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Star Wars Trilogy (Widescreen Edition) Customer Reviews (31 - 33 of 272 Reviews)

Just a brief question..
What's the point of analyzing something to death, especially when that something has given us all so much inspiration?

I Have loved SW all my life... but, I feel betrayed.
"Call for a new Revolution"

First off, I was raised on good cinema by parents who had a true passion for story telling through motion pictures. From the "Ten Commandments" to "The Godfather" to all three of the original "Star Wars" films. Second, I have always felt the George Lucas is a man of vision. The rich and completely engaging mythology he has created influenced thousands, if not millions, to nurture an intense love and admiration for all types of films.
This love, however, does not dull the sting I feel as a fan of "Star Wars" when I think of a future where the only original copies of a beloved and often revered movie trilogy are gone forever. In a haunting parallel to some of the themes in "Star Wars", Lucas(the all powerful Emperor) seeks the end of a time in film making where movies allow for any serendipity, interpretation, or whimsy in the inspiration of fans (this seems like Lucas' search for a supreme "order" in the Galaxy).
Through the use of the ultimate power in recent film making, CGI, Lucas wishes to strike down all those who believe and follow the "light". This belief in the "light" includes the idea that films are meant to be created for the public. The people's experience when watching one's film is a major motivation for creating the art of cinema in the first place. And once that movie has become part of societies' consciousness, that movie now belongs to the people.
George Lucas refuses to see the original trilogy from the perspective of the millions of people whose lives were affected by the additions and subtractions, of his films, he has forced upon the public. I use the word "forced" because this argument would have little voracity if Lucas could have just given one inch to his fans and released, along with the "new" versions, an unedited and re-mastered version of the original movies on DVD. That's not what he did though and he even goes as far as to say that he will not allow any of the unaltered original films to be re-released on DVD. We have but to wait for our VHS copies to completely disintegrate. Then Emperor's plan will come to pass, the reign of the all powerful "Special Edition".
Lucas (the Emperor) seeks total and eternal control over his films (as the Empire seeks control over the Galaxy) through the use of a seemingly unstoppable power that is Computer Generated Imaging (much like the way in which the Emperor uses Vader's terrible power to eradicate the Jedi). The victims of this "war" are the original theatrical releases (or the Jedi) themselves. Lucas will also spawn legions (or "clones") of newly altered versions of the original trilogy in an effort to overwhelm and outnumber all opposition to his new regime. I can only have faith that among the common people, the people who truly love and honor the universe George Lucas originally brought forth, there waits someone with the courage and skill needed to defeat this threat; A savior who can restore the sovereignty of the original trilogy; A warrior who will uphold the ideals and the ideas central to the "Star Wars" saga itself. A strong person, a determined person, ... "A New Hope."



Star Wars Special Edition Version 2.0: Glitches Marr an Otherwise Awesome Set
First off, yes, I am a Star Wars fan, and yes I own these films on DVD, VHS, and watch them regularly. This is NOT a rambling denunciation of the Special Editions or a rant against George Lucas, so please bear with me if you are an honest customer seeking real info, let me explain myself:

Of the official DVD sets that exist currently, this is the one to get. Why? It includes a fourth, bonus disc, that is great for the 3.5 hour documentary "Empire of Dreams" and the smaller mini behind the scenes specials. The "Episode III Teaser" is fluff, as are many of the other "bonus features" which include the space filler Star Wars Battlefront II trailer and Xbox only 1 level demo.. an overhyped and sadly buggy game, and a fluff video for the overhyped Episode III:Revenge of the Sith console game). The screenshot galleries are nice, but everyone who wanted to see deleted scenes was disappointed, though many little hints can be found in the nice trailers section).


In 1997 George Lucas released the Star Wars Trilogy on the big screen again after 11 years (since the last re-release of Return of the Jedi). Many fans were upset over the Special Edition changes like Greedo suddenly taking a wild shot at Han Solo, some CGI Banthas wandering around for no reason, Jabba the Hutt's new musical theater, flute music replacing the Ewok song, a poorly done Jabba the Hutt scene with redundant dialouge and many other goofs as well as nice things like pretty new skylines on Cloud City and enhanced CGI space combat around the Death Star.

Seven years later, Lucas decided to release the films on DVD, but he would not just release them as the 1997 Special Editions, but as a "new" set that was supposedly even closer to his "original vision" and what he "always intended" the movies to be.

