- Post
- #225351
- Topic
- DVD controversy mentioned on imdb.com
- Link
- https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/225351/action/topic#225351
- Time
Well, more emails aside, I'm throwing in the towel. Lucas has won. His ego is just too well-fortified to be contended with.
I'm not a big proponent of corporate greed, where the slogan often seems to be "where you see green, that's the place to be", but, at least a corporate studio mentality, free of the need to protect the ego of a filmmaker who has made a film which they own and he doesn't, would probably see the value (in $$) of giving the market what it wants. If it had been up to FOX alone, I'm sure they would've picked up on the fan demand for the OOT and given the three movies the grand DVD treatment that would make the fans happy.
Since this is apparently not the case at Lucasfilm, where CEO Lucas has the ultimate pull, we will most likely be stuck with the OOT as non-anamorphic bonus features sitting back seat to Lucas's precious "original vision", SE versions of the Star Wars films.
I'd fully be behind another petition, but I won't be giving my money to Lucas for a non-anamorphic, "limited-time-only" DVD set that treats these historical movies as bonus features. This treatment screams that he is only begrudgingly putting the originals out. And not only that, but it amounts to scare-tactics as well: "You better be happy that we're giving them to you at all. Now, pre-order them before they're never available again!"
The marketing that his company has done for the SE release has been nothing short of misrepresentation, if not outright lying. Anyone who goes into Best Buy to buy the currently available DVDs will find no indication that the DVDs are anything but the original versions. They are simply labeled as STAR WARS TRILOGY.
It's the attitude that Lucas seems to exude regarding the originals that really has taken a lot of the fun out of being a fan. The illusion of a masterpiece has been shattered, now that the supposed master seems to be only a leader of a team who has produced three movies that he doesn't consider to be his "true vision", aka, not true master works.
Lucas seems to pride himself on being an auteur filmmaker, and, yet, so much of what made his originals so powerful seems to be the creativity of so many others that worked with him. And this creativity, he seems to readily disregard in favor of supplanting it with his own extrremely after-the-fact retooling.
Why won't he graciously accept the fact that the originals are what made him and that people love the versions they grew up with?
As Aldous Huxley, author of the sci-fi and literary classic BRAVE NEW WORLD, said about his most popular work:
"[T]o attempt to patch a faulty work into the perfection it missed at its first execution, to spend one's middle age in trying to mend the artistic sins committed and bequeathed by that different person who was oneself in youth - all this is surely vain and futile."
Sound like anyone we know?
I won't be paying Lucas for SE ammunition to throw right back at him. I'll be more content to tell my kids, "Not too long ago in a reality not too far away, there existed three of the most magical movies ever made..."
That is, unless of course, they end up on Blue-Ray or HD-DVD, which isn't a possibility too far afield.
It will be interesting to hear how all of this pans out, and I will be sending another round or two of emails to the people in charge telling them that I won't be buying the September release. But, for now, this is the straw that broke the bantha's back.
SW: R.I.P. - 9/12/06
I was beginning to think that my enjoyment of the OOT was largely rooted in being an impressionable kid at the time, so it was good to hear that they converted you. Now, if we can only change Lucasfilm's DVD plans...
