Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Star Wars on Blu-Ray

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/14/star-wars-films-coming-to-blu-ray-next-year/

Yes, the Blu-Rays are coming. And to everyone's disappointment and no one's surprise, the original theatrical versions of the original trilogy will not be included.

Why? Here's
Lucas's answer:

“You have to go through and do a whole restoration on it, and you have to do that digitally. It’s a very, very expensive process to do it. So when we did the transfer to digital, we only transferred really the upgraded version.”

OK. It's expensive. But what kind of numbers are we talking about here, Mr. Estimated-Net-Worth-of-Three-Billion-Dollars? A few million dollars? More? Less? Can it anyway seriously cut into the profits of the Blu-Ray release, which will no doubt be huge?

As to the last question, I think it can hurt the potential success of the Blu-Rays, but not in the way Lucas imagines. Personally, I'm going to wait for the inevitable double-dip with the theatrical versions included. I'm sure I won't be the only serious fan to not rush out and buy these films yet again.

Of course, Mr. Lucas, all you have to do is fix that damn Greedo bit and no one will care which version of Star Wars they're buying.

I'm just saying..

1 comment:

Martin said...

As much as I dislike a lot of the changes in the "Special Edition", the original theatrical versions don't really do it for me either. I'm young enough that I never saw the originals in the theaters. I grew up watching and loving the VHS versions. I may be wrong, but my "original theatrical" DVDs don't match my childhood memories as far as the movie's editing is concerned.