I’ve never gotten more mail about a single issue than I have over the last week or so about the new DVD release of the old, original, actual-unretouched Star Wars trilogy, coming in September. Hoorah, of course.
The official Star Wars site broke the news:
See the title crawl to Star Wars before it was known as Episode IV; see the pioneering, if dated, motion control model work on the attack on the Death Star; groove to Lapti Nek or the Ewok Celebration song like you did when you were a kid; and yes, see Han Solo shoot first.This release will only be available for a limited time: from September 12th to December 31st. International release will follow on or about the same day. Each original theatrical version will feature Dolby 2.0 Surround sound, close-captioning, and subtitles in English, French and Spanish for their U.S. release. International sound and subtitling vary by territory.
"Over the years, a truly countless number of fans have told us that they would love to see and own the original version that they remember experiencing in theaters," said Jim Ward, President of LucasArts and Senior Vice President of Lucasfilm Ltd. "We returned to the Lucasfilm Archives to search exhaustively for source material that could be presented on DVD. This is something that we're very excited to be able to give to fans in response to their continuing enthusiasm for Star Wars. Topping it off with a new interactive adventure makes September 12 a red-letter day for Star Wars fans."
And cynicism immediately sets in. Lucasfilm’s delighted breathlessness makes it sound like they all just had this magnificient brainstorm: Wow, let’s release the original films all the geeks who’ve made us billionaires remember from their nerdly childhoods! But we all know it’s just a ploy to get even more money out of us. As my buddy Gail of A Million Things That Bug Me said in an email to me:
Sweet merciful crap! Are we sure this isn't some sort of evil, belated April Fool's prank? Now I will have eight different versions of the original trilogy. Nice, George, real nice.
I’ve resisted buying the DVDs of the altered versions, so I’ll only have one DVD version... but I’ve still got my widescreen 1997 VHSes. And of course I’ve have to eventually buy the super-HD-whatever-format-we-settle-on version. (The spirited discussion over at Cinemarati.org about Lucas’s likely mercenary motives in releasing this new DVD package now touches on the fact that all-new HD versions are surely on the horizon, which will take even more money out of fans’ pockets.)
While we wait for September, check out Top 10 Other Things that Han Shot that Didn't Shoot at Him First, or The Greedo Assassination Conspiracy Page, which may represent the pinnacle of self-aware geekiness:
The Greedo Assassination Theory (accept no substitutes!) is one of many Exopolitics Graduate Studies Research Projects offered to students interested in exploring advanced level studies in this field, and who also have no social life to speak of. Now that the SW Special Edition is out on video, we at the department are anticipating many fun-filled hours of playing with the "pause" and "slo-mo" controls to take more accurate measurements of the trajectories of both laser bolts in order to uncover more concrete information about the conspiracy. The Department of Exopolitics hopes to offer similar research projects as soon as we can make up some more topics.
Or, as the geeky act of last -- or first -- resort, there’s always a T-shirt to buy (this one is from Think Geek).
