Let's go for it!
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Star Wars is a part of my childhood and, thus, my life. I am one of those who have been wishing for a long time that G. Lucas would re-issue the "original", non-remastered versions of the first trilogy, and was thrilled when I heard about the news he would finally do it.
Then came the news that these original versions, to be released this month:
1. would be available only as bonus material of yet another re-issue of the Special (remastered) Edition ("SE"), a fact which in itself wouldn't have been that big a problem, as long as the movies were finally available again;
2. the masters used for transfer would be the old laserdisc editions, Lucasfilm justifying this by not having copies of the originals at their disposal AND that they had no plans or budget for restauring them anyway (the non-existence of original copies is a plain lie, many great film institutes preserving prints of the original unaltered trilogy, i.e. The British Film Institute);
3. the movies, unbelievably, will be released in *non-anamorphic* format.
Although the mere existence of these sub-par issues of the original trilogy is proof enough that there are more people asking for it than Lucas could ignore, the three facts named above constitute objective reasons for frustration, even for someone who doesn't like the Star Wars movies.
Because these films are part of movie history. They changed the way movies were being made and produced.
They were a quantum leap forward as well in terms of technology as of marketing, among the most successful movies of all time.
It shouldn't even be a subject to discuss that they should be available to the public *as people saw them at the time they were released*.
G. Lucas and Lucasfilms invoque "artistic vision & freedom" to justify the alteration of the original movies (the S.E.) and the absence of any effort on their part to make the original movies available as well, which is quite a disappointing and ironic attitude:
Lucas has been continually setting new quality standards over the years (creating namely the THX quality standard) - for which everyone can only be immensly grateful and full of admiration. So, how can he expect to be taken seriously when releasing the original trilogy in a way that can be described as sloppy at best? Nobody's even been asking for a *restauration* of the original movies - just a decent transfer to DVD!
Lucasfilm don't even assume full responsability for this poor-quality release: the so-called "bonus-feature" status disappears as the issue is being marketed with the Original Trilogy Discs as the main feature of the package!
Whatever the commercial motivations may be to make available to the public only the new "S.E." and/or to discourage people from asking for the films as they were first seen, this is no way to handle such a tremedously significative legacy.
I sincerely hope you consider this is something worth to be adressed and discussed.
Thank you very much for your attention,
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Let's hope we find sensible ears...