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so I finally acquired the '95 boxset

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Some of you may remember my own saga with completing this collection (probably not, in fact it would be weird if you did).

I got the '95 vhs of ANH for Christmas that year.

Cut to early May of '05, I'm back home from college for the weekend to look for a summer job. I stop by my local video store and they've got the '86 vhs of Jedi on sale for 5 dollars! There isn't enough money in my wallet so I race back home (takes, like, a minute), race back and buy it.

Then only a week later I'm in southern Delaware with some friends at a record and tape traders and I notice the '95 vhs of both Empire and Jedi. At last, my collection is complete! Then I get home and find out that the Empire tape is basically shot. There's static like every single second and the tape is wrinkled on one edge. I'm not totally ruling out the possibility that the magnets in my bag fucked it up (it's a flap bag with magnets that snap together instead of those plastic things) since the Empire tape was probably closer to the magnets than the Jedi tape, even though I'm pretty sure I put stuff in between the tapes and the magnets (in retrospect, it was pretty stupid to even put them in there at all).

Back then I was convinced the store had sold me a bad copy and was torn up by the fact that the complete boxset had been lying right there on the shelf, I just hadn't gotten it since I already had a copy of the original movie.

Then January of '06 rolled around and I discovered the whole fan preservation thing. After a couple weeks of torrenting, I had the cowclopsv2 trilogy. But that's really only good for watching on my computer or on a widescreen tv (which neither I nor my parents have), and I'm not getting the GOUT unless it's like 2 dollars per movie. Speaking of which, Black Friday is right around to corner so who knows maybe that'll happen.

So, today I decide for whatever reason to stop by the CD cellar and as it turned out they had the '95 boxset and I ended up getting it for a cool 5 dollars.

First off, I have a question for anyone who knows the answer. The logo on the ANH box and sticker says 20th Century Fox but the boxes and stickers for Empire and Jedi say CBS/FOX (I know there's nothing wrong since the copies I got in Delaware were like this also, I'm just curious). Does this have something to do with the rights to ANH switching over the Lucasfilm around that time?

Anyways, I find it hi-fuckin-larious what's written on the box, considering what would happen in later years.

"The appeal of Star Wars has gone beyond anything I could have ever imagined. I am pleased that for the final video release of Star Wars in its original version, we can present it with the best sound and picture quality yet available, thanks to THX digital mastering.

In the years to come I hope you, your children, and your children's children will enjoy not only this trilogy but also the adventures yet to come in the continually unfolding Star Wars universe."

-George Lucas

This also raises something I was going to start a thread over but I'll just ask here. What are we going to do if, several years from now (because you know it'll be at least that long), the next release is announced and the remastered OOT isn't part of it? Will we resign ourselves to the fact that we'll have to wait until the movies enter public domain so we can hire Robert A. Harris?
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By the time SW enters public domain the non-Lucasfilm-owned 35mm copies would have deteriorated to uselessness. But I'm not worried at all--because Star Wars is bigger than George Lucas. Eventually it will be out again--maybe not the next release, but at some point in the future. Considering Lucas already okayed the OOT last year its not out of the realm that he'll still be around when a remastered version comes out, but once he's dead LFL will be sure to put it out. They already tried but Lucas himself stopped them, so if it is just up to LFL they will give supply to the demand. This whole "SE-only" thing just seems more silly as more time goes on, especially when you have three versions of Close Encounters out this month and four versions of Blade Runner out next month--and I think thats why Lucas has weakened (among other reasons) and re-released it last year, whereas back in 1999-2004 his stance was "over my dead body, those films are no more".

I would say this will happen sometime within the next ten years but no one can really say when--maybe next year or the year after if it comes out on HD disk or the infamous "Saga" boxset on DVD, maybe in five years when they do a big deluxe HD boxset, maybe it will be a whole ten years before the cries of "where is Star Wars?" overwhelmes all other Lucasfilm operations.

