DVD Review

Star Wars Trilogy DVDs

A New Hope Directed by George Lucas
The Empire Strikes Back Directed By Irvin Kershner
Return of the Jedi Directed by Richard Marquand

Well, he made us wait long enough, and I’m sure all two of my loyal readers are at least a little curious as to my opinion of the Holy Trilogy on DVD so here it goes.

The Positives.
Absolutely flawless 16x9 enhanced, crystal clear picture quality that beats the VHS versions and my Hong Kong pirate DVDs to death, but of course I knew it would. Otherwise what would be the point? The films look better than they did when first released in the theatre firchissakes. The sound is a sharp Dolby Digital 5.1 mix that while a little front speaker heavy at times, still sounds terrific. What did you expect anyway, considering the source was originally recorded in good old fashioned two channel stereo, and I suppose there is only so much you can do with it. Like for instance the mixing in of new elements that were never there in the first place.

The Negatives.
Of which there are many. First, I don’t know why they didn’t take advantage of this opportunity to make every flick a two disc set with GL’s Original Releases on one disc, and the Extra-Special Editions on the other, and maybe a documentary about the changes GL felt he needed to make, and maybe one about the restoration process.
The commentary tracks are half decent for the most part, Carrie Fisher stands out to me as the funniest of the lot, but they are completely devoid of any explanation by GL as to WHY he felt he had to make the extra changes to the films. Like for instance, Why The Fuck he replaces Sebastian Shaw with Hayden Christiansen as the Ghost of Anakin at the end of Jedi. Oh, well I guess we’ll never know. There are some decent things on the extra disc, but where are the old TV documentaries from the seventies and eighties? For that matter, where are the deleted scenes that EVERYBODY has been waiting to see for years? Why aren’t they restored, with commentaries like all the deleted scenes on the Episode I and II DVDs? What about a special documentary on the marketing? Toys? Etc? A video gallery with all the old action figure TV ads from the seventies and eighties? If you ask me, (which nobody is, or ever will I know) Lucas really dropped the ball in the extras department.

This leads my paranoid side to believe that George plans to screw us yet again by releasing a HUGE 12 disc “Ultimate Edition” about six months after Revenge of the Sith comes out on DVD which will include all those things left out, and more.

Oh well, I suppose they are entitled to recoup the losses they are currently suffering from the tens of thousands of CRAPPY PAN AND SCAN versions of the films that currently sit unsold on store shelves.

In Closing, for those of you who don’t care about extras, it’s worth it to get the set for the quality of the film’s picture and sound presentation.

Oh yeah, I know all the fanboys ands choads who spend their pathetic lives bitching about films on various LOSERnets and chatrooms have been jerking themselves off about the Empire of Dreams Documentary, so here’s my take: Apart from a couple of segments, it was really nothing more than a two and a half hour commercial for Lucasfilm and ILM.