AuggieBenDoggie said:
Anchorhead said:
The ability to own a high quality version of the films we sat in the theater and watched. The desire for all six films to be offered unaltered has been expressed many times here, regardless of how many of the six people may want to own.
I have never see the desire ( by the community here as a whole ) openly expressed a want for all six films to be released unaltered, above the quality that is offered in the blu-rays. I have only seen the want for a quality release of the unaltered trilogy here. Preferably from a 4k scan, something thats not possible with AOTC and SITH since they where filmed at 1080p, and thats probably why the altered Original Trilogy was mastered at 1080p also. Even the New altered TPM was mastered at 1080p when the print should have been scanned at 4k instead of 2k. Lucas knows that anything he puts out, people will go crazy for.
You're splitting hairs here.
The PT has been promoted consistently, whereas the OT has not only taken a recent backseat, the OOT has been ignored almost entirely. Lucas even said "to me, those films don't exist anymore." It's not that he is saying they are less important, he is actually going so far as saying he treats them as though they were never made. This is not equal treatment.
Moreover, the PT has consistently be presented and available to the viewer. A film that can't be seen and can't be enjoyed might as well not exist. While the 1993 Laserdisc master released in 2006 is indeed better than nothing, in a strictly philosophical sense that is, this is only comparable to content produced or presented in 1993, not 2006. The PT has gotten modern DVD quality transfers. The OOT has not. The PT has received television promotion and airing, and high-definition television broadcasts. The OOT has not. The PT has been released in high definition on Blu-ray. The OOT has not.
So yes, the problem boils down to this: the OOT has basically been buried, and the people in charge (Lucas, Lucasfilm et all) have no desire to treat it with respect or in any sort of respectable form available to the viewer, no do many fans acknowledge it except some obsolete relic. This is not even close to equal-treatment to the PT and OT-SE, in fact Lucas has facetiously denied that the films exist in the first place.
If Lucas/Lucasfilm/et-all and fans had considered the OOT on the same plane as the PT and OT-SE, nothing would be a problem. It is the people who try to bury the OOT or treat it as a relic not good enough for even a museum that causes tension. No one here wants PT fans to not be able to enjoy the films--why would we wish ill will towards strangers? People here may not want to watch the films, but I don't think anyone has ever suggested they be made unavailable to people. With the originaltrilogy.com mandate to preserve cinematic history, that would self-contradictory.
So, why can't the films all be considered and treated equally? At the very least, the OOT deserves to be treated in the same way as every other film is. But it's not. The "creator"/owner (Lucas) has disowned them, confiscated all prints, and refused to sell anything other than a two-decades-old SD Laserdisc video of the films (which is now OOP, by the way, and no longer as relevant a point of discussion). Maybe the PT and OT-SE should be made unavailable to their fans, maybe then they would understand the frustration OOT fans have to go through and understand how selfish it is to assist and be an accessory to the destruction and loss not only of millions of people's favourite films, but an enormously important part of the culturally history of both SE fans and OOT fans alike.