None of us ever imagined as kids that we would have to resort to “alternative methods” to keep these historic versions from fading away to memory, before nobody remembers them at all.
My take? Scratch this. To a media PHB, it’s a threat. And illegal. And piracy. And a war crime. And the end of civilization as we know it.
Maybe just say: None of us imagined twenty years ago that we’d still be watching Star Wars on the exact same VHS tapes, while other films easily leapfrogged past that home video quality many times over.
We live in a era where even a “bad” movie is loved enough to get a meticulous restoration, and can be easily purchased.
Again, when dealing with a media PHB, a bad movie is one that didn’t make enough money to justify a home video release. Direct-to-video movies are all good movies, QED.
Maybe focus on something along the lines of Star Wars in 1977 being a revolutionary and groundbreaking A/V experience in 1977–and yet in 2017, it’s easily outshone by the very films it once stood apart from, because those other films have gotten meticulous restorations, released on modern home video formats, and can be easily purchased.
We have nothing against the Special Editions. They simply aren’t the versions we grew up with and loved.
Meh. I suppose you can say this, as long as there are at least two of us who believe it to qualify for the use of “we”.