This started out life as a comment to Ian’s post about the Star Wars DVDs but as it got longer and more bilious I decided to make it a post.

I’m not happy about the Star Wars DVDs. Not even nearly. They’ve been surrounded by a shitstorm of rumours recently. It’s generally accepted now that we will never get to see these movies in their original form again. Lucas has even gone as far as preventing a film festival from showing a print of the original version of Star Wars. The DVDs will almost certainly be the Special Editions. But it doesn’t stop there. There have been rumours (since Clones was in production) that Lucas is making even more changes to the movies and is even going as far as trying to get the AFI to credit him as co-director on Empire and Return. These extra special editions may actually be a second set of DVDs to be released after the third prequel is out on disk. I know I’ll end up buying them as well bringing the total number of times that I’ve bought these movies to 4 (THX remaster of the original movies on VHS, Special Editions on VHS, Special Editions on DVD and extra mucked around with version on DVD). After Lucas has finished taking all my money the only place where I’ll get to see Han shoot first is on my oldest, crummiest VHS version.