The O-OT is still just as classic now as it was in the early nineties when I first saw it. The thing is, when it ends up as #15 on AFI's 100 greatest American Films list and they aren't even allowed to acknowledge what the movie made in 1977 actually looks like, it hurts.
I remember sometime in October of '04 asking my mom to pick up the silver boxset while she was at costco. I remember her coming home and telling me she got it. I opened it up out of its black wholesale cardboard packaging with vader on it, Episode III vader IIRC, and the silver IV V VI with a faint red glow behind them-I actually saved that section of the cardboard and might still have it somewhere. Popped the movies into my ps2 and was blown the fuck away. This was before the whole GOUT debacle, I had heard and read a lot about Lowry's restoration and Lucas said the originals were never hitting dvd. Therefore, at the time, I couldn't have cared less that this was the Special Edition.
Well, maybe a little bit.
I remember popping in the bonus material and being further blown away by Empire of Dreams. My jaw was on the floor for a good part of it, and that might have been the first time I had actually seen the widescreen original version shots from ANH. That's one thing I loved about the boxset. It actually acknowledged, on both the doc and the commentaries, the history of these films.
That's another reason I wish GL had never bothered with the GOUT release in the first place, unless he was going to do it right. It's been said a thousand times, I know, but it really stings.
He may be trying to do away with the O-OT, hopefully not. Come what may, those early 90's days will stay in my memory until I'm old and senile.