Was George Lucas's Star Wars Trilogy, the most anticipated DVD release ever, worth the wait? You bet. It's a must-have for any home theater, looking great, sounding great, and supplemented by generous bonus features.

The Movies
The Star Wars Trilogy had the rare distinction of becoming a cultural phenomenon, a defining event for its generation. On its surface, George Lucas's story is a rollicking and humorous space fantasy that owes debts to more influences than one can count on two hands, but filmgoers became entranced by its basic struggle of good vs. evil "a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away," its dazzling special effects, and a mythology of Jedi knights, the Force, and droids. Over the course of three films--A New Hope (1977), The Empire Strikes Back (1980), and Return of the Jedi (1983)--Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher), and the roguish Han Solo (Harrison Ford) join the Rebel alliance in a galactic war against the Empire, the menacing Darth Vader (David Prowse, voiced by James Earl Jones), and eventually the all-powerful Emperor (Ian McDiarmid). Empire is generally considered the best of the films and Jedi the most uneven, but all three are vastly superior to the more technologically impressive prequels that followed, Episode I, The Phantom Menace (1999) and Episode II, Attack of the Clones (2002).

How Are the Picture and Sound?

Thanks to a new digital transfer, you've never seen C-3PO glow so golden, and Darth Vader's helmet is as black as the Dark Side.

In a word, spectacular. Thanks to a new digital transfer, you've never seen C-3PO glow so golden, and Darth Vader's helmet is as black as the Dark Side. And at the climactic scene of A New Hope, see if the Dolby 5.1 EX sound doesn't knock you back in your chair. Other audio options are Dolby 2.0 Surround in English, Spanish, and French. (Sorry, DTS fans, but previous Star Wars DVDs didn't have DTS either.) There have been a few quibbles with the audio on A New Hope, however. A few seconds of Peter Cushing's dialogue ("Then name the system!") are distorted, and the music (but not the sound effects) is reversed in the rear channels. For example, in the final scene, the brass is in the front right channel but the back left channel (from the viewer's perspective), and the strings are in the left front and back right. The result feels like the instruments are crossing through the viewer.

What's Been Changed?
The rumors are true: Lucas made more changes to the films for their DVD debut. Hayden Christensen (Anakin Skywalker) has been added to a scene in Jedi, Ian McDiarmid (the Emperor) replaces Clive Revill with slightly revised lines in Empire, Temuera Morrison has rerecorded Boba Fett's minimal dialogue, and some other small details have been altered. Yes, these changes mean that the Star Wars films are no longer the ones you saw 20 years ago, but these brief changes hardly affect the films, and they do make sense in the overall continuity of the two trilogies. It's not like a digitized Ewan McGregor has replaced Alec Guiness's scenes, and the infamous changes made for the 1997 special-edition versions were much more intrusive (of course, those are in the DVD versions as well).

How Are the Bonus Features?
Toplining is Empire of Dreams: The Story of the Star Wars Trilogy, a 150-minute documentary incorporating not only the usual making-of nuts and bolts but also the political workings of the movie studios and the difficulties Lucas had getting his vision to the screen (for example, after resigning from the Directors' Guild, he lost his first choice for director of Jedi: Steven Spielberg). It's a little adulatory, but it has plenty to interest any fan. The three substantial featurettes are "The Characters of Star Wars" (19 min.), which discusses the development of the characters we all know and love, "The Birth of the Lightsaber" (15 min.), about the creation and evolution of a Jedi's ultimate weapon, and "The Force Is with Them: The Legacy of Star Wars" (15 min.), in which filmmakers such as Peter Jackson, Ridley Scott, and James Cameron talk about how they and the industry were affected by the films and Lucas's technological developments in visual effects, sound, and computer animation.

The bonus features are excellent and along the same lines as those created for The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones. Each film has a commentary track, recorded by Lucas, Ben Burtt (sound design), Dennis Muren (visual effects), and Carrie Fisher, with Irvin Kershner joining in on the film he directed, The Empire Strikes Back. Recorded separately and skillfully edited together (with supertitles to identify who is speaking), the tracks lack the energy of group commentaries, but they're enjoyable and informative, with a nice mix of overall vision (Lucas), technical details (Burtt, Muren, Kershner), and actor's perspective (Fisher). Interestingly, they discuss some of the 1997 changes (Mos Eisley creatures, the new Jabba the Hutt scene) but not those made for the DVDs.