But that is NOT what I'm going to get into with this review. That debate has been beaten to DEATH, and the most serious fans have already encoded their Laser Disc versions of the ORIGINAL original trilogy and made them into home-made DVDs, and even made fan edits of their own "special edition" to view alongside or instead of these new incarnations.

Some will complain (as Roger Ebert does) that these movies have lost some of their "film quality" in the transfer process. It is well known among cinemaphiles that Films (that is, movies shown on celluloid) have natural imperfections in the medium, commonly known as "film grain." This "gritty sand" that is subtly noticable in movies is normal. Movies shot on Video tape (commmonly called "video" as opposed to "film") do not exhibit this texture. Likewise digital video such as movies shot entirely on digital "tape" like Attack of the Clones or Revenge of the Sith do not have film grain. Perhaps in an effort to make the visual look of these movies more closely "Match" the prequels on DVD, the grain was mostly "removed" from this set. Some purist may criticize this. It is not my desire to do so in this review, but it is something worth noting. If film grain is something you can't live without, avoid this set.

Rather (sorry to get through this long introduction but this is Star Wars, the product with the most replies, I might as well make this UNIQUE right?), here are the reasons this set FAILS to be the ULTIMATE HOME EDITION OF STAR WARS we've all dreamed of owning:

1- The colors. Yes, Lowry Digital did a bang up job "restoring" the Trilogy so that they almost look like modern movies shot last week instead of movies shot 20 years ago. However, they used an automated process to save time and money and unfortunately this system was not quite perfect, so the color timing is way off in many scenes throughout the 6 hours of the Star Wars saga. You want examples? Sam Davatchi's page has well documented these but sadly his web page is down, but many thumbnails of his pics can be seen via google image search. But in any case, they exist, and here are some examples:

- Blue Rebel Soldiers. In a few shots of the Rebel soldiers who try to hold off the Stormtroopers in Episode IV, their outfits look blue. They are actually supposed to be gray, but some shots the blue level is too high.

- Weird lightsaber colors. This is most commonly noticed with regards to Darth Vader's lightsaber (which is supposed to be RED). Often times it turns pink or violet for no reason, and then will be red in the next shot. Too much blue, or not enough red. In a few shots in Episode V, Darth Vader's saber turns orange (when he leaps at Luke in their first fight in the "carbon freeze chamber" and when he puts his saber up to Luke in "the cave" on Yoda's Dagobah). Luke's lightsaber in Episode IV, while on the Falcon appears green in the far shot (compare this to the menu version of the same shot on the Bonus Disc, also compare to animated menu for that same scene in the ANH menus), when it should be blue. Luke's saber (the one Ben Kenobi says belonged to his father), is shown blue when he first swings it around in Ben's hut at the beginning of the movie. It's then bright green on the Falcon. Then it turns a blue/green color for the rest of the scene, except the last part of the "wearing the helmet with the blast shield down" training scene where Luke "starts to get the hang of it" when it is the proper blue color. In the original versions, the lightsaber was always blue, though the color faded over time to almost white in many of these shots. The automatic color balancing tool they used obviously decided green was the proper color and goofed up most of these shots. One can compare the lightsaber Luke uses in Episode V (storywise it's supposed to be the same one, and it's ALWAYS blue). Finally, in Episode IV, in the otherwise awesomely done "enhanced" lightsaber battle (the lightsabers are recolored to match the rest of the movies) between Vader and Kenobi, Vader's saber appears violet/pink in several shots, while red in a few others. There are one or two far shots (when the Stormtroopers are coming over to watch the fight) where Vader and/or Kenobi's sabers are still unpainted where Lowry Digital forgot to repaint them as they did all the other shots, so they appear as white sticks. In a quick shot where Kenobi's saber infamously "shorts out" as he's facing the camera and swinging at Vader, Lowry Digital added a glow, but forgot to color the white "core" of the saber, so it still appears to be a prop rod, rather than a fantasy energy blade.

