Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Another Video Daily Double from a Galaxy Far, Far Away

As I promised on Monday, here's the final Blu Ray release news (which you more than likely already know): the Star Wars films will make their high definition debut in 2011. Since almost everybody who cares is going to ask, no that does not include the original, unfettered cuts of A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi.

Quoth the Lucas:

“You have to go through and do a whole restoration on it, and you have to do that digitally,” he added. “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.”

“We’ve been working on them for quite a while,” Mr. Lucas said, “but still, there are pipelines. Unfortunately, the recent releases get priority over what we call the classic versions of things.”

Do I smell a double dip? Eh, probably, but this time Lucas is at least suggesting that the "classic versions" will get a better shake than their last DVD outing. Still, don't hold your breath, kiddos.

On the other hand, the Blu Ray set is finally going to have the deleted scenes we've been hearing about for years, including a few a Star Wars geek like the Cap'n didn't know existed...

Enough of the boring crap, they say! Make with the videos, they say!

As you wish.
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Our first video has the clever idea of presenting The Empire Strikes Back as a silent film, and it actually works in a way I wasn't expecting. At first, the Cap'n thought this would be some kind of "premake" trailer (see the Ghostbusters trailer for that, or, for that matter, The Empire Strikes Back), but it's exactly what is promised. Check it out, I think you'll like it:



Our second clip has already been pulled down various times after making the rounds this weekend, but what the hell. It's the deleted opening for Return of the Jedi, involving Vader's meditative link to Luke and the oft-discussed "building the lightsaber" scene. Enjoy it while it lasts:

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