When/Why did you become an OT purist? — Page 2

SilverWook said:

EDIT: My bad, it wasn't the AFI. It was an L.A. film festival in 2003.

http://www.filmbuffonline.com/Editorial/EditorialStarWars.htm

SilverWook said:

Farter Skywanker said:

TV's Frink said:

The topic is when/why you became a purist.  You are not one.  Get out.

ok. I apologize for the oh-so terrible-and tragic news that the entire world/country and president barack obama should know about that I acidentally went off topic on an internet forum website that 7 billion people know about, I apologize for accidentally believing that writing about my disagreements with OT purists was somehow being on-topic and not off-topic.

You get out, bro......

I take a dim view of you talking to a respected member of this board like that.

Looks like someone is skating on very thin ice here. Could he soon be adding ANOTHER website to his "I've been banned" list ?

It was like 2002 or so when I found out there were changes. We had the 90's trilogy Box Set on VHS, and I being to young to really remember was oblivious to the SE. Watching Empire at my uncle's house and seeing the Cloud City CGI was my first dose. but that didn't bother me. It was buying the 2004 DVD set that really got to me. I got to see what they did to Star Wars.

So really, I never got the SE on VHS, my parents didn't buy movies more than once. Good thing I got to be ignorant to the SE up to my teenage years.

To me the Saga has always been from the adventures of Luke Skywalker and the films that came out in 1977-1983.  As well as the comic adaptations, the first two radio dramas.

To me the special editions are as much EU as the prequels and poor substitutes for the real thing.

Not so much a purist per se, since i have no problem with the prequels existing and the multiple versions of the original trilogy as long as the originals get restored to their proper place rather than treated as cast off garbage.

I can wish the special editions and prequels did not exist, but it is easier to recognize them not as Canon with the oot, or as a revised universe starting in like 1994 or so.

Father Skywalker said:

What's is the main problme/issue here, exactly???

For 20 years, the original films were available for average people to see in better than Blu-ray quality.  All you had to do was go to a theatre showing them, buy a ticket, and watch.  Today, if a theatre is caught showing the original films, they are quickly confiscated.

Back in '97, most didn't immediately see the impact of this policy change.  Like you said, the public still had VHS tapes and Laserdiscs, which, while certainly not as good as 35mm film, were good enough for most people's televisions at the time.  And since going to the theatre was falling out of fashion even then, people might not have considered exactly how much better the films looked before they were reduced to VHS and Laserdisc.

Now, not only are those obsolete formats becoming increasingly difficult to play, but two new formats (DVD and Blu-ray) have come along to remind audiences about that quality gap between 35mm film and VHS tape.

The GOUT release (the out-of-print bonus disc DVD release) was a Laserdisc-quality release on the DVD format (not to mention that Star Wars got the wrong soundtrack in this release), so it didn't really do much for fans other than provide a really distorted view of what the originals looked like to the uninitiated.  Even today, you'll hear people say that the originals looked all low-res and dirty like the GOUT, that the Special Editions fixed all of that, and that the originals simply aren't worth an HD release!

In summary, the purists remember the period from 1977-1997 when it was possible to watch the OT in super-high-definition, compare it against today when your best officially sanctioned option is a crappy Laserdisc transfer from the early nineties with the wrong soundtrack, and we feel shafted.  Especially those of us with children.

Or, to put it even more succinctly, when Beverly Hills Chihuahua 3 beats the hell out of Star Wars in the visuals department, there's a problem.

Father Skywalker said:

ok. I apologize for the oh-so terrible-and tragic news that the entire world/country and president barack obama should know......

You'd better apologize to me, boy, else I knock the black off ya.

I became an OT purist in 2004, following the purchase of the OT trilogy on DVD.  Being a massive Star Wars fan, I bought into all the hype at the time and got the 2004 SEs along with the masses. After getting home and watching all three films through, however, something dawned on me... this was it. This was THE version of Star Wars I was being given to watch by Lucasfilm instead of the original films I grew up with and loved.

It was then that I started looking around the internet for others who felt like I did.  I stumbled across this site, joined, and signed the petition.  I then came across my first Laserdisc preservation (Dr. G's set) and realized that this place was totally for me.

I became a purist very early on, around 2001.  I grew up watching and re-watching the THX original versions in full-screen, and I was concerned because I had read that George Lucas would never release the original versions again and I wanted to get a widescreen version on laserdisc before they became impossible to find.  I thought that widescreen VHS would be OK too, as long as I could digitize them. 

I found a VHS copy of the widescreen Faces set from a store that posted their catalog and new acquisitions online (I don't remember what the name was).  It was about $33 for the entire set in new condition (some shrink wrap was missing but that was it). 

But I wanted more- I knew the laserdisc versions would be better quality.  I was on prillaman's site a lot, reading about the DVD bootlegs and etc.  They all looked good for different reasons (TR47 had the uncompressed soundtrack, Dr. Gonzo was anamorphic, another version had isolated score).

In 2005 I found this site. 

I actually don't think I've ever seen the Special Edition trilogy all the way through, back to back (97, 04, or the new blu-rays).  It was obviously inferior and it ruined the pacing. 

I may have been lurking before 2005.  I just cannot remember.

I too became a purist around 2004. I really liked the 1997 special editions ( apart from a few changes) because they were just that; Special Editions. A fun ALTERNATIVE. When the DVD set came out and George announced that these are the only versions of the OT that exist, i grew to dislike them. If he wanted to fix the so called flaws then why didn't he just do that, instead of adding all this pointless crap, like adding Hayden at the end of Jedi, who looks like he is about to butt rape the Ewoks. With George saying that these are the only versions it was a huge "F**k You" to all the original fans that gave him everything he now had and had remained loyal throughout the wilderness years where there was not much Star Wars anything. The final nail in the coffin for me was when the blu-ray set came out and even more questionable changes were added. I can no longer watch those versions. The DVD & Blu-Ray versions just don't exist to me.

If you are going to do a Special Edition, then do it properly, but just keep it as precisely that; a special edition.  At least give some respect to the fans that gave you everything and respect that they [refer the original versions.