I’m not one of those who says “Lucas raped my childhood” or nonsense like that. I may buy it at some point, but it is definitely not on my must have list. With the silly changes, unneeded additions and his nutty justification for it along with the current lame (so far) movies, I have pretty much lost interest in Star Wars.
Indeed! I don’t know what the big deal is. I mean, I am a BIG Star Wars fan, but there are a few different scenes… BIG DEAL! So Greedo shoots first, you can remember when he didn’t, right? So why all the hatred… I mean, who cares, really? And if you do, then why?
So that would mean that the bootleggers aren’t even guilty of any crime. After all, it’s hard to violate the copyright on a work that doesn’t exist.
Brazenly stolen from today’s Slashdot:
No, we mean it, they don’t exist. Don’t you hate when you hit “save” instead of “save as…”?
I have no willpower. I’m sure I’ll buy the set.
The only change that bothers me is Greedo firing first. I know this has been talked to death here, but the original scene is just so right.
Sigh. It doesn’t bother me enough to not purchase though.
Although I didn’t mind the some of the new CGI effects in Star Wars (the Deathstar explosion was nice), it simply felt out of place with the older special effect techniques utilized by Lucas. Imagine if they redid Casablanca with some Matrix effects. 
Really, how far could you go? Could somebody put together a master of the original films and make DVDs that could be sold in any store for $19.99 a pop?
The changes didn’t bother me all that much, apart from the Han/Greedo thing and the yell added to Luke’s falling scene at the end of Empire Srikes Back. Eps 1 & 2 kinda ruined Darth Vader in the original trilogy for me though. Now, instead of seeing an ominous figure, I think “Yeah, Vader. I knew him when he was called Anakin, what a douchebag.”
Still, this whole venture yielded a number of fine games from Lucas Arts, that makes the whole thing worth while from my POV.
He was being sarcastic.
Does anyone know if there’s a site that lists every change between the original movies and the special editions? Thanks.
I liked 90% of the scenes added. You can’t beat all the extra ships during the battles and such. Scenes I didn’t like
- the little cutesy riding in to town with little robots and Jawas running around I know he intended to populate the town but I thought this was a dark dusty town filled with shady characters. Not bumper cars with muppets.
- Greedo shoots first. Why? This takes most of Han’s grittiness away.
- The tail step. I understand he really really wanted to put Jabba in and I can even understand why they did it. But it was unnecessary to add and if you can’t do it right why do it at all?
One weird think I always disliked about the original was the strafing run that Luke does. He hits some VERY VERY plastic looking boxes. It always throws me out of the movie. When the new additions came out I was sure that’s one scene they would have redone…what the hell it’s STILL THERE.
That pretty much sums it up right there- Greedo shooting first detracts from Han’s characterization. Han as we know him is a guy who, when threatened, whips out his blaster and casually kills the foe sitting aross the table from him. The altered scene had Han narrowly miss getting shot himself, and only then did he fire at Greedo. It’s stupid. The change does absolutely nothing positive for the movie.
The DVDs already exist. They are just traded online instead of in stores. (and i think they show up on Ebay also)
What 
Teelo,
sheesh I had to go dig out the movie so I could tell you where the scene I’m talking about it. Luke is attacking the death star. He does a line “This is red 5 going in” he shoots at some very plastic looking models (there are other strafing runs that aren’t as bad but the whole thing could have used a polish and this scene is by far the worst) Then he pulls up and says “I got a little cooked but I’m ok” The really frustrating thing is they added some CGI of him pulling up and sparks flying off his ship. Why couldn’t they polish the scene right before?
I know silly little thing to be annoyed by but that scene has annoyed me since I was 10 yrs old. I dunno why it sticks out in my head so badly.
Sadly, I think I’ve only seen the original versions only one time, and it was a while ago so I don’t remember that much. Luckily, that’ll be fixed soon, but not with DVDs.
Even if it was universally agreed upon that the SEs were better (and it certainly isn’t) he should still release the originals as a curiosity at the very least. Lots of other directors have done such. For example, the Alien Ressurection disc in the Alien Quad set has a new cut of the film. The director says it’s just for fun, and that the theatrical cut was his cut of the movie. Similarly, think of LotR. I would hate it if PJ wouldn’t let the EEs get released because they’re not his cut of the movie.
Anyway, I’ve finally got it through my head that he’ll probably never release the originals again (then again, he changes his mind so damn much. Hell, even the digital and film theatrical versions of AotC were different). So, I’ve finally decided to order a LD player and the “faces” discs from ebay. Don’t have the cash for a DVD-RW drive, so I guess I’ll just have to deal with getting up every hour to flip the disc.
I am not even fooling myself. Although I disgusted that I am forced to watch mini-Jaba and Greedo shoot first, I will be preordering these from Amazon anyways.
Is it possible to ‘hide’ the originals on these DVD’s? How could there be enough room for them?
I’ll probably buy them. I happen to like the special editions (except for the Greedo part which I agree was very wimpy to do, but then Lucas wimped out on the prequel storyline too–I watch the prequel dvd’s now and skip through to just watch the eye candy. Originals=good storyline. Prequels=shit storyline.)
I can’t tell you how disappointed I was with the ‘goodbye’ scene between Anakin and his mother. What a royal F—up. And the actor playing kiddie Anakin! Oh, I wanted to wring Lucas’ throat! (can’t…stop…rant…must…rant…)
Quite aside from the “purity” of the movies or fans’ prefences, there’s at least one other good reason to release the originals. I can very easily picture a film class studying the development of special effects in time, and the original Star Wars movies were certainly a landmark moment in the history of special effects.
As for “hiding” both versions on the same disc, aren’t most of the scenes left unchanged? It seems like it ought to be possible, given DVD encoding, to just have two copies of the changed scenes, and just switch out for them.