I own VHS of the originals, when the originals came out.

What’s amazing is that the first one, from 1977, still dazzles. There’s no material advantage to buying the new stuff, unless you have high def gear.

The old movies still seem fresh. That is to say, the first three, which was really 4, 5, & 6.

Episodes 1,2,& 3 are almost worthless. If I had children, I wonder which order I would present them to them in.

I would like to see, and believe I will someday see, a seventh star wars movie, if Lucas lives long and well enough, for several reasons:

Reasons why I believe there will be at least one more Star Wars movie.

(1) Money.

(2) Lucas would like to go out on a high note.

The last three were not that good, in my estimation, but part of that could not be helped. He had to shoe horn those movies into being set ups for the first three, on the one hand, in theory the techology in episodes 1,2, & 3 were less than the technology in episodes 4,5 & 6.

The story lines had to be made to fit. On top of that there were the over the top references to the Bush regime, “you are either with me or against me” type of thing that could have been more elegantly achieved and arrived at. But in perhaps, with the passage of time, will look better. Lucas real problem is he’s a geek type. He can’t do romance. When it comes to Romance, He has the skills of a black smith, where he needed the skills of a brain surgean who also has a nobel prize in poetry. He really should have gotten help from the outside here. A man has got to know his limitations. I didn’t find the romance in 1, 2 & 3 to be even remotely believable. His only success was with Hans Solo and Princess Lea – and that was romance by hostility/anti-romance. You can get away with that only once and you have to have the right characters.

(3) A new episode would be projected into the future. Lucas will not be ham stung by past and future story lines.

(4) He still has episodes 7,8 & 9. He may not want to do three more star wars films, but he could easily do one more with a little more girth. Or perhaps split the difference and do the LotR deal where you film once, can thrice.

(5) Once he’s had time off from the last go around, say ten year or so, where he’s been able to rest, and perhaps put his hand to something entirely different, he may then be able to come back and think afresh, new story arcs and creatively.

In short, after a nice hiatus, he’ll be able think creatively about the kind of movie he’d like to make, unconstrained by past work and take the opportunity to prove himself that he can do masterful work

I really do think he will touch Star Wars again and finish off the saga. I just hope he’s up to it. He doesnt have to acheive what he did in the first three, but it would be nice if he did better than he did in the second three. And finally, get some help from some women he trusts who is skilled in the romance trade of art and literature.

You do know that a live-action Star Wars TV series is in the pipeline, right? It’s set for a 2008 debut, and will feature stories that take place between “Revenge of the Sith” and “A New Hope.” It will reportedly show the rebel alliance forming, and may feature Boba Fett, Mon Mothma, and Bail Organa significantly. Frank Oz (Yoda), Ian McDiarmid (Palpatine), Hayden Christensen (Darth Vader), Jimmy Smits (Bail Organa), Wayne Pygram (Grand Moff Tarkin), Ewan McGregor (Obi-Wan Kenobi) and Temuera Morrison (Jango Fett/clonetroopers) have reportedly voiced interest in “appearances,” so it could be interesting. James Earl Jones would be a huge plus for the series.

Whether it will be a good show or not, that’s the question, though. Hopefully, the networks will give the show a bit better treatment than Young Indiana Jones, which was an excellent show (teenage Indy only, the boy sucked), but was destroyed by ABC, which kept shuffling the timeslot and brought it on and off of hiatus with little or no warning.

See Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_live-action_TV_series

I don’t think it’s fair to lay this all on Lucas. Fox’s hand is in this as well.

Fox was the first studio to release their classic films on DVD in large numbers. But in the last several years, they’ve considerably slowed down. On the other hand, they can’t stop repackaging the blockbusters. In the past few weeks, they’ve released M*A*S*H and Planet of the Apes for the third time. This week, they’re releasing special editions of The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno. And for Memorial Day weekend, they’ll have special editions of Tora! Tora! Tora!, The Longest Day and Patton, all of them re-releases. And The Omen is getting a re-release soon as well.

And for anyone who’s REALLY a stickler for the directors ‘original vision’, these will not be the exact versions originally shown in theaters. These are the remastered THX certified ediitons produced for the 1993 laser discs later released on VHS. But at least the asinine “Star Wars 4 – A New Hope” will be removed.

What a shame he lacks the talent (or can’t part with the cash flow) to move beyond this franchise already.

BGI: I am pretty certain that Lucas controls this. Before Star Wars came out, Lucas made a deal with 20th Century whereupon he gave up most of his pay for the film in exchange for control of the film and its sequels, 40% of the gross, and the merchandising rights. Fox, like IBM with Bill Gates, thought Lucas was a fool and that they were ripping him off, and they agreed. Ever since then, Lucas had been in pretty much complete control of the whole saga, dictating what happens and when.

Though you do, of course, have a very valid point–the studios do have a tendency to re-release the heck out of stuff. My point is, Lucas does this too, but almost to an extreme, particularly with the soundtracks.

Lucas’ weakness isn’t so much romance (although he does stink at that) but *dialogue*. The guy has a tin ear for how people really talk.

When you’re writing, there’s different ways to put the words together. For example, stuff like a blog entry, or a comment (like this one) is going to be written differently than when you “write” things that people are saying.

If you want to read great dialogue, I suggest Elmore Leonard’s books. They’re all fairly close to the same plot line, but in his books people talk the way people really TALK.

In the Star Wars movies, the lines are merely vehicles to move the plot along- not to actually develop characters, at least not as anything more than sketches. And in Episodes 1-3, the plot is just an excuse to show really neato gee-whiz moviemaking technology.

The real shame of the first three episodes is that they could have been SOOOO GOOD, had Lucas just been willing to give up a little control over the details of the scripts and let someone else write the dialogue.

The turning point in those movies, when Anakin really goes to the Dark Side, would be (IMO) when he goes to rescue his mom, and the Raiders have killed her… that’s when he really gives in to his hate and anger, and goes batshit killing everyone in the camp. From then on, he’s doomed.

That should have been the entire point of Episode II, IMO.

Anyway, I’ll be a sucker and buy the DVDs of the “original” versions when they come out. I hated some of the changes he made for the “special” edition (Greedo shooting first was probably the biggest sin) and liked some of the others (Jabba meeting Han at the Falcon to rag on him for not having the money).

And when it all comes out on DVD-HD or Blu-Ray, I’ll pony up the bucks for that, too. Maybe I’ll just copy the “original” editions and then buy the HD versions when they come out.

Paul
Seattle, WA

I didn’t know about the television series.

I guess that Battlestar Gallaticca must have shown that a sci fi series can be good business.

Ironically, it was the Buzz about the original Star Wars that created the original Battlestar series.

People couldn’t get enough of noble high minded rebels fighting off big empires all in outer space.

If HD-DVD wins the format war, then he can do this all over again. This is why I’m glad I’m not a Star Wars fan, because I’d no doubt have spent hundreds of dollars trying to keep up by now.

What is the need of a Star Wars TV series? We already have Battlestar Galactica on the air. Galactica is grown-up Sci-Fi, and the Star Wars series would probably just end up looking like a pale imitation.

(Which is odd, since the producers of the 70’s Galactica were sued by the Star Wars producers for stealing their idea.)