A final lightsaber note. This is just "one scene" and so it has been heavily critized by some fans as being unimportant. I could argue for dramatic and story purposes it is VERY IMPORTANT, and so to screw it up visually is unforgiveable here. In any case, in the scene in Episode VI, when Luke swings his lightsaber at the Emperor and Darth Vader "blocks" it with his own lightsaber, and the two blades "cross" in front of the Emperor's cackling face... something strange happens. In previous versions, Luke's green blade is blocked by Vader's red blade, and they merge into a "white" area. The Emperor's face is lit up, and what appear to be black "slugs" appear on his face (this was actually a last minute touch up during the original film to cover open areas of light reflection off the unmade-up portions of the actor's face and hood). Probably in an effort to remove the "Emperor's slugs" (the fan name for these odd black blobs that appear on his face) Lowry Digital's tool made the scene very very dark, much darker than normal. As a result, the lightsabers appear more "solid" and less white. In fact, so much so, that Vader's saber appears to be IN FRONT OF LUKE'S (that is, Luke's green blade is closer to the Emperor's face than Vader's). This would lead some to suspect that the story has been changed... Luke was not trying to attack the Emperor and Vader defending. Rather Luke was "blocking" Vader from killing his own master! Wow! And all this because they wanted to remove the slugs by making it too dark, rather than removing them digitally (cheap way out leads to a greater problem). Now on the user end one can "fix" this problem by upping the brightness of their display considerably, and the lightsabers appear correct. However this makes the rest of the movie too bright, and makes obvious "garbage mattes" (VFX artifacts that appear as light green, blue or gray "boxes" around starships as they were blue/green screened into composite shots) that would normally "disappear" in a properly darkened screen stand out like sore thumbs. One more visual glitch that detracts from an otherwise phenomenal experience.

- Pink or Red? Like the Darth Vader lightsaber issue, this one is all over the map as well. When "blasters" or "turbo lasers" fire red shots (everybody fires red except for Imperial starships and starfighters which fire green), they are sometimes the proper red, and sometimes a more pink/violet color. This goes also for explosions which appear violet that were previously red/orange in other releases. But the blaster shots are the most obvious gaffe since they are supposed to be weapon that doesn't change color at random (just like Lightsabers).

- Tammy Faye Leia. Look at Princess Leia's makeup job in the early scenes in Episode IV. Also look at her makeup when she dons "forest gear" for their mission to Endor in Episode VI. That makeup looks REALLY caked on. She's like a white ghost. Her skin is pasty and pale. She does not look this bad in the originals. Rather this is due to the color balancing goofing up with either too much white (light balance) or too much pink. In the shots in Episode IV, her face is often the only "colored" object in the room (everything else is either white, or black like Vader's armor). They mistimed this.

- True Blue R2. This is primarily confined to Episode IV, but watch those shots of R2D2 wandering in the desert after the droids' "escape pod" lands. R2D2 is a frighteningly bright shade of blue. This is not correct. The original prop/costume (whatever you want to call that rig they forced Kenny Baker Jr. to ride around in for his part) is not bright plastic blue, but a kind of dark blue finish that appears almost black except when the light shines on it. The color timing obviously made a choice thinking this was "wrong" and upped the blue, making it now loud and painful on the eyes. The same can be see with the blue object attached to the escape pod noticable in the shots when the droids are first setting out into the sands. It is the same blue color as R2D2. Originally it was much darker in color (I assume this is supposed to be a "parachute" of the pod). Lowry made sure to fix a few "space" shots of R2D2 that originally showed him with Black decals (this was because the blue screen effect used sucked all the color out of R2D2 and they didn't have time to painstakingly put it back in the originals). But they neglected others. So as a result you will sometimes see the exterior of Luke's ship with R2D2 and he's bright blue. Other times, he's black (and not the dark blue he should be always).

- Yoda. Yes, Yoda is made to appear VERY green in Episode V and VI. However at the expense of the rest of the scenes he's in. He was actually a bit more blue and even brown in the original movies. As a result, everything else in the scenes looks too green. They probably did this in the hopes of making him look as vibrantly green as he was in the Prequels. But it's not quite right, and jars with the otherwise drab blueish background of Dagobah. Much of Empire Strikes Back relies on the blue color scheme, which is now a bit more green than before.

- Death Star explosion. Okay this one really bugs me. Take a look at the explosion of Alderaan in Episode IV. It's a big orange/red/yellowish fiery blast. Okay. Now compare the Death Star blowing up in the same movie. It's WHITE. Okay, some people said "well the death star is a cold artificial thing, so maybe it just blows up white." The trouble is in the earlier verisons of the movie the Death Star explosion was the same color scheme roughly as Alderaan. And now check the Death Star II explosion on this set, and what do you find? Nice red/orange/yellowish fiery explosion again! So this was another color timing error. And for those who still need proof, watch the Episode IV Death Star explosion closely. On the outer right edge of the explosion you'll see some obvious, bad blue screen artifacting (looks like blue glow). That wasn't there before! Lowry Digital screwed up again.