The whole thing comes down to Lucas really, and the threshold of "last video release" has already been broken with the 2006 re-issue, so Lucas' philosophy of "SE only" has been nullified, which means it will, at some point, be out again. I think the reason that Lucas said in 1995 that it would be the last release is because he was certain that no one honestly would want the older version, and I think a lot of fans thought they wouldn't want it either. Flash forward to 1997 and the SE is not just a new Jabba scene and more sophisticated FX, and people realised there was still a big place for the original version, especially since the SE had so many changes. Lucas, caught off guard by the negative reactions, says "but this is the version I want people to see, its better". Then the prequels come out, Lucas gets crucified, fans are saying he's a hack and the OT is better and the SE sucks and they only want the original versions--then Lucas says "like hell you will." I think he was just reacting to all the flack he got. This whole issue became especially important a few years later when he made the second special edition with prequel tie-ins--the OOT was now a part of a different series in some sense, and with him genuinely wanting audiences to accept his new PT-based series of "The Tragedy of Darth Vader" he didn't want to give people the option of rejecting this, especially since he honestly believed that this was an artistically superior entity. And thats why he says at this time "this is the only version I want people to see"--it was the only version compatible with his new series, based on the PT storyline.
But then things kind of die down a bit, the prequel flak started to dry up and Lucas might have gotten a bit of objectivity, and with the 30th anniversary coming up Star Wars became increasingly viewed as not some rougher version of the 2004 release but as a real cinema classic that conspiciously was unable to be viewed by students, scholars, fans or just plain viewers curious or preferring this. The whole multi-version home video craze started at this time as well--2 versions of every Alien film, 3 versions of Dawn of the Dead, 2 versions of Apocalypse Now, three versions of Close Encounters and both versions of ET. Lucas' friends all sucked it up and put out the earlier versions of their movies, and I think this might have given Lucas some perspective. Add to this--fans were bootlegging their own LD transfers. The film was out there whether Lucas liked it or not. So when Jim Ward asked Lucas yet again to put out the OOT he said, "fine but I don't want to spend all the money to restore it."

Bootlegs I think were the primary reason why it was put out at all, but if it was just that I don't think he would have done it if he hated this version as much as people surmise he does--after all, The Holiday Special has been bootlegged since the 80's, and we don't have that being released. I think Lucas realised how silly he was being. And if you listen to Lucas interviews from this time period on why he only allowed the pre-existing video master to be used and not a new one created--he says because he believes that it would cost millions of dollars to restore and reconstruct the OOT. He's weakened to the point where he is willing to acknowledge the film for a release but he can't yet bring himself to commit so many funds to it, perhaps simply because he believes there isn't enough audiences to justify it. But he's simply mis-informed--it doesn't cost millions of dollars, simply scanning a release print, an IP or better yet that wonderful Technicolor print that was used as the basis for the SE restoration, doing anything like that would give us a high-res HD image, even if it still grainy like the GOUT (but modern mastering technology would yield a much cleaner image).

So here I think its inevitable that a new transfer is made for HD or a DVD release, and maybe that Lucas will come around to actually restoring it or going back to the O-neg and spending more substantial funds. If not he himself, once he is gone I am sure this will be the first priority of LFL, since it already has been while Lucas is still alive.
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I'm hoping that when Sansweet or whomever it was said that they weren't planning another home video release because of market saturation or because the GOUT didn't sell well or whatever, that it was just a cover for them planning to bring out the big guns and actually remaster the OOT several years from now (just not the very year after since it would piss off all the people who paid good money for laserdisc transfers on dvd. The shortest amount of time I can think of between a laserdisc port release and an actual remastered release of the same movie is two years and that's Conan the Barbarian).
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I assume the bluray camp would love to put the original versions out, I wonder how much payola to Lucasfilm it would take.
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Honestly, if Lucas thought the GOUT would sell any better than it did (and it sold pretty damn well all things considered), then his ego has grown larger than any of us could've possibly predicted. I think maybe he's finally gotten over the "it's my movie" mantra and is thinking about giving us fans what we've been asking for. This isn't THX-1138 (anyone on these boards actually see that movie in a theater back in '71?), this isn't Young Indiana Jones, hell, this isn't even the Indiana Jones movies (which, to my knowledge, Lucas hasn't prohibited screenings of the original prints of anyway), this is motherfuckin' Star Wars, and a lot of people care which version it is. Granted, it might not be quite as many people as I'm thinking it is. After all, I can remember a time when I would spot the '04 boxset lying around at the place of every single person my age I'd visit. But I'm convinced that was just because it was star wars on dvd finally, not because it was the SE or that they even cared which version it was. Even considering that, people were talking about the original versions when September of '06 rolled around.

