Originally posted by: Kaal-Jhyy
Ok, but there's one important thing you don't understand. Star Wars is Lucas' creation, and for him, every new "enhanced" version is some sort of update, not an alternate version. From his point of view, it's normal that he doesn't want to release the O-OT on DVD. I know that, but since StarWars became a phenomenom of modern culture StarWars isn't about George Lucas alone anymore - and that's what he fails to see.
And you're claiming that Lucas considers Star Wars a commercial product and "he fully depended on the commercial momentum the OT still had". If it was the case, don't you think that he would already have released every movie in several versions (I'm talking about DVDs)? From a purely commercial point of view, it would be very fructuous to release the original versions of the movies (including TPM and AOTC), as well as the "final" versions, and maybe the OT SE. In this case, many fans would have bough 2 or 3 different versions of the same movies -> pretty commercial, isn't it?
They did. Just look back how often StarWars was sold to us. And he can't sell to us what doesn't exist by his own rational (which you re-elaborated above). On top of that, he openly stated that he doesn't consider a re-release of the original cuts to be a commercially viable option. Ok, but there's one important thing you don't understand. Star Wars is Lucas' creation, and for him, every new "enhanced" version is some sort of update, not an alternate version. From his point of view, it's normal that he doesn't want to release the O-OT on DVD. I know that, but since StarWars became a phenomenom of modern culture StarWars isn't about George Lucas alone anymore - and that's what he fails to see.
And you're claiming that Lucas considers Star Wars a commercial product and "he fully depended on the commercial momentum the OT still had". If it was the case, don't you think that he would already have released every movie in several versions (I'm talking about DVDs)? From a purely commercial point of view, it would be very fructuous to release the original versions of the movies (including TPM and AOTC), as well as the "final" versions, and maybe the OT SE. In this case, many fans would have bough 2 or 3 different versions of the same movies -> pretty commercial, isn't it?