This is a good letter. Maybe even a great letter. But it is written from the perspective of someone who was alive back in the 70’s. There are some of us on the forum who haven’t been around that long (yours truly) and have only recently gained an appreciation for the originals as fundamentally distinct from the SE’s rather than just having a few different effects here and there.

Before I saw the photos of the Technicolor film projected at the Senator theater, I never imagined Star Wars could look genuinely beautiful. Before I saw the dozens of matte paintings so lovingly restored by Mike Verta which had been discarded for SE changes, I never really considered that Star Wars was art. But it is, and there are generations of people who haven’t had a chance to experience this artistry firsthand. It is not a case of rose-colored glasses by an old-timer wishing things were like they were back then, since I wasn’t around back then. This is someone who grew up with the VHS tapes and 2004 DVDs and 2011 Blu-rays. There was a point at which I thought the HD broadcast looked GOOD, where I showed it to my friends with excitement because I had never before seen the films in such detail. But that is a pale shadow of what they could be, from someone who never saw the originals or SE’s in theaters.

This is what a lot of people are missing in this discussion, that they think Star Wars is Star Wars no matter the presentation, they see OOT purists as ungrateful curmudgeons, but they simply haven’t taken that first step into a larger world. So including something from this perspective in the letter would speak to more people, I think.