This weekend at Lucasfilm’s Star Wars Celebration V in Florida, Star Wars impresario George Lucas announced that all six films in the Star Wars series will be available on Blu-Ray disc in the fall of 2011.
And, as expected, Lucas announced that the new releases will contain a plethora of “documentaries, vintage behind-the-scenes moments, interviews, retrospectives and never-before-seen footage from the Lucasfilm archives.” Among the archive footage footage will be several deleted scenes previously unreleased. While Lucas didn’t specify what those scenes would be – though I wouldn’t be surprised if we finally get to see the scenes of Luke in Anchorhead with his friends Deak, Windy, Fixer and Kami – they did screen one. Taken from the beginning of Return Of The Jedi, it shows Luke Skywalker completing a new new lightsaber (to replace the one he lost in the finale of The Empire Strikes Back) and preparing for his visit to Jabba the Hutt’s palace to free the captive Han Solo.
Of course, the question immediately arises in most fans’ minds is will the blu-ray releases contain the theatrical releases of the original trilogy or the “Special Editions” that Lucas released in the late 90s. Unfortunately, it looks as if we’ree only getting the “Special Editions,” with Lucas explaining –
Releasing the originals is kind of an oxymoron because the quality of the original is not very good. You have to go through and do a whole restoration on it, and you have to do that digitally. It’s a very, very expensive process to do it. So when we did the transfer to digital, we only transferred really the upgraded version.
My own feelings on the Original Trilogy versus their inferior “Special Editions” version have been stated here before. It’s sad to see that as time marches on, Lucas is willing to let the biggest foundations of his cinematic and career empire vanish in to the mists of time.
