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Star Wars Trilogy: Widescreen Edition -20th Century Fox (1977, 1980, 1983)
Summary: Star Wars: A New Hope: Farm boy makes good by blowing bad guys to hell. The Empire Strikes Back: Tiglo carbon! Return of the Jedi: Ewoks baby, Ewoks! My Thoughts: Holy Jesus, this is the DVD I've been waiting to get since DVDs first hit the market. At one point I wanted to wait to buy a DVD player only until Star Wars came out, not knowing how long it would actually take. For about six long years I’ve waited to get my clammy hands on the DVD versions of the Star Wars trilogy, even at one low point going as low as buying a bootlegged copy of A New Hope. Now that the films are out on disc I've done my best to judge them as fairly as possible. Since I'm an enormous Star Wars geek who has had his pennies squeezed out of me for years by George Lucas I may be a bit biased, but I'll do my best. The first thought that came to mind when I purchased the films is that this box set is startling similar to the Indiana Jones set that came out last year. Star Wars and Indiana Jones were both editions that fans have been waiting for in glorious DVD for a good while. Both sets feature awesome surround sound and great picture quality, but with only a good amount of extras, not a mind blowing amount of extras. The Star Wars box set is the best presentation I've ever seen of the films. The only exception to this is actually seeing them in the theater, but then it might be better at home because there are no annoying people in costumes watching them with you… except if you’re an uber nerd. The films have gone under more restoration work for this edition so and it really shows, check out this article for more on that. I must note that despite how great the presentation is, there have been some sound issues that have been reported for A New Hope. Shawn and I both noticed that in several spots the dialogue seems off, with some characters lines dropping out or even being too loud. I’m not sure exactly what the problem is, but if we find anything out we will let you know. Other than these issues with A New Hope, it really is a treat to see how great the picture is and how amazing the surround mix booms in your own living room. There’s nothing better than hearing TIE fighters cruising from one corner of the room to the other. The movies themselves are, well, Star Wars, and I don’t think I have to go into any detail in reviewing them since almost everyone on Earth, including small pygmy cannibal tribes in the Amazon are at least remotely aware of what the films are all about. What can really be said about these films that hasn't been said a million times already? Still, I should go into at least say that my opinions of the films haven’t changed much in the last 20 plus years except that maybe I can see more of the flaws in them since I was a little kid. The special effects are aging a little, but in the end the Star Wars trilogy will always have a special place above other films for me. Even the weakest of the films (in my opinion of course) Star Wars: A New Hope is still most excellent, the darkest film, The Empire Strikes Back is still simply amazing, and the Muppet friendly Return of the Jedi are all better than ever in this edition. The most controversial part of this release is that even more changes have been made to the films for the DVD editions. I'm not one to say that it’s blasphemy to change the films, but the original versions aren't included in this release and perhaps never will be available in any form besides an old VHS tape. I think “changes” to the beloved trilogy would be much more palatable if we could at least go back to the original way on these discs. In this release most of the changes are much more subtle, as opposed to the 1997 theatrical re-release that added a bunch of new things like entire scenes. There are a few of note, however, that I’m going to cover here that I found the most interesting. For a more complete list of changes with pictures go here, but be sure to come back! In A New Hope, the powers that be decided to take another stab at fixing the infamous Greedo and Solo showdown. For those of you who aren’t familiar with this scene, Han Solo shoots Greedo before the alien has a chance to kill him. In the 1997 Special Edition release they screwed it up by having Greedo shooting first before Han has a chance to pull the trigger. What made this change so horrible was that Han's head moved to avoid the blast like he was some sort of hideous snake creature. This time, the animators moved Han’s whole upper body, which still looks odd but not as ludicrous. I think the best solution would have been to restore it to the way it originally was, but perhaps that would have been way too simple. A more welcome change to A New Hope is the rework done on the Jabba scene where the big slug confronts Han. To be frank, the Jabba model they used in the Star Wars: Special Edition looked like a pile of crap. This DVD release fixes the mess this time around by using a much better looking model that actually looks like Jabba and not a computer blob. Still, Jabba doesn't look like he completely fits and perhaps he never will. I always thought that the scene would have made a great cut scene to watch in an extras category rather than stay inserted in the film, but what do I know? In The Empire Strikes Back, the best change Lucasfilm made was replacing the old floating Emperor head with a spiffy new floating head. The original head was played by an old woman and looks almost nothing like the Emperor seen in Return of the Jedi. This time 'round they inserted Ian McDiarmid, the actor who actually played the Emperor and Senator Palpatine in Return of the Jedi, as well as Star Wars episodes 1, 2, and 3. A couple of lines of dialogue in this scene were also changed/added as well, but I don’t want to ruin them for anyone who hasn’t seen it. In Return of the Jedi a great opportunity was missed by not removing the really stupid song and dance number in Jabba’s palace that was added in the 1997 Special Edition. The most significant change out of the whole set by far is the removal of Sebastian Shaw at the end ghost scene by replacing him with Hayden Christensen. This was such a pointless change and makes the scene stick out like a sore thumb to me. Oh well, it could have been worse. Jar Jar could have made an appearance. Extras: There are a few extras, but this edition isn't what I'd really consider Star Wars worthy. Maybe my expectations are too high, but there are a ton of things they could have put on the discs but didn't make it. Things like classic documentaries, appearances by characters in other shows and the like would have been perfect editions. I personally would have loved to see some toy commercials, or more importantly, the cut scenes like Luke at Tashi’s station in A New Hope. There are some good things on the bonus disc. If you like trailers, this edition has them galore. There's the teaser, release, and initial release trailers along with the TV spots for each film. This was a great bonus for me, since I hadn’t seen any of these trailers since I was an infant. The main documentary "Empire of Dreams" is a simply an amazing in-depth look at the films that an old, crusty, die hard fan like me fell in love with. There was a ton of stuff I had never seen before, and it’s a valuable addition to the collection. There are a couple of other documentaries called, “The Characters of Star Wars” and “The Birth of the Lightsaber.” Both are fairly standard mini-docs, but okay viewing nonetheless. The featurette included is “The Force is with Them: The Legacy of Star Wars” and it’s a pretty cool look at some of the famous filmmakers that have been influenced by the films. The video game section of the extras was a slight disappointment, because it only had a trailer for Star Wars: Battlefront and a making of the game based on Episode III. I think that some sort of acknowledgement that there are hundreds of other Star Wars games should have been made would have been interesting and perhaps it would have made the games section so commercial. A cool little feature though is that the bonus disc can be inserted in an X-Box for a playable demo of Battlefront. In this same section is an extensive photo gallery that is well done and features some pretty funny captions. I’d like to note that out of all the Star Wars DVDs released they all have great motion menus including this release. The menus are awesome and the fact that there are multiple menus on each disc really puts it as a great bonus for me. On each film’s respective disc are commentary tracks with a whole boatload of people responsible for the making of the films, most importantly George Lucas. This is another extra that I appreciated quite a bit since the things offered up were pretty damn interesting to a Star Wars fan such as me. As you can see there are extras, but not an overwhelming amount. In fact, I’d say it borders on underwhelming since fans have had to wait for so long for this edition to be available. I’m sure that someday a better set will come out with even better extras. For now, it’s just enough to keep me satisfied. Score: Films: Star Wars: A New Hope: 9 The Empire Strikes Back: 9 Return of the Jedi: 9 Extras: 8 Edition: 9 Picture and sound bump this baby up to a 9.
-Paul
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