2-Sound issues:

Now this one 20th Century Fox actually commented on, and many of us smelled BS. Basically here is what they said:

"Thanks for being so observant, the audience really is listening, these were DELIBERATE CREATIVE DECISIONS." And then just turned away.

Here are the issues, and I'll explain why their excuse is suspect (these are all relating to Episode IV):

- In Episode IV, the stereo channels are reversed. Why is this a "creative decision"? Isn't it rather, "incorrect"? An object you see moving on your right, but sounds like it's moving on your left is a gaffe, isn't it?

- When Govenor Tarkin is talking to Princess Leia on the Death Star, he says "You prefer another target... then name the system! I grow tired of asking..." notice in his speech that the vocal quality of those lines changes rapidly. Sometimes there is a noticable "hiss" behind his lines and other times not. The DVD authors forgot to balance the lines properly so they are all at the same vocal level. This was not part of earlier versions of Star Wars. Likewise notice that whenever Leia speaks in the parts of this conversation suddenly you hear a tape hiss in the background of her lines. It's very noticeable if you have your speakers turned up. Is this also a "creative decision" to make the lines sound more like artificial recordings than natural speech?

Finally, the biggest complaint people had, which is most easily recognizable and puts the nail in the "creative decision" excuse's coffin, is that "horns" incident with the attack on the Death Star. This is often referred to as the famous "Force fanfare" (I think). When Red Leader is saying "...wait for my signal to start your attack run" and then you get a dramatic shot of the X-Wings looping around in formation to swing into the Death Star trench for the first time. You here a big "DUN DUN DUH DUN DUN DUN!" in the music. But in the regular audio tracks, this is completely drowned out by loud engine noise from the fighters, so it almost appears to be WITHOUT music (it's actually still there, just much quieter than before). Creative decision? At first glance, however if you switch from the English to the FRENCH sound track (which is available on Region 1 DVD's at least), suddenly you hear the proper "horns" playing during this same section.

So is Fox saying that French people must hear the scene as it was for twenty years, but English and Spanish speakers must now get only loud engines? Something is fishy at Fox studios!

One could go on and complain about the poor line delivery of Ian McDiarmond (compared to Clive Revil) in his new scene as the Emperor (his voice actually cracks when he says "he could destroy us") or the bored mechanical way that supposed villian Boba Fett delivers his lines in the redubbed by Teumora Morrison scenes also of Empire Strikes Back, but then certain fans could get the satisfaction that I'm complaining ONLY because Lucas keeps altering his movies, and I must just be upset about the Special Edition. So I won't. Rather, I comment on the actual GAFFES in this release, which were not in previous Special Editions, but are NEW, that we the purchasers of these DVD's get to experience for the first time, which should have been caught before release in testing.

These color and sound issues issues are things you can't simply ignore when watching the films, so people buying this, even if they are devoted Lucasphiles who love every change he's ever made to Star Wars, need to consider this before they plunk down their change, thinking this will be the definitive home set of these classics.

As a self-proclaimed "visual filmmaker" Lucas can't ignore these things, and really I think the rush-job to release these new DVD's out in time for a simultaneous release with Star Wars Battlefront (LucasArts actually reported a sales figure that COMBINED sales of the Trilogy DVD box set and the video game, and used this to claim that Star Wars Battlefront was the "#1 best selling Star Wars game of all time"... can you say, fudge marketing??). It's too bad they didn't go back and repair the damage in the 2005 re-issue.

I would recommend this WideScreen set over the "2005 (repackaged) Edition." Despite much of the bonus disc being fluff and lacking many features fans truly wanted (like actual deleted scenes and commentary that wasn't 50% Ben Burtt gushing about his sound effects skills, which are admittedly amazing of course).

Also, this set, despite the cool looking silver packaging, is actually rather cheaply put together. It's thin cardboard, and you'll be lucky to purchase one that isn't already dented and banged up some by the time you get it home. Thankfully the amray cases inside are just fine (the artwork may not be to everyone's taste, but fan covers on the internet are plentiful, I wouldn't recommend buying the 2005 edition just for the artwork, unless you think losing the disc of extras is worth it).

So let the Buyer Beware, and don't shoot the messenger! ;)

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