The original, unaltered, unedited versions of episodes 4, 5, and 6. I thought we’d never see this day, or at least not for another 20 years when the Criterion Collection would dig it up.
One confusing thing:
In response to overwhelming demand, [we] will release attractively priced individual two-disc releases of Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Each release includes the 2004 digitally remastered version of the movie and, as bonus material, the theatrical edition of the film. That means you’ll be able to enjoy Star Wars as it first appeared in 1977, Empire in 1980, and Jedi in 1983.
What is “the 2004 digitally remastered version”? I’m pretty sure this is the version with all the absurd edits. To just refer to the as “digitally remastered” is silly, and a little insulting. Furthermore… I want the “theatrical editions” to be digitally remastered too… I just don’t want the content to be changed. Hopefully the “theatrical editions” have been rescanned and processed like the 2004 version was. I can’t imagine that this is not the case, it would in fact be cheaper for them to do that.
To add even more confusion:
Jim Ward, President of LucasArts and Senior Vice President of Lucasfilm Ltd:
We returned to the Lucasfilm Archives to search exhaustively for source material that could be presented on DVD.
This isn’t stated in the context of special features or anything… it seems like he is implying that delivering undedited versions of the same material used in the 2004 DVD required “exhaustive searching in the archives”. WTF?
Anyway, overall, very good news.
Even though Lucas is definitely doing this now much more for his wallet than for the fans, my inner geek will compel me to fork over my money on Sept. 12