Star Wars Blu-Ray Release0

This week I’m going to talk about a very special movie release, the entire Star Wars Saga on Blu-Ray. As a lifetime Star Wars fan I was excited about the classic movies I grew up with being remastered in High Definition. However there is some debate as to whether or not this is what we will be getting to take home with us. Why? Because once again George Lucas and his team have dived back into the original films once more to fuck around.

Some of you might remember back in 1997 (long before the prequels) the Star Wars special editions were released theatrically. This was wonderful because kids of the eighties could finally see these films on the big screen and digitally remastered. Not only that but the promise of updated special effects and the addition of deleted scenes made the whole experience very exciting. For the most part it was very good. They spent a fortune on cleaning up the footage and tweaking a number of technical issues. But controversy came in the form of needlessly shoving in CGI effects that weren’t really needed. Like having large digital creatures roaming around or putting sprawling cityscapes in the background of scenes. That is pretty cool that you can do that, but just because it can be done doesn’t mean it has to be. In fact it is really distracting when you have two characters explaining some important plot point and there’s a guy falling off the back of a dinosaur behind them. The most infamous change to the original movie was adding a deleted scene between Han Solo and Jaba the Hut. Now ignoring the fact that the digital Jaba looks embarrassingly bad, there is no point to the scene at all. It slows the pace of the film and gives no new information, it was quite obviously cut for a reason. So why was it put back in for the special edition? Because they could.

In 2004, one year prior to the conclusion of the prequel trilogy, the three original movies (Special Edition) were put into a DVD box set for the first time. We were all surprised to find that more alterations were made to the films. The voice of Boba Fetta was replaced with that of Temuera Morrison to match his clone brothers from Episode 2 along with a number of other additions to help bridge the two trilogies together. The big one was the ghostly image of Hayden Christiansen from the prequels added into the end of Return of the Jedi. Of course a lot of these changes make sense in bringing all the films together but the movies we knew and loved were slowly being picked apart piece by piece. Fans were finally given some relief in 2006 when it was announced that all the movies would be re-re-released individually and each of the original movies would have a second disk containing the unaltered theatrical movies. “Finally” we all sighed. But we were disappointed to find that these original movies were not remastered at all and were simply laser disc transfers, looking little better then VHS copies.

Now that brings us to this months new Blu-ray release. Unsurprisingly the films have been tweaked once again. Now with even better technology the ewoks blink. That’s right, a small fortune was spent on Wicket and the rest of the space care bears to give them eyelids. I guess that dead stare you get from puppets can be a bit off putting, but really CG blinking, are you fucking kidding me. Another change is that the sound of the Krayt Dragon in the original film has now been replaced with a stupidly comic sound effect that leaves you wondering “how is that better”. It literally sounds like a flamboyant gay man stepping on a thumb tack in a wind tunnel. But the one that has so many people screaming “SCREW YOU GEORGE!” is the addition of the much hated “NOOO” line from the end of Episode 3, to the end of Return of the Jedi. The big pivotal emotional moment of the climax of the entire series which was expressed beautifully through sound effects, visuals and John Williams score has now been altered to have Darth Vader screaming “Noooo” like a little bitch. I can forgive ewok eyes and a stupid sound effect but when you start messing with the important emotional resonance of the movie and it’s characters you have crossed a line. You can’t possibly think that putting that in would be a good idea.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27RVJJfny4I?hd=1]

This is clearly nothing new, so why are people getting their tontons all riled up over this? Well I can only speak for myself but what upsets me about this is that the only way you can watch these films now, is by watching these altered versions. It wouldn’t upset the fans so much if they simply had the remastered original films as well. That way the people who grew up with these could still enjoy the films they remembered. Don’t get me wrong, I completely understand why they wish to do this. They want to sell these movies to a new, younger audience who didn’t grow up with the films. A new audience who are used to a certain level of special effects that the thirty-year-old movies couldn’t possibly live up to. But by doing it the way Lucas and his team are doing it, the original fans feel like they have had the films taken away from them.

I still have my VHS copies of the original trilogy and I will never get rid of them because that is the only way I can watch the films I remember from childhood. Okay well I’m also a massive Star Wars nerd and why would I get rid of them. I know the effects aren’t as good and there are some issues but they were the films I remembered and I wouldn’t change anything about them. We can only pray that one day George Lucas will be kind enough to release the remastered but (not altered) theatrical version for the original fans to love once more. That’s it for me this week.

Rowan

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