- Post
- #58655
- Topic
- Special Edition on DVD (1997 versions)
- Link
- https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/58655/action/topic#58655
- Time
Why would someone want to own the Special Editions on DVD? Very possibly for the exact same reason many of us want to see the Original Trilogy on DVD. Because it's what they grew up with.
I was born in 1972, and Star Wars was actually the first movie I saw in a movie theater. Suffice it to say that, like many of the people on this board, the movie affected me greatly! I would assume that for a child born twenty years after I was, the Special Edition may very well have been his/her first introduction to the Star Wars movie, and hopefully the same would be true as well.
Think about it from THAT child's point of view... the movie he/she grew up watching is now being altered, and maybe some of those changes aren't what he/she had hoped for. So why shouldn't that person be entitled (just as WE feel entitled) to have a copy of the movie we grew up with?
Maybe I'm completely off in my thinking here (and I realize I'm treading on very dangerous ground just by bringing it up!), but... what if in the original trilogy Greedo HAD shot first? And then in the Special Editions the scene had been changed so that Han Solo shot first? Wouldn't the outrage simply be reversed? Instead of the argument that "the scene destroyed Solo's rebel image," now be one of, "Solo would never shoot first! He was a carefree guy who would rather avoid conflict than start it!" Wouldn't that be the argument?
So I don't know... I think that the biggest argument against changing a movie in the first place is that it tends to alienate those who grew up watching/living/experiencing the original. And so it's not that the changes were incorrect, or bad, or even ruinous to the film, the real problem in the changes is simply that they were made in the first place.
People fear change, and tend to want what they know... what was originally presented to them. And for many people the Special Editions ARE the original.
So why would someone want to own the Special Editions? I think it makes perfect sense.