George Lucas responds to the overwhelming demands of his bloated, emperor-like lifestyle.
By Burbanked on May 10, 2006 in DVD, Movies | 1,066 views |
To us, it seems a little surprising that anyone would claim some kind of rebel-like victory now that George Lucas has responded to “overwhelming demand from Star Wars fans” by graciously taking our money in the “limited time only DVD release” (or, in marketing terms, “in order to meet big Christmas sales numbers”) of the original, unaltered trilogy.
Well, golly - how many DVD releases does this make, now, anyway? How many times are we to play this game where we complain and moan and then still give up our money to this man? It’s becoming an increasingly bad joke and one wonders if there’s any good will left in the Star Wars world now that the whole thing’s been so thoroughly, deliberately reduced to the merchandising conspiracy that it is.
Lore Sjalberg at Wired (via Boing Boing) has some delightfully cynical ideas about additional versions of Star Wars that we can expect to see in the future, including the “8-year-old Edition”:
“This edition comes with a brain probe that turns you into an 8-year-old again, at least mentally. You’ll watch the entire movie with your mouth wide open, then you’ll run around the house making lightsaber noises during the credits.”
Finally - an idea that actually helps us recapture the magic. We’ll keep our widescreen VHS version of the OT, Mr. Lucas - at least that still has some nostalgia attached to it.
My blog-love affair with cartoonist Doug Savage’s terrific daily Savage Chickens (
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because clearly Cage has decided to become action/thriller cinema’s first Polish great-grandma. (
Well, that’s too bad. Back a year or so ago when I heard that they’d be making a movie out of Judi and Ron Barrett’s terrific kids’ book Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, I hoped maybe it’d be made live-action. Handled well, the idea of seeing an actual town where it rained hotdogs and baked beans in an open-roof restaurant, as well as the bit where sanitation trucks clean up all the leftover rain/snow/food and feed it to the pets would be, I thought, a bundle of CG-imbued cinema fun. 
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Lukas | May 10, 2006 | Reply
WHAT? George Lucas is just making it available, following fan demands. Of course we is mkaing it for the money too, BUT, if you dont want it, DONT BUY IT.
I mean, is anyone FORCING you to buy these dvd´s packs? Its out there, and whoever WANTS to buy them, does so, whoever doesnt want them, or thinks its a worldwide plot for sucking our money, just DOESNT buy it.
Pretty simple, no excuses. No one is controlling your mind, please.
Burbanked | May 10, 2006 | Reply
Forgive my cynicism, but I think that fan demands have little to do with it. Isn’t this the guy who said that he would never - never, ever - release the trilogy as it originally was on DVD? Because they were only “25% complete” in his estimation? So we all said, “Ok, the only way we can get these is to go ahead and spend $50 on the enhanced ones that some of us maybe weren’t so happy with, because we won’t get the chance to have them otherwise.”
And lo and behold - hardly a year later - the original versions will be made available packaged with the enhanced versions! So not only did we buy these versions previously, but now - to get the thing that many of us wanted in the first place - we’ve got to buy the same thing we already bought when we weren’t all that sure we wanted to buy it because he told us that the thing we wanted would never ever be available for us to buy it.
This practice - of constantly reissuing DVDs with enhancements, better transfers, all that stuff that we want - is not limited to George Lucas. But he’s elevated it to an art.
Of course I won’t buy this and I’m well aware that no one is forcing me to do so, thanks. But to suggest that these are being sold primarily for the “fans” and only secondarily for the money is, in my opinion, backwards.
Thanks for reading Burbanked.