When I first heard that the Walt Disney Corporation purchased Lucasfilm and the Star Wars franchise, I was ready to Occupy Disney in protest, and I’m sure there are millions of fans who would have joined me. I was shocked. I sat stunned in my room, cuddling my Wicket doll and wishing it was all just a bad dream.
Episode VII? I didn’t want an Episode VII! Hell, I didn’t even want the prequel movies, but I guess George Lucas was going to shove them down my throat no matter what. To be fair, his marketing machine did go a great job of making me believe I only knew part of the story, and he did pocket a ticket purchase from me for all three of those below-average films.
It was then that I had my epiphany: if George Lucas wasn’t in charge of Lucasfilm anymore, then George Lucas couldn’t pollute the original Star Wars trilogy ever again. And that’s a huge plus, one that a Blu-ray collection absent of Star Wars reminds me of each and every day.
If you do a quick Google search about changes made to Star Wars, you’ll find that ol’ George has been altering the classics since their initial release to such a degree that the untouched versions haven’t been seen since their original theatrical run. Worse yet, Lucas seemed to adopt the “Special Edition” films (which also keep changing) as the official Star Wars originals. Hell, the man refused to release the theatrical versions of the film on Blu-ray.
I opted not to buy the Blu-ray releases, since the cluttered CGI nonsense that’s sprayed aimlessly all over my beloved Star Wars grates on my nerves. I want the original trilogy. If I can’t get the unaltered, pristine versions that were released starting in 1977, I’d at least like to see the theatrical versions that were re-released on VHS when I was a kid.
Where am I going with this? Well, if there’s one thing Disney seems good at, it’s archiving, maintaining, and making available their classic films. While Disney is just a machine motivated by profit, the company has, at the very least, realized there is a huge audience of consumers who like the timeless greats to stay exactly the way they are.
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Article comments
1 - Q
The thing is the special edition is kinda 50/50 with me, I actually like some of the changes he made to the trilogy (New CGI shots, improving Yoda, better explosions etc, but I also don't like a couple things he did, like the NO in episode 6, and the Jabba scene in episode 4, I would personally vote for a best of both worlds edition
2 - Frank TB
The one thing Disney could really provide audiences with is the one thing even Steven Spielberg made available but which George Lucas refused: choice!
The current HD version of the original trilogy (i.e. Special edition) was only made in 2K resolution almost a long, long time ago.
And there could not only be a significant increase in HD resolution but color fidelity as well. I recently gave my old Japanese LaserDiscs (first letterbox edition ever) a spin in my LD player. The original cinematography was so rich in colors, illumination, contrast et cetera that the current Blu-ray version looks like a poor copy or shadow of it.
Technically, Disney has a unique opportunity of not only offering the original theatrical edition but also in a visual (cinematographic) quality we have not been able to experience in the last years (correction: make that decades!).
If this quality would make it onto a new Blu-ray release, the previous Blu-rays would cause an E-Bay overflow.
Disney paid a lot of money for purchasing Star Wars, I'll gladly support them once they feel they would like to get some of that money back...;-)