Originally posted by: caligulathegod
Exactly. An ersatz "Criterion Collection Star Wars" is like serving pizza on "Royal Doulton china 'with the hand-painted Periwinkles...'" while at the same time diminishing the efforts put forward by the X0 crew.
As a side note, I don't think Criterion would do a Star Wars special edition, even if they could. Perhaps back in the laserdisc days but not now. Criterion fills a specific niche and is not just the ne plus ultra of film presentation. Here's a list of the Criterion Collection releases. Putting Star Wars in there is putting a square peg in a round hole. They aren't doing "Blade Runner" anymore.
I'm sure Criterion would love the opportunity to release any title (of reasonable quality), especially one as important as Star Wars, if they could get the rights to it. It's always been my theory that they aren't all that choosy, it's just that big studios aren't willing to license out their films like they were back in the LD days. Heck, they've released movies like Armageddon, The Rock and Chasing Amy on DVD. And The Life Aquatic and The Royal Tenenbaums were already part of the Criterion Collection before they were even filmed. Exactly. An ersatz "Criterion Collection Star Wars" is like serving pizza on "Royal Doulton china 'with the hand-painted Periwinkles...'" while at the same time diminishing the efforts put forward by the X0 crew.
As a side note, I don't think Criterion would do a Star Wars special edition, even if they could. Perhaps back in the laserdisc days but not now. Criterion fills a specific niche and is not just the ne plus ultra of film presentation. Here's a list of the Criterion Collection releases. Putting Star Wars in there is putting a square peg in a round hole. They aren't doing "Blade Runner" anymore.