According to the Home Media Retailing website, George Lucas’s original “Star Wars” films – read: before he messed with them – will be released on DVD in September.
If – like most of you did - you hated the razzle-dazzle special edition releases, and were grinding your teeth as Sebastian Shaw was tragically erased from the final moments of “Jedi” - only to be replaced by Hayden Christensen, ridiculous I tell ya! -, You’ll definitely want to pre-order this set.
On September 12, two years after diehard fans blasted Lucasfilm Ltd. for releasing only the digitally modified “Special Edition” versions of the celebrated trilogy in a boxed collection, “Star Wars”, “The Empire Strikes Back” and “Return of the Jedi” hit disc in all their unscathed glory.
Each release, distributed by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, will be a two-disc set that also includes the digitally tweaked 2004 edition. The DVDs will only be available through Dec. 31.
Lucasfilm said the decision to revisit the trilogy came about “in response to overwhelming demand.”
“See the title crawl to Star Wars before it was known as Episode IV — A New Hope; see the pioneering, if dated, motion-control model work on the attack on the Death Star; groove to Lapti Nek or the Ewok Celebration song like you did when you were a kid; and, yes, see Han Solo shoot first,” according to Lucasfilm.
Jim Ward, president of LucasArts and SVP of Lucasfilm, said over the years, “a truly countless number of fans have told us that they would love to see and own the original version that they remember experiencing in theaters. We turned to the Lucasfilm Archives to search exhaustively for source material that could be presented on DVD.”