Some of my fellow Sci-Fi fans may be shocked by the title, but I’ll stand by it. Last week I finally got what I’d be waiting years to have, or so I thought. The new DVDs are the same as those in the trilogy box set that came out about two years ago. What’s new is that they’re each sold separately and come with a copy of the original theatrical version on a second disc. (oh yea, and there are big FBI antipiracy labels all over the cover and the discs, tacky…) Unfortunately almost no work went into producing this new disc. The original version isn’t even in a true widescreen format; it’s a 4:3 letterbox formatted for traditional TV sets, not widescreen. I’m going to take a guess that Lucas doesn’t want the original to compete with his new vision of the films and left us with the old Laserdisc version instead. I don’t expect surround, as the original film didn’t have it either. However, I would’ve liked to get at least a full quality widescreen version for my money. My advice: if you already have the trilogy don’t waste your money.
Out of curiousity, I checked to see what had been released on Laserdisc. According to the site below, there are a number of widescreen 2.35:1 format versions of the original 3 Star Wars films released on Laserdisc.
http://www.blam1.com/StarWars/index.htm
Since I actually do have a Laserdisc player, I thought I would check this out. Unfortunately, the site above is less than accurate. While the actual movie frame is depicted in 2.35:1, the presentation on the Laserdisc is actually a letterboxed 4:3 format. In fact, there are only 25 anamorphic (true widescreen) LD titles according to the Laserdisc database:
http://www.lddb.com/list.php?format=laserdisc&list=squeeze