I don't doubt that Lucas honestly thought people would prefer the Special Editions when he wrote those words back in '95, but for crying out loud, he's had ten years to get over the fact that they don't. Now that Spielberg has shown him up (or whatever) with the new close encounters release, Lucas doesn't really have much of an excuse to not do the same with Star Wars. Granted, he would have to go through more trouble since you can't just seamlessly branch both versions onto the same disc, but how would it not be worth it? I think one of the reasons Spielberg decided to go all out with the blu-ray release is that he realized people wouldn't have much of a reason to buy it if he didn't. The reason we still might not get what we want with the next Star Wars release is, well, it's STAR WARS and not close encounters. People probably will buy it again when it finally hits hi-def just like they did with dvd back in '04, and maybe we OOT fans are more of a minority than we'd like to think and Lucas will just have to decide if it's worth the trouble just to please a few more fans.

In any event, I say three more years at the most until we see the next release. Close Encounters hit dvd in '01 so that gives some idea.
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But what you're all forgetting is that the will of Geroge Lucas eclipses every effort we throw at him. The OOT is doomed to die because of his own cyclic logic, and he has an iron grip over all hollywood companies- he even forced AFI to show the SE of SW! It doesnt matter if its HD or something ridiculousy good looking such as maybe, 256:81 presentation, or 2480p quality in the next 20 years. It doesnt matter if its 1998 or 2028 or even 2108! IT is Lucas' absolute iron will to keep the OOT in rotting VHS and film reels, and sealed forever in DVD quality that would be substandard even to Soviet Bloc standards! The will destroy a film out of existence is the single thing that helps Lucas sleep at night.
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I think everyone has to see how the whole HD-DVD/BluRay war plays out before even thinking about the OOT, or let alone any SW movie version in that format. I was in BestBuy this weekend, and I wanted to get into the HD market for movies, but I saw 2 competing formats sitting there and no clear winner right now, and I took a pass until there is a clear winner. I am just not going to shell out $400.00-$500.00 per player just to watch a slim list of older 'A' titles that are available on both formats.

I guess I am trying to say that because so many people like me are holding out, the format war may go on a while, maybe past Christmas '08 into 2009, and once the dust finally settles and we have a winner, then you will finally see the 'A' titles like The Godfather start being released. And once the format is in full swing, Lucas will finally put out the saga boxset with hopefully the OOT remastered, Deleted Scenes, etc, but that may not be til 2010-2011? I think it is a more of a waiting game right now for any hopes of the OOT, unless Lucas tries to milk the Standard DVD market one more time, before HD takes over. You never know.
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Originally posted by: generalfrevious
But what you're all forgetting is that the will of Geroge Lucas eclipses every effort we throw at him. The OOT is doomed to die because of his own cyclic logic, and he has an iron grip over all hollywood companies- he even forced AFI to show the SE of SW! It doesnt matter if its HD or something ridiculousy good looking such as maybe, 256:81 presentation, or 2480p quality in the next 20 years. It doesnt matter if its 1998 or 2028 or even 2108! IT is Lucas' absolute iron will to keep the OOT in rotting VHS and film reels, and sealed forever in DVD quality that would be substandard even to Soviet Bloc standards! The will destroy a film out of existence is the single thing that helps Lucas sleep at night.



Some how I have a feeling Lucas is not quite that shallow. I mean, he has a family, I doubt the suppressing of the OT is his primary motivation in life. If anything, I would label it more as wounded ego. He made his special editions of the films to be the updated and definitive versions and very likely never thought anyone would ever want to go back to the outdated ones. He said he would never release them, yet he did so just last year. Yeah, the quality is awful, I never bought the things myself, I wouldn't touch them. But the fact is, it is an official release of the OOT, something that he said would never happen. He sees that there is demand for them, and that it has now become pretty standard for a high quality release of all versions of films that have multiple versions. Just as George, the huge supporter of new and inovative technology such as digital filming and CG, was slow to release his films to DVD even when it was quickly replacing VHS, he will eventually come around with an HD Star Wars. Like usual as of late, he is just a little behind the times.

If it is in fact a matter of a wounded ego that people want the old versions rather than his improved versions, than it is just a matter of a bit of time covering things up so he can come along and say he knew the OOT would need to be preserved and release in HD format from the very beginning. Once he can pass it off as his idea, it will be a good idea and he can play the winner and we will all be happy. Both sides win. This seems to be the way ol' George works. I would even hazard to say that the longer that there is a group of angry fans constantly reminding him that he stiffed them on the OT and that they dislike his ever changing SE versions of the films, the longer it will be before he will decide that he had always intended to release them on HD once the technology became availible and affordable.

"Every time Warb sighs, an angel falls into a vat of mapel syrup." - Gaffer Tape

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you call the OOT being designated as "special features" as an official release?

