About freakin' time

Star Wars will finally be coming to DVD.

Of course, the big question mark amongst fans has always been whether Lucas would allow the original, unaltered original editions of the trilogy to also be released on DVD. Not possible, said Ward, who confirmed that the upcoming set will feature only the 1997 Special Edition versions of each film. "What George did in 1997," Ward explains, "was [to] make the movie he originally wanted to make."

That sucks. My gripe is the scene with Jabba and Han in Episode IV where he walks over his tail. That's freakin reatarded!!

Not where Han Solo shoots first? That ruins the entire character arc.

Maybe they will keep the originals in the "bonus material"... Hopefully...

Sure. Keep telling yourself that. In the meantime, I've still got my CAV LD ``Definitive Edition'' box set.

Not where Han Solo shoots first? That ruins the entire character arc.

Amen. The "silly" stuff I can handle all right (though I don't like it), but Greedo shooting first is an absolute travesty.

but Greedo shooting first is an absolute travesty.

I agree 100%.

Four words....

Rip. Edit. Re-encode. Burn.

What's even stranger, IMO, is that they didn't fix the technical problems with the movies. The snow speeders are still transparent and the Emperor still has little blobs around his eyes, for example. I mean, most of the movies is really good, technically, but the few places where there were problems ought to have been fixed. Hell, they could have figured out how to do some motion-blur on the rancor and gotten rid of the Harryhausen-ness.

What's even stranger, IMO, is that they didn't fix the technical problems with the movies. The snow speeders are still transparent and the Emperor still has little blobs around his eyes, for example.

Agreed. Of course, those two particular things were simply gamma problems in the telecine transfers, and it's possible that they might get fresh transfers for the DVD release. We can hope.

I think it's a stupid move for them not to make the special edition footage optional. The Jabba scene and the Greedo scene sucked so bad...

Well, yes and no. The speeders are transparent intentionally to overcome the common problem of black lines surrounding matte work. They should have been able to re-matte it digitally. This was probably hidden by the film-to-film copy and brought out in film-to-video. It doesn't make it less worthy of fixing. The Emperor's blobs are obviously totally a gamma problem, but should have been fixed digitally, too.

And while I agree that most of the stuff added to or changed in the trilogy should be expunged, Lucas is so far removed from the real world, blocked from it by yesmen, that I don't think that he has any interest in hearing any criticism, if he could hear it at all. (On the other hand, the RotJ edits largely made it better.)

The speeders are transparent intentionally to overcome the common problem of black lines surrounding matte work. They should have been able to re-matte it digitally. This was probably hidden by the film-to-film copy and brought out in film-to-video. It doesn't make it less worthy of fixing.

Especially after they did fix so many things. I saw the original versions on VHS a few years ago, and it was amazing how the effects, which everyone remembers as seamless, were so ropey when watched with more modern expectations. (For instance, the bit where someone's about to get thrown into the sandworm thing in the desert, but then gets rescued -- all the ships and particularly their shadows just look completely amateurish now on the original, but fine on the remake.)

Peter

Lucas is so far removed from the real world

The South Park episode with George Lucas and Steven Speilberg is spot on.

"We've replaced all of the weapons with walkie talkies!"

Lucas Reveals Changes for Star Wars DVDs