ANOTHER Star Wars Trilogy (Trilogies?) DVD release on 11/04/08... (1 Viewer)

[Ed St. Clair]

True, true, true.
Third time is a charm?!?!?! :-0

I say this is the last ditch 'effort' (or maybe ripoff) for SD DVD.
Next is Blu!
I'll wait for the BD.

 

[MielR]

 

[Colin Jacobson]

Thanks for that off-topic threadcrap... :rolleyes

 

[Craig Beam]

The ONLY thing notable here is that this is the first time Episodes 1-3 have been released together in a boxed set.

Wait, is that actually notable?

 

[Brian Borst]

Wow, that's almost a legitimate reason to buy them (according to George, at least). But who has been waiting since Ep. 1 hit dvd to buy them all in a cardboard box? I'd honestly don't know.
Anyway, I'm going to wait for the BD superbox that Lucas was talking about (remember? It wasn't supposed to come out on dvd in the first place) and (I never thought I would say this) I'm waiting for more revisions on the films, actually. The lightsabers looked wrong in a lot of shots in Empire and Jedi, and some continuity errors still need to be fixed (Cloud City is a very good example). I don't want to go into the whole 'Han shoots first' debate again, but I read something interesting in the Making Of Star Wars book by J.W. Rinzler. It said there that the original scene with Greedo was reshot, when the Jabba scene was deleted from the movie. The Jabba scene had a lot of expository dialogue, that had to be fitted somewhere else. The Greedo scene was reshot, with the information added. In the Special Editions, the Jabba scene was put back in. Wouldn't it make more sense to put the original Greedo scene back in, so you don't have two different characters saying the exact same thing? Just curious.
Of course, the best thing to do is to leave the Greedo scene as it was (while Han still shoots first) and just delete the Jabba scene, but it is interesting

 

[seanOhara]

Six -- I refuse to purchase the films until I can get decent copies of the versions I grew up watching.

 

[Alex cosmo]

You would think with all the inevitable publicity for the upcoming TV shows Lucas would just want to take this well-worn subject off the table (and make a few bucks in the process. I wonder how close we are to something weird like Lucas striking a deal with Wal-Mart to be the exclusive home of the restored original trilogy, like the thing The Eagles did.)

 

[LCD22]

Make that seven, although I do own the '97 Special Editions as well as The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones on VHS. I had the original versions of the OT taped off one of the premium channels in the '80s (don't recall which one), but they got accidently taped over somehow.

While I did rent the 2004 DVD release and Episodes I-III, I've been passing on purchasing anything Star Wars-related put out on DVD (and will be in the future) until an anamorphic treatment and a non-laserdisc transfer is given to the original theatrical cuts for Episodes IV-VI.

In the meantime, I've had the non-anamorphic versions saved in my Netflix Queue.

 

[WillG]

Eh, doesn't really matter to me. Think of it like working in an office with Jabba the Big Boss and Greedo as a middle management type. If you had to answer to both of them, you'd have to hear from both of them about how you screwed up.

And on a side note, we have to stop refering to it as "Han Shoots First" because originally, he was the only one who shot.

 

[SilverWook]

It's too late for that. Lucasfilm "borrowed" the phrase, and slapped it on a t-shirt. George was seen wearing one on the Indy 4 set. Talk about rubbing it in!

 

[Chip_HT]

Wasn't one of the driving factors behind the special editions was restoring the film that was detoriating? And my impression of that is that the original versions don't really exist anymore in any way to make an anamorphic release.

 

[Inspector Hammer!]

No thanks, the next time I buy any of the SW film's it will be on BD.

Which, knowing Lucas and the way he uses chess mentality with his releases, will be in a few years probably. :rolleyes

 

[Jonathon M]

Exactly. And to be perfectly honest, we were told we were never going to get the OUT on DVD in the first place. Either way, I own it, legitimately, and it looks better than my laserdisc and is a hell of a lot more convenient to watch.

Sure, it aint anamorphic, and yes, that sucks, but its better than nothing, especially when we were told we were getting nothing.

 

[SilverWook]

There are well preserved prints in private collections. (Library of Congress, British Film Institute, etc.) There are probably others.

 

[MielR]

......not to mention eBay.

 

[James 'Tiger' Lee]

They could have re-done the master to anamorphic. Now it wouldn't be anywhere near as good as a genuine new master but it would be a good convinience for 16:9 tvs with poor zooms. And in any case, they didn't make the subs for the alien dialogue 16:9 friendly.

 

[WillG]

If bootleggers can put out 16:9 versions, surely Lucasfilm could have found a way.

 

[Jonathon M]

I'll assume you also mean that comment for the bootleg copies with the high quality "dialogue-through-all-speakers-all-the-time" DTS 5.1 tracks that the bootlegs have as well?

Sure, they should have made the subtitles in a safe zone for 16:9 sets. I aint saying the discs are perfect (far from it), but I'm just happy to have legit copies at all to be perfectly honest.

 

[Jonathan Peterson]

To be honest, now that I have Star Wars Revisited, I doubt I will watch the original DVD's much anyway.

 

[Nick Martin]

I ran my non-anamorphic trilogy DVDs through a program that cropped the movies to 16:9, while preserving all menus and the subtitles are in the correct positions now.

No image quality improvements, and no, they don't look worse because of the cropping either. They look the same, just enhanced for 16:9 TVs.