Minesweeper!

Ooh, what a pretty bunch of blocks! Shall I click one of those?! *CLICK! Several blocks disappear!* WHOA! Let’s make more blocks disappear! *CLICK! Some more blocks disappear* Yeah! I’m winning! I’m the greatest. Player. Of the greatest. Game. Ever!!! *CLICK! BOOM! You lose! Retry?* I LOST?! This game sucks! Worst. Game. Ever! *Throws computer out of the window*.

A message from one of our sponsors? Yeah that’s the ticket.

Anyway… I just read that there’s a film festival somewhere in California, and they wanted to show a couple of films representing a decade, and one of the films they picked for the 1970’s is Star Wars. And guess what? Ole’ George Lucas wouldn’t let them show it unless it’s the special edition. Not the original one.

What kinda bull is that?

I remember Star Wars fondly. I was a late comer to the Star Wars saga – hey I wasn’t even born when it came out – but I saw it at a young age, and I thought it was the greatest thing to flicker at me from the tube. And I watched it again during the summer, and it’s still one frickin’ great movie. I got that original VHS tape set. Glad as hell that I did too.

Everyone in America knows Star Wars. Luke Skywalker, acted with horrible talent by Mark Hamill is still awesome. When bad acting is awesome, it gotta be something special, and good ol’ Luke is one of those. And we have the bad ass villain. Darth Vader stole the whole screen whenever he is on, with his awesome voice and corny as hell but still bad ass dialogue (“your lack of faith disturbs me.” aw, that was awesome).

And now good old George went and re-did the trilogy in a special edition extravanza. Fans complained, moaned and bitched. And cheered at the same time. Sure, there’s some bull in there – Han Solo shot first, not Greedo, dammit – but hey, it’s a nice touch, ya know? As long as we keep our old movies, the new ones can’t hurt. Right? Right? WRONG!

Now George is trying to erase all memories of the original trilogy. You want the originals on DVDs? Dream on, the closest thing you’ll get is the special editions – Greedo shoots first and all.

And man, that blows ass. If old George releases a uber-DVD set that includes the original AND the enhanced edition, that’d be just sooo sweet. Hell, if he releases the originals and the special editions in separate DVDs, I’ll buy them both. I’m sure many people will do that. So why not? I mean it means more $$$ for our George there!

It just sucks that George is trying to change film history. He’s trying to do something that is impossible – Star Wars is a huge part of many of our childhood, and it’s not going away anytime soon. I bet you that as soon as George dies, the studio’ll release the originals. Just you wait.

If you still have the old VHS tapes, or the laserdisc version (you lucky dog!), clutch on it. Cuz it’s not gonna be re-released anytime soon.

Raven out.