- Post
- #213260
- Topic
- Lucas is a businessman - Don't believe what he says
- Link
- https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/213260/action/topic#213260
- Time
Way back when, Lucas was adamant about the fact that the Star Wars movies would never be broadcast on television because they needed to be seen on the big screen to have the impact that they were supposed to have.
Then he broadcast Star Wars on... I think it may have been on ON-TV, the old pre-cable pay movie station. It was a big huge deal, they even broadcast the audio portion on the radio (which I taped, obviously) and as I recall it was supposed to be a one-shot deal. Then, of course, they ended up running the thing on network TV a couple years later with great pomp and fanfare, and thereafter Star Wars was in broadcast rotation on TV.
Lucas also was equally adamant, once upon a time, that the Star Wars movies would never be released on home video. Again... not the way he thought people ought to be watching them.
But of course, we all know that he didn't hold out forever on that one either.
How long did Lucas insist that he didn't want the original edits out on DVD? I mean, he was *thump!* serious about it this time. No original edit DVDs. Only the Endlessly-F***ed-With Editions were to be released, as they were his true vision du jour.
Now, suddenly, they're releasing what amounts to the bootleg DVDs of the O-OT as incentive to shift 10,000 or so more units of their 2004 EFWE DVDs, and they're now saying that they will never release the O-OT again, especially in any kind of DVD format that's at all useful to those of us with modern widescreen TVs.
Y'all know as well as I do... they'll eventually release the O-OT in the same crisp, anamorphic widescreen format in which we see the O-OT clips in the Empire Of Dreams documentary.
The trick, of course, is to not pony up for the jocky-ass versions of the O-OT that they're putting out in September. Why would any of us want to shell out money for something that's been available VERY inexpensively on Ebay for years?
I'm not sticking pins in the arse of a George Lucas voodoo doll or anything, mind you... I just think he's been incredibly lame to a lot of his fanbase for quite awhile now (I think it really started after the "Greedo shoots first" debacle back in '97, but certainly after the tepid fan reception that TPM so rightly got.) This current nonsense about the O-OT, though, is just beyond the pale. O-OT footage can be presented in anamorphic widescreen in a DVD documentary, but the full films end up being released like Chinese bootlegs. I know that we'll eventually get the O-OT in anamorphic widescreen with good sound and picture, despite LFL claims to the contrary, but at the moment I have no trouble at all seeing why so many people are pissed at Lucas over this.