So Lucas has finally given in to pressure and decided to satisfy the fans and release the original Star Wars trilogy theatrical versions as seen in the 70s and 80s (sans Special Edition enhancements) on DVD.

Fantastic, but George has decided to test our faith in the original trilogy and give us it in it’s most raw form by using non-anamorphic, low resolution laserdisc transfers as the source! It would appear he believes by asking for the original versions we would be hypocrites for wanting those versions cleaned up and sourced from a high definition transfer (the kind of thing that film preservation purists at Criterion do after all ;)).

This is nothing short of just sticking two fingers up to the fans.

Of course this does allow for better future releases on DVD and then HD versions later, consistently going back on his word 😉

As always, more information at www.originaltrilogy.com

Oh, and to make it worse the covers for the DVDs are awful new versions inspired by the original posters rather than the brilliant original posters. Artwork and details of the DVDs here.

P.S. If you have the SE versions, you have to re-buy them to get these versions, and if you have the laserdiscs or the fan DivX versions derived from them you aren’t getting anything new anyway 😉