First off, i think that the forum discussion i posted above is pretty much dead on...at least in the ones that said that the reason for the suit is due to the widescreen/fullscreen comparison picture on the dvd case.
however, the Spaceballs dvd does not contain the same image that DanielB posted from the back of Princess Bride. Where the two screens overlap in that the image on the Spaceballs dvd is actually two seperate images side by side.
no i think im going to have to politely disagree with DanielB on the fact that there is nothing wrong with their widescreen releases. I beleive bad_karma24 is correct when he said that spaceballs is misframed (which in my opinion is something wrong with their widescreen version, maybe not all the movies but at least this one).
in the widescreen version of the nose is cut off so you basically cannot see the nose, you see it enough to know that it is big and ugly, but it goes out of frame. at the same scene on the fullscreen version, only the very tip of her nose is cut off by the edge of the screen.
also, the fullscreen version contains more picture on the top and bottom of the frame but is slightly cropped on the sides of this frame. this is very apparent by the princess' relative location to the boarder of the screen, the bottom straps holding her to the table, and the view screen with her father on it. now please, do not start saying this is because of open matt filming. while the movie may have been filmed this way, the boarder is not a consistant thickness (boarder being the cropping on the sides & extra picture on the top/bottom in the full screen), and if it was just open matte then there would be no need to still crop the sides of the picture...besides, the sides of the picture are more severely cropped during certain scenes on the widescreen version than on the fullscreen version.
so basically, will i send my dvds back...no, probably not because i doubt they'll give me the new version of Spaceballs for my old one, and for the $7 minus my shipping costs i dont feel its worth it. I will probably not check out the other 2 movies i have that are on the list either (terminator & hang 'em high) because terminator only has the widescreen version so i have nothing to compare it to, and hang 'em high i first saw on regular cable so it was in fullscreen and the dvd presentation did not detract from my viewing pleasure as i noticed nothing amiss (unlike the nose job in Spaceballs) I will however probably buy a copy of the new Spaceballs release (probably see if DAYV knows if this one issue is corrected first) in hopes to get a properly framed movie
-Darth Simon
p.s. i posted this above but for a really simple yet informative guide on different aspect ratios and fullscreen/widescreen methods check out htis link http://www.rexer.com/cine/oar.htm