I had always heard through the grapevine that George Lucas had no interest in releasing his films on the Blu-ray format. This always baffled me because doesn’t Lucas go for the cash grab at every opportunity? I mean seriously, how many version of the movie are there on VHS and DVD? At least six I believe. Probably closer to ten. But in an interview in the New York Times, Lucas has confirmed that all six titles will indeed be released on Blu-ray now saying that he’s just been waiting until the format was big enough so that everyone could enjoy it. “We’ve been wanting to do it as soon as we possibly could, but we just wanted to do it when enough people would be able to buy it and see it.”. These will unfortunately be the 1997 special edition versions with all the added bullshit, but I’ll take what I can get. And besides, those versions don’t bother me as much as it does the purists and other hard cores. I don’t really care about the reasons or the excuses or the versions. All I care about it that it is here (almost, kinda)!
“I wish I could say it was coming out this year, but it will come out next year.” So it looks like Fall of 2011 is the tentative release time frame we’re looking at.
Also included in the box set will be all new, extensive special features; including documentaries, vintage behind-the-scenes moments, interviews, retrospectives and never-before-seen footage from the Lucasfilm archives.
One of those special features, a deleted scene from Return of the Jedi, premiered at the convention. In it, Luke Skywalker is seen asembling his new lightsaber before going to the palace of Jabba the Hutt. Some fan illegally bootlegged it and uploaded it to YouTube for our viewing pleasure (for the time being) after it was unveiled and screened at Celebration V:
I love the fanboys shouting over that 50 second clip of nothing. I will probably buy the original trilogy on blu-ray, haven’t bought any others before.
I seem to be the rarity of Star Wars fans (albeit not much of a fan these days) in that I’ve only bought the film once on VHS, back in the early 1990s. It is amazing the number of editions that have came out and re-sold this series. Is this go-around #5 or #6? At least they are bumping up the tech instead of just ‘releasing it another time.’
Blu-rays have lots of space, they should release them with both the Special Editions and the original ones.
I cannot believe you went there, Jandy. Has history and Lucas taught you nothing? There are at least 4 or 5 more releases before it comes to that!
Isn’t that like the first thing I mentioned in the article? Yes, there will possibly be more releases of these down the road – but I doubt it will be for many years if at all. As the billionaire Lucas says, it is expensive to restore all of these things, so to go back and do it to the classic versions might not be “worth it.” And even if it is, like Jandy says, by the time they get around to it there could likely be a new bit of technology rather than Blu-ray.
And yes, I can’t fucking wait to sit down and watch the entire original trilogy on gorgeous Blu-ray sometime in October of next year.
LOL. By that time, we’ll just be having movies streamed directly onto our retinas without any physical media or screens at all.