A long long time ago in a blog that’s far far away (but close enough to find in any of the site caching sites on the internet), I ranted about the “Special Editions” of ‘Star Wars’ and the Star Wars related movies.
At the time I was pissed. I mean, seriously pissed. The “special editions” of the movies are all about adding things to the series. The VHS releases in the 90’s added things like Han Solo stepping on Jabba the Hutt’s tail in a restored scene and Greedo shooting first (plus lots of little heres and theres) in his showdown with Han, let alone a whole song and dance number in ‘Return of the Jedi’ that was no where near as dumb in the original movies.
The DVDs enraged me further by giving very little attention to the DVD releases of the ORIGINAL movies while focusing on going over the top with the prequels so much so that Lucas added the young Annikin Skywalker to the end of ‘Return of the Jedi’ just to mess with the fan bois such as myself.
And now, the blu rays have been released and the internet is up and arms because he made even MORE changes. This time Lucas changed some audio and added a rock to a scene with R2D2 and the internet fan bois are going INSANE over it yet again.
And me?
I’ve watched the first four movies so far and I’ve yet to notice any real changes. Sure, there were some enhanced animations and the aforementioned R2D2 behind a rock looked kind of silly when there was no sign of said rock as soon as the camera switched from a view behind the robot.
I haven’t had the “you ruined my childhood” moment yet. I may with the ending of Jedi and the dumb sounding “Noooooooooo!” added to Darth Vader returning to the light side of the force, but really, I’m not at all outraged about it. I’m more resolved that these moves are Lucas’ to change and he’s going to keep changing them to meet his whims no matter what fan bois say or do over the years.
And… maybe I’m remembering things being worse than they really were. I just reviewed my two pet peeves: Greedo shooting first and Han Solo stepping on Jabba’s tail. I initially saw them in the blu ray version and thought “well they cleaned that up a bit” but upon further review, the scenes are virtually identical to the 2004 DVD releases. I think the clearer print of the blu ray and maybe shaving a frame or two off makes things a lot better than they were. They’re still cringe worthy moments, but the sheer outrage I felt with those scenes isn’t there any more.
It’s too easy to get caught up in outrage. If you read the fan sites the Blu Rays are the equivalent to Satan raping puppies live on FOX News but in reality, they’re turning out to be something else. I love the fact that you can see so much more compared to my DVD copies. Star Wars in high def is a marvel. There’s so many details about the characters and the space ships and things going on in the background that you could spend hours noticing things that are “new” when you just couldn’t see them on the old copies of the movies.
Does it excuse all the changes to the story? Not really, but it’s your choice to skip these editions. Me? I like what I see and I’m enjoying them, flaws and all.
Jim