OK, so I haven't looked at a fraction of the set yet (it seems like the bonus disc is the best thing in it), but the more I read about what's actually on these discs I own, the more I want to try to return it. Sure, maybe this is the only official version we'll ever see, but for less money I can score some region 0 version that's the version I saw as a kid.

Do I even like star wars so much to bother?

Well, its started raising these questions in my mind about what a someone should and should not do with a film. I guess in a way I feel like Lucas can do whatever he wants, but I feel he owes something to us (the people who flipped the bill for him, remember?) to at least keep the original version available. Is this just another weird parallel between Lucas and Disney to keep his stuff unavailable, and then only make an edited/changed version available? What bothers me more are the deletion of scenes--I mean, whole actors have been removed from the film! That, and by replacing the special effects, he eliminates scenes that were impressive in 77, 80 and 83 with special effects that are merely mediocre right now. Sure, they may look better in some ways than the original, but it was those deleted special effects that won an academy award all the way back then, not some shitty cgi.

I wonder if Orson Welles was alive today if he'd put in new cgi to replace the currently dated special effects in Citizen Kane. Well of course he wouldn't. And of course, I'd be a lot more bothered because Citizen Kane is a much better film, but the problem is I grew up with star wars, and the idea that I can't even see the original film is stupid. The new DVDs are even messed up beyond the Special Edition. They even changed Boba Fett's voice--those bastards!!!

So in all seriousness, I guess I'm stuck with the question of whether what Lucas did was right or not. Being his films I can't object, but I feel like he should of had the decency to keep the original versions available. This is really a bigger question than star wars. Huxley in time decided he wanted a different ending to Brave New World but realized that the book had already become a commodity as much owned by the public as himself. In releasing it, it had taken on public ownership, even if he was the creator. The thought in my mind is that this is just what Lucas has -not- realized. That in deleting actors from the film, obliterating old special effects and even changing the story and most importantly, doing every thing possible to keep the original versions from anyone who want to see it, he's denied this sense of public belonging.

Well it is just star wars after all, but star wars changed the way we see movies, the way we make movies, and the very economics of the movie business. Good or bad, it is a significant part of the history of cinema, and in this final sense, one must think that Lucas has no respect for history. Rather, he seems hell bent on bending all his previous work to the direction of his inisipid new films, revising the past to fit in with the new ho-hum future. In the grand scale I guess all is Shakespeare; Lucas, once the young rebel has become corrupted and apathetic at his throne, now not only mockery of his former self, but becoming in truth, the very thing he set out at first to overcome.

Chris

Thanks for the comments Chris! If you have something to say drop me a line at gleep9@hotmail.com Once you're done here head hurry up and head on back to either the Third Movie or Main page before I decide I need to fill them up with crappy CGI effects.