WARNING: Geek Rant

Further proof that George Lucas is an ass and a liar.

From the original Theatrical Version of Star Wars:

Notice the lack of a reference to Episode IV or "A New Hope".

Seeing that I was weaned on Star Wars (the Star Wars madness started in '77 and I was born in '74), I have been thoroughly disgusted with the constant changes GL has made to the original story. It's one thing to clean up some technical issues and remaster the video and sound, it's another thing to completely rewrite parts of the story to fit a changed world view.

Thankfully GL is at least giving fans of the original versions (who don't have a laserdisc player) a digital version of the un-bastardized movies. Mind you, it's a somewhat low quality scan of the laserdisc versions, in Dolby Stereo (instead of the remastered Dolby Surround/Digital which was done for VHS before GL started screwing with things) and with widescreen display issues (with our widescreen monitor, you can see that it is formatted to a standard display and doesn't scale to a native widescreen display).

Until these versions were announced, I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to introduce Zane to the true glory and cheese that was/is the Star Wars Trilogy (don't even get me started on the so-called Episodes I-III *spit*). Thankfully, with the purchase of Star Wars this week, I was able to share with my son something that had a lasting impression on me. He LOVED it! Then he promptly asked to watch the original Gojira movie (Godzilla to most of you).

Thankfully, my disgust with GL's tinkering kept me from forking out money for the first DVD set of the Star Wars Trilogy, so I did not end up paying double for what my geeky soul craved. Now it is time to budget for The Empire Strikes Back (best of the series in my opinion) and The Return of the Jedi (Ewoks must die!) before the evil GL takes them away from us forever in December.