cup-o-robots

September 21st, baby. Cannot wait. Seriously the most anticipated DVD release since Invader Zim Vol. 2 (err.. which is coming out next week). Yeah it’s great that the DVD market is booming and we get to see so many movies and television shows in a great home video format, but sometimes it’s hard to keep up with collecting all the DVDs you want to get - they are coming out faster and more featured-filled. With the Star Wars Original Trilogy DVD, we’re getting the first official DVD release of the movies, some cool extra features (that documentary on the films sounds cool and will make its way onto TV on A&E in some edited format), but also.. it’s ANOTHER version of the trilogy. What I mean by this, is there are some changes in this new release. Besides a new transfer there are little cosmetic changes (tells you how finicky Lucas is, but pretty impressive from a technical/SFX standpoint) like labelling on control panels, fixing up costumes for consistency, and a new Jabba the Hut rendering for A New Hope. That’s like 4 different Jabbas in all the movies we’ve seen - whoa WHOA! I’m particularly interested in any CG frame recomposition that might be in the releases, something that Lucas is also doing with the new THX-1138 DVD release, and it looks awesome. What they do is take an original scene and then expand the surroundings and settings, giving a really neat depth and scope effect, making sets look larger and more detailed. There are some interesting takes as well. From footage that has been around the net, it shows a different ending to Return of the Jedi, with Hayden Christensen replacing Sebastian Shaw as the “ghost” image of Anakin Skywalker; it doesn’t make any sense to me (if someone can help me explain) but oh well. Man, Lucas loves his digital filmmaking and I’m impressed how busy he’s keeping everyone at Lucasfilm and ILM. Well anyways, we’ll see how it turns out and maybe someday there will be a super-dooper complete Star Wars set with all 6 episodes and 5 verisons of each or something (hmm.. it’s kinda scary what Lucas might do to the Trilogy when he starts using upcoming formats like Blu-ray, HD-DVD, or HVD, erf.). One drawback, it’s so sad that Greedo still, STILL shoots first. Grrr. (The images shown here are from Sam Davatchi’s Page, check them out.)