I saw Star Wars on its original theatrical run in 1977. I was only three, but it was the first movie that I ever asked to see again. The Empire Strikes Back shocked the hell out of me in 1980, and in 1981, my parents had already divorced, which gave me the opportunity to see the film at least once a week through it's entire re-release run. And I was there opening day right after school to find out what happened in Return of the Jedi.
I need to stress how long the wait was between Empire and Jedi. Not only was it unusual at the time for a major film to end in what was, while not technically a cliffhanger, definitely leading into the next movie (it just wasn't done), but the dangling threads — Han frozen in carbonite, Luke finding out that he has some serious dysfunction in his family — made it damn near unbearable.
My grandfather had one of the first VCRs and recorded the premiere of Star Wars on HBO. I watched that tape, and later ones made of Empire and Jedi over and over again. I bought the widescreen VHS editions (pre-Faces, 1985 sound mix, original poster art and From Star Wars To Jedi) when they came out in '92 and was delighted to finally see them in Panavision again, and a few years later I had a laserdisc player and bought the Definitive Edition CAV box set.
I had a book when I was younger called The Making of Star Wars, and for one Christmas when I was older, my father gave me a copy of Industrial Light and Magic: The Art of Special Effects. These two books gave me a real appreciation that cinema was a construct; a combination of creativity, inventiveness, collaboration and hard work that came together to tell a story. It was through understanding how the special effects worked in Star Wars and other films that gave me an understanding of how film worked as a technical process.
Why am I an OT purist? Because the originals are the movies that inspired me.
Now, I don't mind that Lucas is altering the films; one one hand, I actually think that it's kind of cool that he can do that. However, I found the changes that he made not only to be lackluster, but very distracting. They're not for me (neither were the Prequels). Unfortunately, as time has gone on, my television has gotten bigger and it has been harder and harder to be satisfied with what the Star Wars movies looked like. I discovered this site only last week when I read about the Despecialized Edition elsewhere on the web.
Lucas' attempt to make one, final canonical version of these films is resulting in a gabajazillion variations, with it being very difficult to determine what one is going to see. I just want to watch the movies I grew up with, warts and all, in reasonably good quality for this era of home video.
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To this day, I maintain that the best holiday present I ever got was the Millenium Falcon action playset for Chanukah. It had been a rough year, so I wasn't expecting it, but my mother saved and bought it for me because she knew how much I wanted it.