Okay, I’m going to confess my dorkiness. I love Star Wars. And I don’t mean all the fancy digital effects of episodes I and II. I mean, I love the campy, minature-model goodness of the original trilogy. Fortunately, so does A2C 🙂 So, for her birthday, I got her the (along with other stuff) new release of the original trilogy (episodes IV, V, and VI) on DVD.
I read an interview with George Lucas regarding this release. He claims that the edits that he made to this release makes them the way he intended them to be in the first place. The trilogy that we grew up with was, in fact, a hack: an unfinished piece.
Now, being the creative type myself, I can understand the desire to make one’s creations exactly how they were envisioned. Unfortunately, making some of the changes that Lucas made here are, as Noodlemonger so aptly puts it, “like rewriting history”.
The biggest change that has been talked about is the “Greedo shot first” change that was made to the “special editions” that were released in theaters in 1997. This of course changes the portrayal of Han Solo, whose “bad boy” image gets turned into a softer, more moral Han, who shoots only in self-defense. There were rumors (that have proven false) that the new DVD release would have Han and Greedo shooting at about the same time. This would at least blur the line between hero and bad boy for our friendly neighborhood smuggler.
Anyway, I haven’t had a chance to sit and watch them yet, but I can’t wait to see the whole trilogy in its entirety, changes and all.
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