait to see the others play out.''

The executive said exhibitors will ultimately determine how long the re-releases play in theaters, but added he is certain that when ``Jedi'' comes out on March 7, a filmgoer should be able to see all three in one day.

Fox plans to release ``Star Wars'' to more than 1,800 to 2,000 theaters - a solid start but short of the 2,500-screen-plus openings that are now routine for potential blockbusters. It will limit the release to theaters with digital sound in major markets, but will waive that requirement for smaller markets lacking such facilities.

``We're not stressing the new footage,'' Sherak says. ``This is about celebrating what's on the screen, because we believe the whole is a lot bigger than the parts.''

Sherak also points out that Fox will now possess a new master print, known in the industry as a negative since it is used to strike prints for distribution. ``The stock of the original had faded, so upgrading the negative of the movie had to be done anyway.''

Sherak says Fox has started making similar forays into its library to restore negatives, but noted that such projects will not necessarily be re-released even though Universal has been doing so recently with projects such as Alfred Hitchcock's ``Vertigo.''

``I don't think every picture should be brought back to the big screen, but if you're going to be a major studio, you have to have a good negative,'' he says. ``But `Star Wars' is different. It's sort of like the grandfather of all movies since.''

BIGGEST MONEY-MAKERS

The 15 top-grossing domestic movies, year of release, total gross:

1. ``E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial,'' 1982, $399.8 million.

2. ``Jurassic Park,'' 1993, $356 million.

3. ``Forrest Gump,'' 1994, $329 million.

4. ``Star Wars,'' 1977, $322 million.

5. ``The Lion King,'' 1994, $313 million.

6. ``Independence Day,'' 1996, $306 million.

7. ``Home Alone,'' 1990, $285 million.

8. ``Return of the Jedi,'' 1983, $263.7 million.

9. ``Jaws,'' 1975, $260 million.

10. ``Batman,'' 1989, $251 million.

11. ``Raiders of the Lost Ark,'' 1981, $242.4 million.

12. ``Twister,'' 1996, $241.7 million.

13. ``Beverly Hills Cop,'' 1984, $234.8 million.

14. ``The Empire Strikes Back,'' 1980, $223 million.

15. ``Ghostbusters,'' 1984, $220.9 million.

CAPTION(S):

2 Photos, Box

Photo: (1--color) No Caption (Luke Skywalker)

(2--color) In the coming release of ``Star Wars,'' Jabba the Hutt is now mobile.

Box: BIGGEST MONEY MAKERS (see text)