So if you haven't heard, all six Star Wars films are being re-released on Blu-ray soon. And George Lucas being George Lucas, he has decided to touch up the films yet again, and bury all other versions while pretending they never existed. From what I've read, it's mostly minor touches this time, fixing up fan complaints that were levelled at the DVD releases of the original trilogy and the subsequent prequels. However, puppet-Yoda in Episode I is being replaced by CGI-Yoda, so it's not all subtle touch-ups to make the film more pleasurable with modern home entertainment systems, which does worry me slightly.
In all fairness, as much as we hate it, Lucas owns the films and has every right to do this. If he has a single vision of the films, then he has every right to deliver it to us, no matter what he thinks it'll take. It's not like he doesn't have the money or resources to do it. And the Blu-Ray releases, as far as I can tell, don't try to retcon the entire story further by screwing with the original trilogy some more. It's just a touched up special edition. So if they're finally getting a decent release with love and care put into it, then why should we be complaining?
We should be complaining because if people want to see older versions of the film, they have every right to that as well. The original theatrical releases of the, er, "original" trilogy are a part of cinematic history. Sure, some people don't mind and/or prefer the special edition versions, but there are plenty of people who also prefer the original cinematic versions.
Ideally, George Lucas should take a page out of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner book. It's no secret that Scott hated the version of Blade Runner that was released in cinemas. It's no secret that a lot of people besides Scott prefer the "directors cut" version. But there are some people who prefer the theatrical version. In the 5-disc DVD box set, Ridley Scott gave us all the versions of the film. He polished up the directors cut to give us the version of the film he was finally happy with. but put care into the other versions as well. His intention was to not only give us his preferred version, but to give us the film in whatever form we preferred in the best quality possible.
The question then, is, why can't George Lucas do the same with Star Wars? Why must there only be one version that strictly dictates his "one true" vision (which isn't actually his one true original story he intended to tell form the beginning, no matter what he says)? I think we the audience are smart enough to overlook any plot or canon inconsistencies that might arise from special edition scenes not being in the original releases.
If you're going to put so much effort into restoring and fixing flaws that arose in the special edition / DVD releases, then why not do the original versions of the films at the same time? I'd love to revisit the the original films, even if they're not the "preferred" versions. We're not idiots, and we'd understand that they're not representative of Lucas's vision of the story. Hell, I'd love to see the title crawl for Episode IV on DVD or Blu-Ray before it was Episode IV and was just Star Wars.
That'd really be something worth paying good money for.
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