THE STAR WARS TRILOGY DVD SET
You might have heard of this. My thoughts on the original version of Star Wars are here and talking about the films themselves in detail I’m in two minds of, but I think not this time. So instead, some brief reflections in general:
* Much as I love the various classic films I’ve been seeing for the first time lately and which presumably many people think I should have seen by now anyway (thus The Rules of the Game a week ago), I make zilch apology for spending a lazy weekend (I needed it, work was a mess) doing nothing but watching all three of these, and hearing their commentaries, and watching all the extra features stuff as well. I doubt I’ll ever need to indulge myself that way again but it was great and I was most content.
* You know, the changes made aren’t all THAT much difference to the end result. Let the Greedo scene stand as was, keep the “Bring me my shuttle” bit in Empire in place of the new voiceover, those would be the two things I’d still have a small problem with. And they ditched Luke’s scream as he fell, happily.
* It really does look and sound pretty damn good.
* I loved the documentary for one key reason — I think it was the first time there was an official (as opposed to unofficial) accounting of the fact that Star Wars not only had tons of problems getting filmed but that more than a few had zilch faith in the damn thing to start with. And hell, they even interviewed Gary Kurtz, which I wasn’t expecting in the slightest. Of course, they didn’t talk about why he and Lucas severed their partnership, but you can’t have everything.
* Irvin Kershner really is a character. He can do commentary for any film I have any time, even if he doesn’t like it!
* Did trailers just plain SUCK up until fairly recently? Now don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of crap trailers now in turn. But most of the trailers I’ve seen from films on DVD that were released in the sixties through the eighties are abysmally awful, I mean really, really poor, and all the ones for all three films here, perhaps one exception aside (the bemusing but effective Empire one consisting only of closeups on Ralph McQuarrie concept paintings) are some of the worst I’ve ever seen. Paul Frees does some awful voiceovers for them (did people forget he was in on Hardware Wars?), the edits are clunky, the picture collage ones just make me think of Daft Punk gone wrong for some reason. Standards must have been different, SOMETHING was different.
* Just make this final Obi-Wan/Anakin fight in the one next year really something. That’s all I ask. Really.