Sorry guys, you are treating a category 5 hurricane as a mere drizzle
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Originally posted by: generalfrevious
you call the OOT being designated as "special features" as an official release?

Sorry guys, you are treating a category 5 hurricane as a mere drizzle


I think we all agree it is a crappy release, I think that the fact that Lucas put it out and went against his word, gives us hope.

You have to remember that the average person with a 27" Standard TV won't notice a difference in quality between anamophic and non-anamorphic, and that is still the majority of people who are in the market. Of course there will always be diehards like us who notice any ounce of good or bad quality in a DVD release, but we are still a huge minority.

My nephews have grown up on the SE and were born after 1997, so they didn't even know what the OOT was? I bought them the OOT movies and showed them the ending of ROTJ with that old guy Anakin there in the ghost scene, and they were amazed! They don't have a VCR in the house, and those kids have grown up on a steady diet of DVD's, so if this release never came out, there would be one less set of kids who would always think that Greedo shot first.

I have never defended this release, nor I refuse to ever pop that thing in my 52" Widescreen TV, but if there is one fan out there who now knows that there is 2 versions of the OT, I still say it is better then no OOT on DVD.

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"Sorry guys"???? It was just me making the "hurrican" into a "drizzle". Most people see it as the end of the world. I used to get my panties in a knot about it, but I decided there was nothing I can do about it.

"you call the OOT being designated as "special features" as an official release?"

Well, no matter how you put it, it WAS a release of the OOT, no matter how substandard, and no matter how you put it, it WAS official. So yes, there was an official release. No matter how much you or I wish that pathetic release away, the fact remains that it still happened. So yes, just for the sake of calling things as they are, I do designate the "special feature" as an official release. As I mentioned in my last post, in some ways that "special feature" is a good thing. If you remember, George once said that the OOT no longer existed, I consider it no small step that several years after he made that comment, the thing he said no longer existed wound up as a special feature, an admitance that it no longer no longer exists. Or to translate the double negative, it once again exists. I don't see it as too much of a stretch for it to once again be included as a "special feature" one day in HD. Either way, even if we never get another release again, I wouldn't consider it as one of life's "category 5" hurricanes". I have had hurricanes in life, and in the grand scheme of things, being stuck with old VHS tapes and bootleg LD transfers of the OUT isn't one of them.


"Every time Warb sighs, an angel falls into a vat of mapel syrup." - Gaffer Tape

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I was actually talking about george lucas with the hurricane comment.
Okay, I admit it was an official release, but it did not deserve to be just only a special feature
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Originally posted by: generalfrevious
Okay, I admit it was an official release, but it did not deserve to be just only a special feature


No arguments there.


"I was actually talking about george lucas with the hurricane comment."

I agree the guy is a bit out of touch. If you read many of my posts around here you will see I am one of the first to admit it and complain about it. I still think George's whole problem is a matter of ego. I used to love that mad tv sketch that was made sometime after TPM where a reporter goes to interview Lucas at the Ranch and he is like a spoiled little child the whole time. At the end of the sketch he is dressed up in an Ewok costume and he and the reporter are playing a game of some sort together, and he keeps changing the rules. The reporter finally gets pissed off and just leaves. I think for a long time, starting even before I ever saw that sketch, I almost pictured George that way in my mind, as a grown up spoiled little child. Of course he isn't like that though, and lately I have been trying to see him in a more honest and realistic light, rather than assuming he is really the kind of lunatic who drives around his own ranch in a golf car dressed in an Ewok suit swinging around a plastic lightsaber. He is a real man, with a real family and a real life. He is not an idiot, he is a very cleaver guy. He obviously has an inflated opinion of himself and an exaggerated sense of his own greatness and ability to do no wrong, which we can all plainly see working against him throughout his directing/writing career. I really thing it is this that kept him from releasing the OOT, and it is his hurt ego at the realization that he made a mistake and has been called out on it by a large portion of his fanbase that is keeping him from it now. One way or another, now is not the best time to throw the money into making a new release after having just had a new one last year. Not to mention the current bluray vs. HD-DVD. The special feature of last years release was a foot in the door for the OOT, now that the door is open I don't see a reasonable quality release of the OOT sometime in the future being that much of an impossibility.

"Every time Warb sighs, an angel falls into a vat of mapel syrup." - Gaffer Tape

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Also, don't forget they said "existing prints are in bad condition," which seems to confirm that they didn't actually track down and destroy all the prints like we thought they did. I think the assumption that Lucas didn't remaster the OOT because he thought it would be too expensive (and maybe it actually would've been) is an accurate one.