The first time I got the news about anything at all related to the SE's was november of '96. The 22nd, I think. I'd just seen Star Trek: First Contact (it was opening night) while my mother and sister had seen Jingle All The Way. Now that's a night I'll never forget, mostly because the whole audience for ST: FC cheered when the movie ended, and this wasn't even a midnight screening! My, how times have changed. I met up with my mother and sister afterwards. One of the first things they told me was that they'd seen a trailer announcing something along the lines of "starting New Year's Day, the Star Wars films will be shown in theatres for a limited engagement." This completely took me by surprise, having heard nothing whatsoever pertaining to a re-release of the films. The only thing I'd read had been nearly 3 years earlier on the cover of the first issue of some science fiction magazine, proclaiming "3 years until the next Star Wars Trilogy" against some stock photo of the Millennium Falcon. Years later, this year to be precise, I would find out all about LFL's rearrangment of the SE/Episode I release schedule. I think she also mentioned the part about the altered fx, thx and "new surprises." At some point I saw a commercial for it on tv. I saw Star Wars the weekend it was released, Empire with my mother and Jedi on its release weekend. I'm almost certain that the SE trailer archived on the '04 bonus disc must be the trailer they saw. "President's Day Weekend," so my mom remembered wrongly.

Looking back on it all now, I did get a little too caught up in the trilogy's return to the big screen to step back and think of what was really happenning. Because I was young, only 11, and stupid, the thought that these were inferior to the original versions never really crossed my mind. I didn't really care either way about the changes, at least not immediately. One of my bigger regrets has been not picking up the '95 vhs set back then when there were still a few lying around in the stores. I've since collected all three, but the Empire tape is shot (see one of the poll threads for that story).

In '97, Star Wars went from being this classic movie trilogy to being something that needed to be brought back and capitalized on, complete with fast food tie-ins. Whatever happenned to the days when the scifi channel would show empire and jedi letterboxed during thanksgiving weekend? I don't remember if they did it during thanksgiving of '96 or not, since the SE was right around the corner, but in any event '97 was when Star Wars stopped feeling classic and started to feel painfully modernized. The trailer for Episode I in november of '98 was perhaps the last bit of real genuine excitement for many Star Wars fans, mainly due to that classic John Williams music. Still, even then it hit me. When I saw that revamped LFL logo at the head of the trailer, I realized what the SE had been for.