There's also a sampler of the Xbox game Star Wars: Battlefront, which lets the player reenact classic film scenarios (blast Ewoks in the battle of Endor!); trailers and TV spots from the films' many releases; and a nine-minute preview of the last film in the series, Episode III, Revenge of the Sith (here identified by an earlier working title, The Return of Darth Vader). Small extra touches include anamorphic widescreen motion menus with dialogue, original poster artwork on the discs, and a whopping 50 chapter stops for each film.

This review might be interpreted as sacrelige....

I have seen these 3 films once and only once in their entirety. I saw them all in the theater, and I have never seen them again. I feel OK with that. I never got into these, and I don't understand why people love them so much. I'd rather watch Antonioni's trilogy of solitude, Bergman's religious trilogy, or listen to Emerson, Lake, and Palmer's Trilogy. The best film Lucas made was the original THX 1138. When I saw the first film, the film broke a few times, which was more entertaining than anything on screen. Luckily, Lucas has decided to end the series, which all of us can be grateful for. These films are, however, superior to the prequels, which shows how bad those films are...

Star Wars - conquers your disbelief

Star Wars is the story of a young man (Luke Skywalker) who in just one day's time goes on an incredible and unbelievable adventure of a lifetime, exploring the depths of outer space, confronting terrible evil, and prevailing against a machine designed for terror and destruction.
George Lucas' first Star Wars film "A New Hope" is one of the best movies of all time, but it is also one of the most unbelievable, and succeeds at suspending one's disbelief. As one example, Luke Skywalker leaves his home planet on board the Millennium Falcon, a space ship about the size of a basketball court. While traveling through space the Falcon provides its passengers with "Earth-like" gravity, always keeping their feet firmly planted on the floor.
Another example of how well Star Wars "suspends disbelief" revolves around the story's main plot line: that a small, manmade, metal moon has been designed by the evil empire in order to keep control of all its imperial possessions through the threat of terrible force. The empire's "Death Star" moon is equipped with enough fire power to destroy a planet, and early on in the movie it does fire a death ray that completely obliterates a whole planet. The problem is that the Death Star is a moon. If the empire wants to go destroy a planet it has to go "hover" over to some region of the galaxy where it can then fire its guns. Traveling at the speed of light, it would take about 4 years for someone on Earth to reach the next closest solar system to our Sun. The Death Star does not travel at the speed of light. It hovers. If the Death Star hovered at a considerable rate of thousands of miles per hour, that would still be only a tiny fraction of the speed of light. When the Falcon escapes the Death Star, because "the old man got the tractor beam out of commission," the space ship blasts off into hyper space, traveling a tremendous distance in a short amount of time to reach the Rebel base. Then, in hot pursuit, comes the Death Star, "hovering" after Luke, Leia, and Han in the Falcon. That very same day the Death Star catches up to the Falcon at the Rebel base. Luke, a farm boy from an insignificant corner of the universe, is entrusted by the Rebels and gets equipped with one of the Alliance's X-Wing fighters so that he can go destroy the Death Star before it destroys the Rebel base. And as the Death Star makes its final approach to the Rebels' planet, the evil imperial lord Darth Vader says, "This will be a day long remembered. We have seen the end of Kenobi. We shall soon see the end of the Rebellion." The key word is "day." This whole Star Wars adventure took place in just one day. So the Death Star covered many millions, or perhaps many billions of miles, in a fraction of a day. Conquering this impossibility of reality is really what make Star Wars so great. The plot features the triumph of good over evil. The cinematography features the triumph of science fiction over physics.
Review by: Adam Platts

Star Wars Original Trilogy Unaltered coming to DVD!

Those fans who have been demanding the original theatrical editions from 1977 - 1983 on DVD will finally get their wish in September 2006!

Each release will include 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 Strikes Back in 1980, and Return of the Jedi in 1983.

LucasFilm and Fox have announced the original theatrical editions shall be available for a limited time from September 12th to December 31st 2006!