Greedo Went Out Like a Chump

I've been waiting for this a long time.Lucasfilm finally caved and are releasing the original Star Wars movies on DVD. I’m not happy about it.

Reason one: I already bought the “special editions.” I don’t like the special editions. The Death Star did not blow up with a shock wave. Either time. And as the Star Wars.com main page reminds us now, even though they’ve been denying it for years because of you know “original artistic vision” and all that crap, Han shot first.

I put off buying the special editions for a long time, and then finally caved when I realized it was the only way I was going to be able to have copies of the original movies on DVD. If I could exchange the special editions for the real ones, then I’d be okay with that. Something tells me they’re not going to let you do that, though. When I do some ciphering and calculate how much money I made from working for Lucas companies vs. how much money I’ve given to Lucas companies, I think I’m at a net loss.

Reason two: “This release will only be available for a limited time: from September 12th to December 31st.” On the press release, they should just replace this sentence with a picture of George flipping us the bird. Haven’t these guys heard of ebay? Don’t they realize that this is going to make it impossible for people to just go into a store and pick up a copy of the DVDs? There’s going to be speculators all over the place waiting in line to snatch up all the available copies, then sell them online for a huge mark-up.

Disney gets a lot of grief — and very deservedly so — for their whole “Disney vault” nonsense and creating an artificial demand for DVD releases by only leaving them out for a limited time. It may generate revenue for them (although considering they’re down to doing it with direct-to-video stuff like Mulan VIII or Bambi’s Revenge, even that well may have dried up), but it just pisses off the fans.